6 reasons the Spurs didn’t foul against the Nuggets in Game 7

After careful observation there are some good reasons.

The Spurs were so weird, so mind-boggling, so un-Spurs like in Game 7 against the Nuggets that it’s leaving everyone scratching their heads and wondering what the heck happened. After a dramatic fourth quarter comeback Gregg Popovich’s team astoundingly decided not to foul with 28 seconds left on the clock and down by four points.

Our own Kristian Winfield described the moment as a “defensive brain fart,” which is probably the best explanation you can possibly give for what happened. However, after pondering this moment overnight I have a few more ideas.

The Spurs were ready for vacation.

There are two types of people in the world: Those who coast on their final day of work before vacation, and those who pretend to be industrious to cover up coasting on their final work day before vacation.

San Antonio was both in one game. They remembered “hey, if we just drop this one we can be in Aruba by Monday, which honestly — I can’t fault them for.

The Spurs had tickets to see Avengers: Endgame at 10 p.m.

Do you know how hard it is to find tickets right now, especially for an entire NBA team? Overtime would have forced the Spurs to need to find a different showing, and dodging spoilers is already a minefield.

Seasons come and go — the end to this arc of the Marvel Cinematic Universe only comes around once in a great while.

Gregg Popovich saw this photo of himself with Tim Duncan in 1998.

NBAE/Getty Images

I can absolutely see Coach Pop catching sight of this photo in the crowd somewhere and having an immediate existential crisis about the passage of time and what life means. It would have been enough to forget what was happening on the court, for sure.

Nikola Jokic dominating shook the Spurs to their core.

After all, San Antonio is supposed to be the team who finds obscure 2nd round international talent in the NBA Draft and turns them into superstars — not other teams. After dropping a triple-double on them it would have been difficult to continue with the realization someone else chomped your flavor.

They thought it was the third quarter, not the fourth.

Makes as much sense as anything at this point.

The Spurs saw Kawhi Leonard’s box score and got sad.

A career-high 45 points and 11 rebounds will do that to you, especially when DeMar DeRozan struggled to shoot .333 from the field.