SAN ANTONIO — With three minutes remaining in the first quarter Sunday night, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, yearning for oxygen, placed both of his hands on his knees. Above him, the Frost Bank Center jumbotron flashed a giant, white “10,” the Thunder’s point total and an indication of the offensive struggles of a team without two players who have started playoff games.
In the midst of Gilgeous-Alexander’s brief recess, a pair of hands rested against his back.
But this wasn’t a show of support or encouragement. These weren’t hands of comfort. Those hands belonged to Stephon Castle. The touch was firm. The message was much firmer. A reminder of Castle’s — and San Antonio’s, by proxy — omnipresence. Every inch the two-time MVP took, Castle would be right there, like an overly eager intern. A wounded champion, with key parts of its makeup missing, would need to rely on a central figure to win another playoff game on the road. And these young pups, refusing to go into the night quietly, decided to make a statement. Not by their might or mouth, but by their hands.
“I think it was a combination of the physicality and resistance,” Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson said of the 103-82 win that evened the Western Conference finals at 2-2. “Along with the discipline and connectivity to still be together in team defense, not just trying to take one guy out or worried about what you were doing with your matchup.”
The hands are technically an extension of the body — and the crux of how the sport is played — but in truth, they’re an extension of the brain. Movements are dictated by impulses and instincts. External responses to internal reactions. So when Spurs rookie guard Dylan Harper offered to help Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein as he lay on the floor before changing his mind, doing so with his hand and pulling it back in disgust. When Gilgeous-Alexander tried, and failed, to create separation, he was informed by Castle’s hands that there would be some irregularities in his rhythm. When De’Aaron Fox needed to show a lack of trepidation on the battle of the boards, he did so by extending his hands over and over and over again. When Victor Wembanyama deleted entire Thunder possessions from existence, launched a 43-foot prayer that hit before halftime and seemingly defied gravity, his hands did the talking (game-high 33 points and a plus-29). And when the Spurs needed their faithful to roar louder and cheer harder as their sworn enemies sat across the sideline befuddled in doubt, their hands beckoned toward 20,000 people for more.
“I think that just comes from trusting our instincts,” Carter Bryant told Yahoo Sports. “Coach trusts and encourages us to make plays, to be aggressive defensively and offensively. When you play with pride, you understand your job is to disrupt the offense in any way. They’re a really good team so we have to make adjustments, disrupt their flow, cadence and speed.”
The Western Conference finals have been a celebration of the beauty of basketball brands, but Game 4 was the complete absence of aesthetics. Oklahoma City shot just 33 percent from the field and missed 27 of their 33 3s, and its half-court efficiency and effective field-goal percentage were the worst of any team to step foot on the floor this postseason. (San Antonio didn’t fare that much better from a shooting perspective, but was able to control the game in other key areas.) Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 19 points on 15 shots, turned the ball over four times and didn’t play a minute of the fourth quarter, with head coach Mark Daigneault already recognizing the writing on the wall. Twenty Thunder turnovers resulted in 25 points the other way, and the reigning champs were bested in transition, total rebounds and in the paint.
Because as young and inexperienced as these Spurs are, their defense — and attention to detail at that end of the floor — has always displayed a maturity far beyond its years, aging like fine wine in real time. San Antonio finished the regular season ranked third in defensive efficiency despite rarely forcing opponents to make mistakes. Their postseason run thus far has been marked by a similar opponent turnover rate, making their mark by allowing the worst shots, the lowest effective field-goal percentage and by controlling the glass.
That speaks to the sum of a scheme that puts the right amount of emphasis on being active everywhere, all the time. Start a possession latching Castle onto SGA’s hip, have Devin Vassell and Julian Champagnie’s length waiting on the wings to cause havoc and Wembanyama roaming the middle, suffocating any perceivable pockets of space. Play those individuals longer together, creating an impenetrable cushion, and you give yourselves a chance no matter how ill-equipped the second unit is. San Antonio’s deflection rate has improved in the postseason as well as its ability to chase after loose balls and its shot contesting, which ranks No. 1 among playoff teams. Offensively, the game may be loose and uneven, a symptom of a young nucleus learning and growing together. At the other end of the floor, though, there’s no excuse. All five players on the floor are moving on a string, accounting for each other and working like true colleagues.
“That’s super important,” Wembanyama said. “And pretty much everybody would do that if they could trust that the rotations are there. But we have good individual defenders, so when we connect individual and team defense, it holds teams to low-scoring numbers.”
There’s an underlying element of innocence that has captured this Spurs group and, in turn, has captivated onlookers, even amid the backdrop of a brilliant Thunder team looking to get back to the Finals. San Antonio has come too far to claim it’s playing with house money — that locker room is as confident as ever of regaining control of the series — but whatever happens from this point onward, this team isn’t going down easy. A best of three. A best of hands.
