SAN ANTONIO — Mark Daigneault turned and looked down the Thunder bench.
He was looking for an answer.
The Thunder was on the verge of getting run out of the building, being shutout and trailing by more than two touchdowns only minutes into Game 3 of the Western Conference finals. The Spurs were soaring. The Frost Bank Center crowd was roaring.
In Daigneault’s moment of need, he called on Alex Caruso.
Did the Thunder coach have any message in that moment?
“No,” Daigneault said. “I just subbed him in.”
Caruso did the rest.
On a night the Thunder beat the Spurs 123-108, there were lots of reasons Oklahoma City turned a 15-point early deficit into a 15-point statement victory. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was supremely efficient. Isaiah Hartenstein, Chet Holmgren and the rest of the Thunder defense made Victor Wembanyama look almost human. And Jared McCain and Jaylin Williams, man, how many superlatives can you find for those two and the Thunder bench?
But as the Thunder wrested back control of this game and these conference finals, one thing became increasingly clear.
Alex Caruso has been the MVP of this series.
“There’s so much more to him than his defense,” Daigneault said.
Caruso, of course, has long been known for his defense, and rightfully so. He is a dynamo on on that end of the court, deflecting passes and causing turnovers and generally raising hell. But Friday night was a reminder that in this series, Caruso is proving he is way more than a one-way player.
That was evident from the moment he first checked into the game.
On the very first possession, he snagged a defensive rebound. A minute later, he hit a pull-up jumper from the right baseline, then immediately came up with a steal on the next Spurs possession.
Then came a 3-pointer.
Then an offensive rebound that led to a Williams three.
Then a block on a Stephon Castle drive, and lest you forget, when Stephon Castle drives, he’s capable of throwing down the most monstrous of dunks.
Caruso was everywhere doing everything.
“Whenver I go in, I’m just ready to make an impact,” Caruso said. “Sometimes, we’re up 15. Sometimes, it’s tied. Tonight, we’re down 15, so a little more urgency on my part.”
A little more?
“I mean, I’m trying to win the game, so down 15 at any point in time, alarms are going off,” he said. “You need to make a play now. You don’t have time to wait.”
The way he was playing, if he had hair, it would’ve been on fire.
In the 5½ minutes that Caruso played in the first quarter, he was a plus-10. The Thunder outscored the Spurs 19-9 while he was on the court, turning that 15-point hole into a five-point one.
That stretch changed the tenor of the game, the vibe in the arena and the psyche of the players.
What had been an epic blowout in the making was suddenly a battle.
“It was just one or two plays, and you look up and it’s a 10-point game. Feels a lot better,” Caruso said. “And then it’s five, and it’s like, ‘All right, cool, we got something to work with.’”
Did they ever.
By halftime, the Spurs’ lead was gone, and by the end of the third quarter, the Thunder rout was on. Again, the credit for that goes to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore Caruso’s contributions.
He finished with 15 points on 4-of-7 shooting, including 3-of-5 from behind the arc.
He added three rebounds, one assist, two steals and one blocked shot.
His plus-minus: plus-28.
Plus-28!
“I think the most impressive thing is, he makes the plays that have nothing to do with physical ability,” Holmgren said. “If you just kind of saw him walking down the street in regular clothes, you wouldn’t assume that he’d be the all-world defensive type of guy that he is. But when he gets out there on the court, he just … ”
Holmgren paused, seeming to search for words to explain the unexplainable.
“He sees things before they happen,” Holmgren said. “It’s almost like he knows it’s gonna happen and that makes it happen. I don’t know how to explain it, but he just makes plays that nobody else really sees.”
The thing is, those plays haven’t been largely on defense in this series. They have been everywhere.
His averages in these first three games: 21.0 points, 2.7 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 1.7 steals, 1.0 blocks.
His total plus-minus: plus-46.
“I’m always looking to get better, whether when I started on the G League and tried to get a two-way (contract) and get better there,” Caruso said. “Get better when I was in L.A., got a taste of the playoffs and a championship. Then went to Chicago and had more opportunity to grow myself as a player.
“The more I work, the more I know how good of a basketball player I am, and I’m very confident in that when it comes down to it.”
No reason he shouldn’t be.
We saw the fruits of his labor throughout the playoffs a year ago, but in these Western Conference finals, we are seeing it every game. He is a problem for the Spurs and an answer for the Thunder.
“There’s no situation he doesn’t want to dive into,” Daigneault said.
Williams said, “He’s a confident player. He brings it on both sides of the ball. He doesn’t let a foul or a missed shot or a turnover change the way he attacks the game. He’s aggressive in every situation.
“When you have a guy out there competing, it’s hard not to go out there and compete the same way.”
Maybe Alex Caruso is a one-way player after all. He only plays one way — to win.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at @jennicarlsonok.bsky.social and twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC Thunder gets MVP output from Alex Caruso in West finals vs Spurs