'Amped Up!' 3 Takeaways From Spurs' Season-Opening Loss to Thunder
· Yahoo Sports
The San Antonio Spurs scored 16 points in the second quarter of Tuesday’s season opener at Frost Bank Center.
The Oklahoma City Thunder scored 31 in that quarter, led by as many as 26 points, and held on for a 116-104 win over the team that eliminated them in Game 7 of last season’s Western Conference Finals. San Antonio won that game 111-103 at Paycom Center on May 30 before it lost the NBA Finals to the New York Knicks.
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 32 points on 13-of-27 shooting with 6 rebounds and 4 assists. Jared McCain added 20 points and went 6-of-8 from 3-point range. Chet Holmgren finished with 14 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 blocks.
Stephon Castle led San Antonio with 24 points. Dylan Harper had 18 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists, and De’Aaron Fox added 14 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists on 6-of-9 shooting.
Victor Wembanyama finished with 12 points, 13 rebounds, and 6 blocks. He missed his first 12 shots before Fox found him for an alley-oop as the third quarter expired.
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson started Fox, Castle, and Harper together with Devin Vassell and Wembanyama, the three-guard group he had committed to before the opener. San Antonio played without Tobias Harris, who strained his left calf in training camp.
1. The Second Quarter Buried the Spurs
Oklahoma City led 34-28 after one quarter. McCain scored 8 points in less than 90 seconds late in the period on a pair of 3-pointers and a step-back jumper.
With 9:21 left in the second, Fox was called for a Flagrant 1 foul after he and Holmgren got tangled up in the paint. Holmgren made both free throws. Kenrich Williams hit a 3-pointer on the next trip down, and the Thunder led 42-30.
Harrison Barnes made a 3-pointer at the 7:28 mark to pull the Spurs within 46-33. The Thunder scored the next 13 points.
Oklahoma City made 10 of its 14 3-point attempts in the first half and led 65-44 at halftime.
Johnson said the Spurs did not play to their standard.
“I thought we came out probably a little amped up, which would be understandable,” Johnson said. “I don’t think we put our energy or tried to channel that energy in the right places. It didn’t feel very connected. Execution wasn’t very good. And I thought we competed and played hard, just didn’t feel like we put our energy in the right places. And I thought Oklahoma City played a much cleaner game.”
“I thought in the third quarter we’d try to kind of get going,” Johnson continued. “But again, team of that caliber and just in this league in general, it’s hard to try to flip a switch and play out of a hole and then put it all together like that mid-game.”
2. Perimeter Defense Was a Major Problem
The Thunder finished 14-of-31 from 3-point range. San Antonio went 10-of-37.
Alex Caruso made both of his 3-point attempts in the first quarter and finished with 9 points. Kenrich Williams, Jaylin Williams, and Jalen Williams each made one in the second quarter.
Johnson said there were defensive lapses on the looks McCain got.
“Pretty simple,” Johnson explained. “It felt like, at least in the moment, lack of execution, whether it was there’s an action on one side and then it moves to the other side, whether the basketball moves or the action moves, and we’re a step late.”
“I thought we had pretty good ball pressure, to be honest, but I thought the off-ball stuff was a mess,” Johnson added. “We had some times where we were supposed to switch, we didn’t switch, we did switch, we weren’t supposed to switch. And so, in this league, especially a team of that caliber, when you start chasing your tail like that and they get you, they’ll make you pay.”
3. The Comeback Showed Something, but Not Enough
San Antonio opened the second half on a 23-9 run. Harper scored the first two Spurs baskets of the half on running layups.
Castle had 11 points in the quarter, 9 of them from beyond the arc, and his layup with 6:05 left cut the deficit to 74-67. Fox scored 10 points in the third. The Spurs won the quarter 36-28.
Oklahoma City’s lead was back to 16 when McCain made a 3-pointer with 2:12 left in the period.
Harper’s free throws with 8:18 left in the fourth made it 95-88. McCain answered with a 3-pointer, and Cason Wallace’s steal and dunk put the Thunder up 100-88 at the 7:45 mark.
San Antonio finished with 31 fast-break points to Oklahoma City’s 12. The Thunder’s bench outscored the Spurs’ bench 48-29.
Johnson said everybody struggled pretty equally, Wembanyama included.
“I thought however many guards we played, they all struggled tonight,” Johnson said. “I thought it was a pretty well-rounded, poor effort by all of us. And it’s good to get the first one out of the way. We’ve got a lot of tape to look at and learn from.”
Up Next
The Spurs face the Houston Rockets on Friday at 8:30 p.m. CT at the Moody Center in Austin. The game streams on Prime Video.
San Antonio visits the Dallas Mavericks the next night at 7 p.m. CT.