OKLAHOMA CITY — Apparently, Dylan Harper still thought there was a chance he could beat the count. Gingerly jogging back out from the locker room after going down with a right leg injury, he hoped to return and save the day against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Wednesday’s Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.
But when he was about to reach the San Antonio Spurs bench, he was suddenly turned away. The training staff said something to him, he hung his head and sulked back to the locker room, done for the night. There was nothing left for the stellar rookie who loves being out on the court more than anything to do as his team kept turning the ball over. The fight that has left these teams battered and bruised continued, and it quickly became apparent how much his team needed him in a 122-113 Thunder win that evened the series.
In the end, the Spurs were so close to hanging on. Even without their trusted point guard, De’Aaron Fox. Even without Harper, who made the All-Rookie first team before the game. But once he was gone, the Thunder defense seized the evening and evened the series. The Spurs took the fight the distance, but lost on the card. The Thunder just forced too many turnovers and saved too many possessions.
Between Cason Wallace’s ball pressure and Isaiah Hartenstein’s battle in the trenches with Victor Wembanyama, the defending champions showed they have the wherewithal to outlast the Spurs.
“Obviously, (Oklahoma City) is as good as anybody at turning you over,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “So when you’re down some of your primary creators and initiators, it causes a little bit of an extra strain.
Stephon Castle, who had nine turnovers to go along with his 25 points on 10-of-17 shooting and eight assists, blamed himself for the offensive struggles. The Spurs had their second straight 20-turnover game, something they had only done once since mid-November until they traveled to Oklahoma.
Castle acknowledged that the Thunder defense is designed to bait the Spurs into trying to score one-on-one, the antithesis of how San Antonio wants to play. Especially with Wembanyama out there, the better shots find their way to the surface the more they flow. The Thunder did a phenomenal job pushing Wembanyama up against the boundary lines while his teammates struggled to give him clean outlets, then jumped passing lanes like they already knew the playbook when Castle got downhill.
Devin Vassell said he talked to Castle after the game and told him to keep his head up.
“‘You’re the only point guard on this team, and they force turnovers,’” Vassell said he told Castle. “The biggest thing is they have so many people that can pressure the ball and cause turnovers and pick him up the whole game.”
This game was a mountain of responsibility for a second-year guard, especially as the support system around him went down. Castle has mixed up playing on and off the ball so that his downhill, slow style could come out when needed. He had some brilliant moments in this game, like his tomahawk slam over Hartenstein. But having to run every possession left him exposed, causing him to rush against ball pressure and making it difficult for the Spurs to execute cleanly. Even when the Spurs would break the Thunder’s press, they didn’t reset plays at an angle to get Castle a cleaner path into the paint. That was exactly what the Thunder wanted.
Things came to a head in crunch time when Wallace was hounding Castle so much on an inbound that the Spurs couldn’t even get the ball in. They struggled to come up with answers when Castle was being denied or stuffed into a corner, with Wembanyama absorbing some of the blame himself.
“It’s all in the scouting. I have to trust the scouting,” Wembanyama said. “We have to trust it and do our work early. It’s a straight effort.”
Wembanyama noted there were a few down moments for him in the fourth quarter and lamented the team’s lack of consistency, which was understandable, considering what they had lost. But the Thunder were also without Jalen Williams, yet managed to keep their offense flowing through league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Spurs’ defense did its job so many times, only for Hartenstein to blow it all up by keeping the possession alive. San Antonio got the game back to within five with just over a minute left, then had another turnover that put things to bed.
The Spurs’ half-court offense struggling isn’t unheard of, but they get stops and rebound well enough to take games over in transition while getting Wembanyama easy points. That didn’t happen in crunch time, though, thanks to Hartenstein, who was masterful battling Wembanyama in the trenches.
The Spurs got what they needed out of their trip to Oklahoma but will limp into Sunday’s Game 3 with serious availability concerns.
Harper was walking with some discomfort when he departed the locker room after the game but did not appear to be significantly hobbled. Johnson said Fox’s status will be a game-time decision from here on out, as the point guard struggles to play through the ankle sprain he aggravated against Minnesota.
“He’s just trying to play every day. It’s a tough injury that he wouldn’t be playing with in the regular season,” Johnson said. “So he’s trying to tough it out, and he did that in Minnesota. Then he had an awkward landing and re-aggravated it, and we just gotta make sure that he’s in a place that he can be out there and compete to the level that he would need to in the game that we’re playing.”
This is the reality of Game 96 of the season. Your depth and your identity take over as key players go down or have elements of their games taken away. Castle was great in many aspects, but struggled mightily in perhaps the most important one.
“I think we’ll erase this game pretty quick,” Castle said. “Obviously, we’re gonna watch it and go through it and scout it. But looking forward to next game.”
Most years, the healthiest team is the one that ends up winning. Both teams have key figures on the sideline. The challenge for the Spurs is to find their strengths and lean into them until they mitigates their weaknesses. They will need their best defensive performance of the year to right the ship in this series. They have it in them, but the Thunder have set the standard again.
