Spurs' biggest potential obstacle for a championship is painfully obvious

San Antonio rose to seventh in three-point shooting just a week ago but has quickly fallen back to the middle of the pack. It was a bit of fool's gold. Even when they made their way into the top ten, they were only shooting 36.7% as a team. That would have been average by past years' standards. That just tells us that the entire league is having a down year in that area.

That can be used to the Spurs' advantage because they're going to be up and down all year. There aren't any pure shooters on this roster. Nearly every single one of these guys had to grow into their percentages, entering college with shooting as a work in progress. Devin Vassell came in as a three-and-D guy, but he doesn't have the most fundamentally sound form. That breeds inconsistency.

But San Antonio's best shooters have all been struggling for a while now, but they were winning games anyway. There's a very good reason for that: their effort was through the roof. They'll need to lean into that to go further than anyone thought possible.

Spurs must outhustle their opponents to counter shooting woes

The Cavaliers' head coach, Kenny Atkinson, basically called it after the game. "We were the force. Sometimes it comes down to that: who’s the more aggressive team? I thought we had the advantage," Cleveland's reigning Coach of the Year told reporters after the game. He was talking more about his guys and not trying to bag on the Spurs, but he's right.

Mitch Johnson brought up former head coach Gregg Popovich's old belief system of the basketball gods after the loss to Utah. He said they didn't listen to them, and that's what led to the loss. That night, the effort wasn't there because they looked past their opponent after coming off a couple of tremendous wins.

The Cavs game felt like they thought they could just shoot their way to victory. By the time San Antonio figured out that wasn't working, they were completely out of sync and on their heels. They couldn't recover. Had they brought their full attention to detail on both sides of the ball from the beginning, that could have been avoided.

Victor Wembanyama gives the Spurs a game-breaking defensive weapon. When he's on the floor and they're at their peak, the numbers are ridiculous. The offensive game always takes longer to settle into place for young guys, so they need to lean on the other stuff. They're good enough to go as far as their focus carries them.