Photos by Michael Gonzales/NBAE via Getty Images The 2024-2025 season begins with a game against last season’s Western Conference champion 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. It seems like a long time ago that there was a real Spurs game, mostly because San Antonio had been a playoff team until the last few years and played well into the summer most years. This year, they were done playing on April 14, after a 28 point win over the tanking Pistons. Of course, Victor Wembanyama played a lot of games this summer with the French National Team, culminating with an inspiring effort in the gold medal game as the Les Bleus lost a close game to the stacked USA squad and scored an Olympic Silver Medal. The Spurs preseason was kind of a mishmash as Pop played a series of odd lineups and seemed to mostly use the games as conditioning for his players as they somehow stumbled to a 2-3 record. That’s wiped away now as the real season starts, and the new-look Spurs are going into action with Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes added to the lineup and Devin Vassell out with injury for the beginning of the season. Tonight they face Luka Doncic and the Mavericks, who have added sharpshooter Klay Thompson to the high powered offense that made it to the finals last year. Klay is also a good defender, which is something that the Mavs were lacking in last year’s finals. Klay has always played with a ball-dominant guard who is an excellent passer, and that’s not going to be any different on his new team, so I would expect him to get lots of wide-open shots tonight. Let’s see if he can hit them. The NBA season is long, but tonight we can be fresh and optimistic. Pace yourself, it’s a long way to April. Game Prediction: Victor Wembanyama will block at least two Klay three point attempts. One final word: Go Spurs GOOOOOO!! San Antonio Spurs at Dallas MavericksOctober 24, 2024 | 6:30 PM CTStreaming: TNT OvertimeTV: TNT 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.