It wasn’t exactly a Zaza Pachulia performance, but Mitch Johnson gave it his best. After the Spurs stayed alive by winning Game 6 in San Antonio, Johnson did his best to hype up Saturday’s Game 7. He flubbed the line about Game 7 being the best two words in sports but predicted “a lot of fans are going to be happy.”
Johnson said the Spurs would “get prepared to go into a hostile environment against the defending champs in the Western Conference Finals against a team that’s done it multiple times and knows exactly what it takes. I would expect to get their best punch.”
That sounds fantastic. Let’s do that. Because other than the double-overtime spectacular in Game 1, the rest of this series has somehow felt like a bigger flop than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander trying to draw a foul call. (I’m so sorry Thunder fans I couldn’t help myself.)
For a moment, it looked like Game 6 was headed for an actual showdown. OKC cut the lead to seven at the half — then the Spurs went on a 20-0 run in the third quarter on the way to winning by 27. The Thunder never led. According to NBA researcher Keerthika Uthayakumar, it was the Thunder’s first wire-to-wire playoff loss since 2016 (which, coincidentally, also came courtesy of the Spurs).
The Thunder have won their three games so far by an average of 12.3 points. The Spurs have been even more dominant in victory, taking their three by an average of 18.3 points. These were the best two teams in the NBA during the regular season. They both feature lockdown defenses, offenses that can beat you in multiple ways, and each boasts first-team All-NBA superstars. And yet aside from the opening game, we haven’t seen both teams and their leading men show up in marquee performances on the same night.
In Game 6, it was Victor Wembanyama’s turn to command the spotlight. Wemby filled the box score, going for 28 points and 10 rebounds along with two steals and three blocks. He also knocked down four 3s after missing all five of his attempts from deep in the previous game. Alas, as the rhythms of this series have so far dictated, while Wembanyama and the Spurs were up at their end of the seesaw, that left SGA and the Thunder down on their side. Gilgeous-Alexander had a season-low 15 points on Thursday. And just like Wemby before him in Game 5, SGA went 0-for-5 from beyond the arc in Game 6.
Why Game 7 vs. Spurs will go a long way in defining Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s legacy
Sam Quinn
But while the Spurs have big, physical guards and wings who have done a good job harassing Gilgeous-Alexander, his struggles — and those of his team in losses — have felt less like a byproduct of San Antonio cracking his code and more like SGA simply being off at times.
“Sometimes players make shots or miss shots, especially players of his caliber,” Johnson said. “You can get at times intoxicated of what you think may be working or not working. I think we’ve learned that throughout this playoffs.”
Single-game plus-minus isn’t my favorite statistic for a host of reasons, but in SGA’s case his minus-28 in 28 minutes in Game 6 was pretty indicative of his outing. Which doesn’t mean that he wasn’t getting good looks, but it does mean those shots weren’t falling.
“A lot of the shots that I’m shooting, I shot plenty of times before, and they feel good,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “They’re just not going in. It’s too late to abandon my work and abandon my game and who I am this late in the season, I gotta trust it and live or die by it.”
The difference in effectiveness from Game 5 to Game 6 was pretty pronounced for SGA and the Thunder. OKC head coach Mark Daignault flagged it too. He said he thought Game 5 “gave us a margin for error to be a little bit sloppy [in Game 6], and we were. That’s not the plan. We’d like to be clean.”
The Thunder aren’t alone there. The Spurs would like to be more consistent too. So far, that’s been a struggle for them as well. Wembanyama was excellent at home in Game 6, but that came after a brutal Game 5 performance that had him so in his feelings that he skipped the postgame press conference. Maybe part of the oscillation for both teams is owed to how well they know each other and how hard it is to consistently get the better of a bitter rival when the stakes are so high and a trip to the NBA Finals is on the line. Following Thursday evening’s win, Stephon Castle boasted that the Spurs “feel like we’re collectively better” than the Thunder.
Bully for him. You wouldn’t expect him to say anything else, but despite the confidence, the Spurs have been just as hot and cold as OKC in this series. That doesn’t necessarily portend well for both teams showing up in Game 7 and delivering the rest of us an entertaining classic. History favors the Thunder here. They’re 4-0 in Game 7s, with recent wins over the Pacers in the Finals last season and the Nuggets in the second round prior to that. The Spurs are 1-5 in Game 7s since the NBA-ABA merger, which matters a lot less than this version of San Antonio finding out how bright the lights will be in real time on Saturday evening.
SGA knows full well how much pressure he and the Thunder — not to mention Wemby and the Spurs — will be under. It’s a potentially legacy-defining game for him. That might sound a bit silly considering he’s the back-to-back MVP, the reigning finals MVP, and the Thunder are still the defending champs. Even so, he called Saturday’s high-stakes affair “the biggest game of my career.” He also said “anything can happen in Game 7.”
Good to hear. If that’s the case, a Game 7 that looks more like Game 1 would be appreciated.