SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Spurs’ five starters may not have any NBA Finals experience among them, but you’ll forgive them for having a familiar feeling after a second-half offensive meltdown led to a 105-95 loss to New York in Game 1.
In the words of a famous New York legend in a different sport, it’s like déjà vu all over again. They’ve been here before.
San Antonio’s lowest-scoring game in the first round, of the three full games Victor Wembanyama played, was 111 points in Game 1 against Portland. San Antonio’s lowest-scoring game in the second round was 102, in Game 1 against Minnesota. And the Spurs’ lowest-scoring regulation total in the conference finals against Oklahoma City was 101 in Game 1 (they finished with 122 in double overtime).
So if the Spurs’ 95 points in Game 1 ends up as their low point of these NBA Finals, it would be par for the course.
Here’s the counterpoint: It had better be the low point. The Spurs have little chance of rallying to win four of the next six games unless they deliver far better offensive performances than Wednesday’s measly 99.0 Offensive Rating. After the dud in the opener, holding court at home in Game 2 is all but essential.
That said, the parallels to the Spurs’ previous rounds are hard to ignore, particularly the opener against Minnesota in the second round. Like that game, the offensive shortcomings resulted from cold 3-point shooting (10-of-36 that night, 11-of-42 Wednesday), a struggling Wembanyama (5-of-17 that night, 6-of-21 Wednesday) and offensive short-circuits that felt — with due respect to the opponent — as heavily self-inflicted, at least to some Spurs staffers.
With a day to digest the defeat, the Spurs’ message at Thursday’s media session was that their play in Game 1 was out of character, especially in a 40-point quagmire of a second half. In particular, there was too much hero-ball and not enough cutting and screening. Yes, some Xs and Os adjustments following the opener are inevitable, but the core reason behind the Spurs’ woes felt simpler.
“I think the reason we lost the game isn’t even technical,” Wembanyama said. “We need to approach the game with a better mental state. And we just need to play our game, you know? We just need it to be normal. We don’t need to do anything incredible.”
The lack of ball movement and reliance on one-pass possessions were notable sore points. San Antonio finished with just 16 assists, which wasn’t just the team’s fewest this season, but actually the lowest number in Wembanyama’s entire time as a Spur. The last time they had fewer assists in a game was March 11, 2022, a year and a half before the French phenom’s NBA debut.
“Sixteen assists is not a reflection of this program ever since I’ve been here, and decades before I was,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said Thursday.
“That’s not the Spurs way,” Devin Vassell said Wednesday after the game.
Here’s the thing, though: You can’t get an assist unless a teammate makes a shot. And thus begins the series of chicken-and-egg questions about the San Antonio Spurs’ shooting performance in the loss.
Was San Antonio’s ghastly second-half shooting the result of poor ball movement and thirsty shot attempts? Or was the Spurs’ low assist total a consequence of make-or-miss variance on a torrent of otherwise desirable catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts?
One way or another, here’s a hot prediction for you: Game 2 will have more points than Game 1.
I say that because both sides looked ragged for long stretches in the opener. The best way to say that is in the horrifying shooting numbers they posted from the perimeter, despite both having lineups with decent shooters in the game.
Remember, this loss might have been far worse for the Spurs if the Knicks hadn’t also shot poorly on a diet of relatively makeable shots. New York, despite winning by 10, shot just 14-of-52 on shots outside the paint, including an execrable 3 of 23 on above-the-break 3s.
San Antonio, alas, said, “Hold my beer.” The Spurs were a ghastly 11 of 46 from the perimeter, sullying an otherwise analytically pristine shot chart that included only four non-paint 2s.
So yes, the ol’ “play better adjustment” should figure prominently in Friday’s Game 2 for both sides.
This takes us to a second prediction for Game 2: Those jump shots are going to be there. All season long, the Knicks’ defense has prioritized paint protection while accepting corner 3s as a trade-off; only three teams allowed a higher percentage of opponent shots from 3 than the 44.8 percent the Knicks allowed.
Against the ever-present rim gravity of Wembanyama and the Spurs’ trio of athletic guards, New York doubled down on that trait. Maybe the Knicks can close out a bit better to the 3-point line rather than relying on the provenance of the fickle 3-point gods, but they’ll live with the Spurs’ Game 1 shot chart.
“We always want to try to get a little bit better with what we’re doing, including the 3-point line,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “But at the end of the day, this team will kill you if you allow their guards, as big and athletic and long and quick as they are, to get to the paint and finish.
“I know we can’t allow them to live in the paint against us, because they’ll destroy us if they do.”
New York’s core defensive strategy worked. The Knicks allowed just 42 paint points in Game 1, including only eight from Wembanyama. On the other hand, it’s not like this is a new tactic to the Spurs.
“We’ve played a couple of teams similar that are very committed to guarding the paint with bodies,” Johnson said.
“We have to make sure we don’t fight the game. You know, if a team is going to be very active and committed to taking away something, typically that means it’s opening something else up elsewhere …
“But we have to make sure we pass the ball to the guys. We’ve got to make sure we continue to put pressure on the rim. That’s not always for ourselves. It can be with the roll, it can be with the cut, it can be with the drive. And I think last night we got a little away from that.”
Of course, all perimeter shots are not created equal. The feeling from San Antonio staffers was that even though nearly all 42 3s were catch-and-shoot attempts, that didn’t necessarily mean they were great shots, which was, perhaps, a familiar story from their openers in previous rounds.
“I think we rushed some of our shots,” Vassell said.
“I just think we can do a better job with moving the ball around a little bit, and just playing a little more together,” Julian Champagnie said Wednesday (he made 5 3s in the first half but had only one point after the break). “I think in the first half, we were really, really connected.”
The Spurs will hope for a more normal game for themselves in Game 2, much as they were able to conjure up in the previous rounds. San Antonio suffered a home loss in each of those series, but followed them with wins by 12, 38 and 21, respectively. With New York likely to shoot better itself, the pressure is on San Antonio’s offense to deliver a “normal” performance, as Wembanyama put it.
And what, exactly, does normal mean?
“Normal means trusting each other, trusting the basketball gods, trusting the game plan, executing, and not relying on talent so much to make shots or to save the day,” he said. “We’ve been playing a certain way all season, and we’ve been successful this way. There’s no reason to change the day the finals start.”
