SAN ANTONIO — The long, strange trip the San Antonio Spurs faced to get home from the East Coast was tiring and, at times, scary, but it turned out to be well worth the journey.
San Antonio defeated the Orlando Magic 112-103 on Sunday night in a game that started five hours late after the Spurs dealt with a series of travel woes.
Returning to what he called his normal — playing basketball following a dubious 24 hours — Victor Wembanyama had 25 points, eight rebounds, five blocks and four steals as San Antonio regained second place in the Western Conference.
“We have to answer to our responsibility,” Wembanyama said. “We actually discussed it before, there’s no excuse. We need to be ready for tonight. So ... I mean, it doesn’t really matter.”
With the Spurs (33-16) moving ahead of the Denver Nuggets (33-17), San Antonio coach Mitch Johnson will represent the West in coaching one of the teams in the NBA All-Star Game.
Playing, let alone winning and securing the honor for Johnson seemed improbable for the Spurs following their 111-106 loss to the Hornets.
San Antonio planned to fly out two hours after that game, but had to stay overnight because of the storm that dropped nearly a foot of snow in and around North Carolina's largest city.
The NBA on Saturday changed the start time from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. because of a bomb cyclone in Charlotte that grounded flights.
"It was ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ a little bit," Johnson said, referring to the 1987 road trip comedy film starring Steve Martin and the late John Candy. “Had a little bit the COVID PTSD just with the uncertainty, but it was good. We got back to the hotel last night and got some sleep and stuff, so some good quality time.
"Reminded me a little bit of the G League days. Had those long travel days, and bust out some cards or tell some jokes and stuff.”
The Spurs left Charlotte at 9:20 a.m. Sunday, but the flight was diverted to Atlanta because of what forward Keldon Johnson said was a loss of cabin pressure. The flight landed at 11:01 a.m. in Atlanta, where the Spurs remained for more than two hours before switching planes for their flight home. They arrived in San Antonio at 3:25 p.m.
“It was a little scary,” Keldon Johnson said. “I mean they came on the intercom, said we was losing cabin pressure. We had the emergency landing and, I mean, obviously you don’t know the extent of what’s going on, but it seemed pretty serious.”
Johnson said the mood changed once the plane landed in Atlanta and remained so throughout the two-hour flight back home to San Antonio.
Some players went home before the game, but Mitch Johnson and most of the staff and players went directly to the Frost Bank Center after landing.
The Magic had been in San Antonio since Saturday morning awaiting the start of a two-game road trip that concludes Tuesday in Oklahoma City.
Orlando coach Jamahl Mosley prepared his team to expect San Antonio to come out energized despite the travel delays.
“I think sometimes those are the easier games because you’re just laying it all out there and you’re not worried about all the things that you have to walk into before,” Mosley said before tipoff. "You just show up and play. I think there is a freedom and a looseness that guys can play with in those situations.”
It proved prophetic as the Spurs built a double-digit lead in the opening five minutes and extended the advantage to 18 points in the first quarter.
“Don’t matter how you feel, it don’t matter how they feel," Keldon Johnson said. “We got to go out here and we got to get the job done and that’s what it’s about and that’s what we did tonight. We could have said we were very tired. We had a long layover, we didn’t get no rest or we was on the plane for this amount of time, but weren’t no excuses tonight.
"We went out there and we executed it and we played our brand of basketball and that’s big time to be able to come together and get it done.”
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