Thunder vs. Spurs: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander helps OKC even series with Game 2 win
The Oklahoma City Thunder took Game 2 from the San Antonio Spurs, 122-113, on Wednesday to advance to the Western Conference finals in a game apiece before the series shifts to San Antonio for Game 3 on Friday.
It’s hard to reduce a game, or a series, like this to any one thing, or a few of them. There’s a lot going on, and at the end of the day, this is a fight to fight. Two heavyweights throwing blows in the middle of the ring. It’s a matter of who can stay on their feet for a few seconds.
That said, let’s take a look at some key takeaways from OKC’s Game 2 victory.
1. SGA’s MVP response
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was awarded his second consecutive MVP title before Game 1 and continued his streak of being stolen by Victor Wembanyama as San Antonio’s defense has put him in a tight spot. The script was flipped in Game 2, where Wemby made a more pedestrian effort (by his world standards, of course) and SGA controlled the game from the start.
Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 30 points on 12-of-24 shooting. I thought he attacked faster than he did in Game 1, before San Antonio settled on the wall they were building in front of him, but for the most part, he made a bunch of the same tough, tough jumpers he missed in Game 1.
It started with his first bucket. Stephon Castle has him square off against the first line, inviting him to drive straight to Wembanyama. That’s a no-go zone, leaving him with two options: pass the corner and let someone else create, or pull up to jump over Castle. You go with option 2.
Same thing in his second bucket. Castle fights over the screen and stays attached to SGA as he drives left, cutting his angle to the basket. Devin Vassell leaves his man behind the 3-point line to hold down SGA, his only option, again, is to pull a contested shot (shout out to Isaiah Hartenstein for blocking Wemby outside to prevent him from flying to disrupt this shot even more, if not block it outright).
Rinse and repeat: SGA drives left, Castle stays in front, Hartenstein covers Wemby, then another solid jumper falls.
Before we look at another clip from Game 2, let’s go back to Game 1. Here’s what SGA was watching as they assessed the incident from the top of the pack. The castle in front of him, with a defender waiting at his elbow on one side and Wemby waiting on the other.
Now look at his attitude in Game 2. Same thing. The defender in front of him, one is waiting for him if he goes one way, and Wemby is waiting if he goes another.
In Game 1, when SGA chose to drive to Wemby’s side and actually tried to pass over him, either the shot was blocked or he missed.
In Game 2, almost the same shot went in.
When people say the NBA is a “hit or miss” league, as simple and often as lazy as that analysis is, that’s what they’re talking about. SGA faced the same coverage in Game 2 that he did in Game 1. Of his 12 plays, only two went off the rim. Spurs also forced him to work hard on his opponents by cutting off his many-bodied driving lanes and Wembanyama backed it all up. The only difference is that this time, they entered.
2. Spurs replacement
Some turnovers will be included in the recipe for playing against an ultra-physical and aggressive Thunder defense, but at some point, you can’t keep coughing up the ball and expect to keep running away.
The Spurs he did out of Game 1, where they turned the ball over 23 times and scored 28 points on OKC but then found a way to win in double overtime thanks to the Black Panthers’ championship. They weren’t so lucky in Game 2, when they committed 21 turnovers that led directly to 27 OKC points.
Do the math, and the Spurs have fumbled the ball 44 times in this series. That’s the highest number of turnovers through two games of the conference finals since the 1998 Pacers, and the highest number through Games 1 and 2 of any series since the 2014 Warriors (one of the all-time franchises).
Castle, in particular, needs to put pine tar on his hands or something. Dude is amazing in every other aspect of the game, but he can’t hang on to the ball for his life right now. Buddy has 20 solo hits through two games in the series. Twenty! That is not the fair side of history.
Castle has 56 hits so far in the playoffs, and that’s made even more of a problem with De’Aaron Fox missing the first two games of the series with a sprained ankle and no word on whether he’ll be ready for Game 3, and Dylan Harper leaving Game 2 with a leg injury. When those two guys are out, Castle becomes the main ball handler. Suffice it to say, he better start handling it a lot better than he does.
3. II-Hart factor
Isaiah Hartenstein played just 12 minutes in Game 1. He had two points and two rebounds. He was not a feature. In Game 2, Mark Daigneault committed to Hartenstein for 27 minutes, and it worked.
“The only thing that didn’t feel right was playing Hart for 12 minutes (in Game 1),” Daigneault said after Game 2. “It didn’t feel right to me. To extend it beyond that, the matchup (Wembanyama guard), so we decided to start with it.”
Hartenstein beat Wemby in every game. Most of it was illegal. He appeared to spend half of the 27 minutes pulling Wemby to keep him in the middle.
At one point, he started pulling hair.
But what do you know? This is the conference finals, and the series is full of blood both ways. Go watch how Castle defends SGA. I promise it’s not all illegal. So fair play. Wemby is 10 meters tall. Hartenstein is a fighter, and he won more battles than he lost in Game 2.
Did you see that Wembanyama, who made it clear that he won from the elbows from the bottom, was working far down in Game 2? That’s a lot thanks to Hartenstein, who struggled not to let Wemby put himself in a deep spot.
Hartenstein finished with 10 points and, most importantly, 13 rebounds. Seven of them were offensive. If you look at the stats, both teams were equally effective on the offensive glass (17 to 16 in favor of OKC), but on the floor, it seemed like OKC was getting all the bigs. They had seven offensive boards in the fourth quarter as Wemby looked tired of dealing with Hartenstein’s body all night.
