Welcome to the Game Thread. Veterans of the Game Thread know how we do things around here, but for all you newbies we have a few rules. Our community guidelines apply and basically say be cool, no personal attacks, don’t troll and don’t swear too much.

Right now, Hurricane Milton is bearing down on Florida, and the minds of the Magic players are probably on the fate of their state as the storm devastates the west coast of the state and moves eastward over Orlando towards the Atlantic. Maybe they’ll want to spend some extra time in San Antonio and try out the breakfast tacos as the area recovers.

The Spurs will only play 5 preseason games this year, and most teams would probably want to give the expected starters some time to play together and shake off the rust. But that’s not how Pop plays the game, so I would expect to see a lot of lineups tonight that would never sniff the court in a regular season game. It would be nice to see Chris Paul make his debut in a Spurs jersey tonight, and that’s likely to happen, if only for a limited number of minutes. After Victor Wembanyama’s big summer of Olympic basketball, he’s probably already ready to play, but the fans would be pretty excited to see the tall Frenchman take the court, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

We’re sure to see a lot of minutes from Julian Champagnie, who played well in the opener, and more minutes from Harrison Barnes and a slimmed-down Keldon Johnson. We should see a lot of time late in the game for Riley Minix and Malachi Flynn, who seem to be fighting for the third and last two-way spot on the roster. There are only three more preseason games left, so the players at the end of the training camp roster are going to have to make the most of their minutes to improve their chances of being picked up by an NBA team, most likely not the Spurs, whose roster appears to be set for the most part.

* Preseason basketball

Game Prediction:

Riley Minix and Malachi Flynn will both shoot 100% from beyond the arc tonight, just to make Brian Wright’s job harder.

One final word:

Go Spurs GOOOOOO!!

San Antonio Spurs vs Orlando Magic
October 9, 2024 | 7:00 PM CT
Streaming: NBA League Pass
TV: CW35

Reminder: It is against site policy to post links to illegal streams in the comments, but it is not against site policy to exchange email addresses, for instance.