Stephon Castle calmly knocks down the biggest shots of his life to save the Spurs’ season
It was the same for Spurs. They all knew it. At the very least, they needed a big performance from Victor Wembanyama in Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday. He released. They needed someone else to do that. It went 2-0 against the Knicks. At Madison Square Garden. Do or die. Stephon Castle did. Spurs are not dead.
You could point to any of Castle’s big moments in what has been a streak of relentless pressure from both teams, but his big bucket and free throw late in the fourth quarter of Game 3 were things you’d expect from a veteran, not a 21-year-old. He wasn’t scared. If anything, Castle seemed to accept responsibility.
The Spurs were clinging to a four-point lead late in the fourth quarter and were desperate for another bucket, to avoid blowing the lead again, as they had done in the first two games. The shot clock was running down. Wembanyama tried to take Karl-Anthony Towns off the dribble, then had second thoughts. Instead, Wemby threw Castle a wicked, curling foul and begged him to send Spurs off. The castle is bound.
Those 3 alone would have been reason enough for his teammates to salute him and thank him for his work. But with 6.8 seconds left and the Spurs’ lead down to two points, Castle went to the line for two crucial free throws. He shot 73.4% from there this season, and has risen to 81.1% in the playoffs. It’s very good. But advanced numbers only get you so far. Think about the weight of being that thin and knowing that dropping two gives you another game, and doing anything short of that could end your season the way the Spurs struggled to close out the first two games. If Castle thought about any of that, he didn’t let the MSG crowd or anyone else see him sweat.
Castle also played well after the game. He finished with 23 points, five rebounds, five assists, one steal and one block. He committed just two turnovers. He made 8 of 14 shots, including two 3s, and drained 5 of 6 free throws. And after all that he sat courtside with the Inside the NBA guys — all of them legends — and calmly answered questions like he didn’t just make the three biggest shots of his life when his stable franchise needed it the most and all eyes everywhere were on him. The silence after the game alone was impressive.
Unless Castle has the most important game of his young career at such a critical time, Spurs will be cooked. They may still fall short in this series, but, at least, they prevented the Knicks from eating them late for the third game in a row. That’s nothing. Here’s another: however this series ultimately resolves itself, San Antonio knows it has a deadly core that will make the Spurs a nightmare throughout the league for the foreseeable future. Dylan Harper, 20, is already so far ahead of the curve that it feels wrong. And Wembanyama is Wembanyama. But Castle emerging as a monster two way force — a guy with All-Defense-level talent in his own right and a developing game that isn’t scary — is perhaps the secret sauce. What he will be two or three years from now boggles the mind. What he already is is not very easy to process.
When the Spurs traded for De’Aaron Fox a little over a year ago, the idea was to pair him with Wemby and speed up San Antonio’s rebuild. But as for Fox — who scored the biggest touchdown of his career in the fourth quarter Monday evening — he’s already been replaced by two younger teammates. Perhaps Harper ends up being the better of the two, and has had many big moments this season, but in Game 3 it was Castle who took on as much weight as he could carry and helped the Blacks lift the Spurs to victory. Together, they became the first teammates in NBA history aged 22 or younger to both score 20 or more points in the NBA Finals.
Castle played in touch to find Wemby a couple of times. And he contacted him when he moved Jalen Brunson, much to the chagrin of Knicks fans. In everything, in every game, he looked like a veteran in body and mind. When it was finished, he withdrew it as you would from a professional who will do his business and knows that the work is far from over. The Spurs had just won a big game on the road to climb back into the series and make the Knicks think twice about their upcoming showdown, and the freshman said it felt “like we haven’t done anything yet.” The castle was right. The Spurs still have a lot to do — but that’s because Castle did so much in Game 3.
