The Bounce Newsletter 
| This is The Athletic’s daily NBA newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox.
We don’t have numbers yet for last night’s Game 2, but the NBA announced that Monday’s Spurs-Thunder game was the most-watched conference finals Game 1 ever. It had a Total Audience Delivery (some kind of industry measurement, I’m sure) of 9.2 million people. And it peaked at 12 million viewers in the second overtime. I’d say the NBA made a good decision by partnering with NBC and having more over-the-air games televised.
We’re tied
Thunder clap back to even the series
The playoffs are all about adjustments from game to game. The losing team will try to correct what just happened. The winning team will try to anticipate and counteract what the losing team might do.
In Game 2 of the Spurs-Thunder series, Oklahoma City put Isaiah Hartenstein on Victor Wembanyama for some more physicality and to turn up the pressure on the perimeter players. It resulted in a 122-113 victory that evened the series. (And thank goodness from an OKC perspective; coming back from down 0-2 when headed to San Antonio was going to be less an uphill battle and more like that scene in “The Dark Knight Rises” with everybody trying to escape up that pit.)
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the guy we’re used to seeing. He was cold-blooded, calculated and efficient in how he attacked the Spurs’ defense. After an inefficient Game 1, he had 30 points on 12-of-24 from the field and 6-of-6 from the line to go with nine assists, four rebounds and just one turnover. Victor Wembanyama was obsessed with the MVP ceremony in Game 1 and used it as motivation. In Game 2, SGA leaned into the calm and steadiness that brought him his second straight MVP.
Hartenstein’s physicality was enough to make Wemby seem much more pedestrian. At least by extraterrestrial standards. Wembanyama was held to 21 points, 17 rebounds, six assists and four blocks. He also had four turnovers.
It’s unreal that this feels like you held a player in check. But that’s how good Wemby was in Game 1 and in the previous series against the Timberwolves. And, yes, his 21-17-6-4 was just the 14th time that’s happened in a playoff game. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Ralph Sampson, Dan Roundfield, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal, Patrick Ewing, Tim Duncan (five times!), Pau Gasol and Jayson Tatum are the other players to do it.
Let’s go over the other big takeaways from this game:
- De’Aaron Fox missed this game, as well as Game 1, with a right ankle injury. Spurs coach Mitch Johnson called it something “he wouldn’t be playing with in the regular season.”
- Dylan Harper had 12 points in 24 minutes but left in the third quarter with a right leg injury. He didn’t return.
- Jalen Williams left the game in the first quarter with another hamstring injury and did not return. Ajay Mitchell appeared to hurt his quad or something on his upper leg and left with just over a minute left in the game.
- Thunder coach Mark Daigneault sat Chet Holmgren the final 3:19 of the game. Holmgren had an effective stretch on offense in the third quarter but was not part of the closing unit.
- Alex Caruso continued to be a hero with 17 points off the bench.
- Mitchell (10), Cason Wallace (12) and Jared McCain (12) helped Thunder dominate the bench scoring, 57-25.
- Hartenstein had 10 points and 13 rebounds with eight on the offensive boards.
What do the Spurs need in Game 3? Stop turning the ball over so much. Even if we eliminate the turnovers from the two overtime periods in Game 1, the Spurs have still turned it over 38 times and given up 50 points off those turnovers in eight quarters. Having Fox on the court would help mitigate some of this, but OKC is feasting on any little miscue.
What can the Thunder improve upon? If J-Dub is going to be out again with a hamstring injury, then they have to get Holmgren to lock in, be aggressive and make an impact. He has 21 points, 12 rebounds, two assists and two blocks in nearly 67 minutes and 50 seconds in this series. He’s too good and paid too much to be this nebulous.
What’s a big stat? Twenty. That’s how many turnovers Castle has in the series. He had 11 turnovers in Game 1 (remember, it went double OT) and another nine in Game 2. The Thunder scored 10 points off his turnovers in Game 1, and 13 in Game 2.
Playoff Panic Meter: 🚨 for San Antonio.
When is Game 3? Tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
More on Game 2 after a few links …
The last 24
🗣 Hali speaks. On the one-year anniversary of his iconic shot against the Knicks, Tyrese Haliburton talked about that — and his love of wrestling — in this one-on-one with our Nick Friedell.
👟 U’Nique story. Dominique Wilkins gave his shoes to a fan 42 years ago. They recently connected to talk about it.
⚔ Beard maintenance. The Cavaliers have a James Harden problem, Mike Vorkunov writes. Can they solve it?
🌍 Travel abroad. The Spurs and Pelicans will play games in Europe next season. They’re headed to Paris and Manchester.
🔊 “NBA Daily.” Watch and listen to a full breakdown of last night’s game.
Stream the NBA on Fubo (try it for free!) and catch out-of-market games on League Pass.
GIF giving
Keep Calm and Dunk On
We’re not done with Game 2. In fact, the game had a dunk so vicious that I immediately started figuring out how to grade this in the Bounce Index Dunk System (B.I.D.S.).
That’s the way we started treating these momentous dunks, and very few have felt as momentous as what Castle did to Hartenstein last night. In the second quarter, he came flying down the lane, took off on two feet outside of the restricted area and detonated on the Thunder big man. On the other side of this GIF, we’ll give it a B.I.D.S. score:
- Convulsion/jump scare: 10/10. I jumped off my couch and felt like I was very close to pulling my hamstring. He cocked that ball way back and brought the hammer down.
- Bench reaction: 10/10. We get everything. The yelling. Holding teammates back. Teammates walking down the baseline. Bismack Biyombo losing it too.
- Dunker reaction: 9/10. He stares down Hartenstein, does a little flex and then mean-mugs his teammates on the bench on his way up the floor.
- Where is the damn replay? 10/10. We had to wait 37 excruciating seconds of game time until we got a replay. OKC scored twice during this time, and then the Spurs called a timeout. I couldn’t wait and rewound it after the first Thunder bucket.
- Witness protection scale: 9/10. The only thing knocking off a point here is Hartenstein doesn’t really get high to contest the dunk. His hand doesn’t even get above the rim. Probably because Castle jumped so quickly and violently.
Total BIDS score for Castle: 48/50.
Check out how Wemby, Reggie Miller and Jamal Crawford reacted:
Same, fellas. Same. And before anybody looks at all this and then feels compelled to downplay it because the Spurs lost Game 2, I need you to just calm down and enjoy cool stuff. In fact, that idea of calming down perfectly leads us into our next important GIF from last night. It’s almost like I planned it this way.
Late in Game 2, the Thunder needed to put the Spurs away. There’s no better player to do that than the two-time MVP and reigning Clutch Player of the Year. With the Thunder leading 118-113 with less than a minute left, SGA knocked down a 19-foot jumper with 42 seconds left. He then seemed to be telling his team to “calm the f— down.”
Immediately, we knew this was going to be a highly shareable video/GIF on social media. But there’s more to it than that. Apparently, he was specifically telling one teammate to calm TF down. This is from Joel Lorenzi:
“Jared (McCain) was yelling at me while I was shooting, and I was like, ‘Bro, I’m shooting. Don’t distract me.’ I was literally just telling Jared to calm down.”
Why would he need to do that? Law Murray shared this screenshot of the players on the court, and I did a little telestrator work with it. Look how far McCain is from the play, calling for the ball as the MVP is shooting it:
Calm TF down, indeed. But to be fair, he was wide open.
Tiering up
Legends are falling. Is that fair?
All week, Law Murray has been continuing his Player Tiers project, ranking the top NBA players. Seth Partnow used to do this for us, and Law took it over. Seth was always adamant these aren’t player rankings, but dividing them up into tiers is kind of ranking these guys. Sorry, Seth!
Today, Law has his Tier 2, and something fascinating is happening. We love to talk about the legends of the game passing the proverbial torch to the next generation. And then we love to say, “The league is in good hands,” whenever a young player or group of young players accomplish something. It’s an eye-roll-inducing phrase, but it can be true nonetheless.
Three all-time legends have dropped out of Tier 1. These guys are so massively accomplished that they own a significant portion of the NBA record books and tell the complete story of the last 15 years in some way.
Law has Steph Curry and Kevin Durant both falling from Tier 1C to Tier 2A. He also has arguably the most accomplished player in league history, LeBron James, falling from 1C to 2B. Curry and Durant join Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell and Kawhi Leonard in 2A. LeBron joins Jaylen Brown, Scottie Barnes, Holmgren, Jalen Johnson, Tyrese Maxey and Karl-Anthony Towns in 2B.
It may sound a bit out there to see those legends grouped with those other names, but Law provides plenty of context and reasoning to more than justify it. There are other groupings outside of 2A and 2B in Tier 2, and we’re going to get the Tier 1 players tomorrow.
This has been a phenomenal project. Make sure to check it out here.