Spurs hope to learn from squandered opportunity

The "L" word reverberated throughout the locker room Wednesday after a fast start morphed into slow
death for the San Antonio Spurs, which saw a 22-point first quarter lead disintegrate
into a 110-98 loss to the Golden State Warriors.
Nearly every Spur interviewed said they'd "learn" from this, or characterized the game's outcome as a "learning experience."
"I think it's a great learning experience," Spurs guard Manu Ginobili said. "Reality check? We knew who we were playing
One of the best teams of the last few years ... . It was not going to be easy. We knew it was going to be tough."
The Spurs also now understand their road through the postseason probably will track a little more adversely as most likely the No. 2
seed in the Western Conference. San Antonio probably knocked itself out of a shot at securing the
top seed, as it fell 3½ games back of Golden State with eight games left in the regular season.
It's a fate the veteran Spurs can accept, but not without critical self-evaluation to prevent a another meltdown should
the teams meet again in the Western Conference finals. Surrendering a 22-point lead to a
Golden State team playing without an injured Kevin Durant even led Spurs guard Danny Green
to consider what they're missing given the retirement of franchise icon Tim Duncan.
"It's the NBA. You can't dwell on any of them," Green said. "You learn from it and move forward, be more professional,
and try to get better. In the past that's where Timmy was good for us, or teams in the
past just collectively. We wouldn't let things like that happen. It might happen
, but rarely. But I think it's happened more often than it should here at this time and this year.
"I wouldn't say it was a wake-up call. We knew what was at stake. We knew what we had to do
We did it. We just didn't do it for 48 minutes."

Spurs hope to learn from squandered opportunity

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