Historically speaking, the winner of Game 5 in best-of-seven series that are tied 2-2 has gone on to win the matchup 82% of the time. Suffice it to say, Tuesday night’s Spurs-Thunder match is a biggie. And if OKC is going to protect home court, where the Thunder have lost just one game in these playoffs (Game 1 to San Antonio), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is probably going to have to validate his MVP stripes.
It has not been a great series for SGA. He’s averaging fewer than 25 points per game, down from 31 in the regular season, and more concerning is his 39% shooting percentage, which includes a 26% 3-point clip. He was held to 19 points in OKC’s Game 4 loss, when the Spurs changed up their defensive strategy of double-teaming him all over the court and instead allowed their guys to cover him more straight up.
Spurs defense dominates Thunder, and Game 4 might have flipped the chess board of this series
Brad Botkin
It worked because the shooters who were ignored through the first three games (as a result of sending multiple defenders to SGA) were no longer wide open, and the production fell way off. Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace, Jaylin Williams and Jared McCain, who combined for 68 points and 12 3-pointers in Game 3, scored just 12 points on two 3-pointers in Game 4. Caruso, who hit 14 3s at a searing 61% clip through the first three games by himself, didn’t score a single point.
The rub of shutting off the ancillary scoring and covering the back-to-back MVP with a single defender (at least until he drives inside the 3-point line, at which point the Spurs were still helping down aggressively) is that he’s supposed to kill that coverage. But again, that didn’t happen. That means you can bet the Spurs are going to play him the same way in Game 5. At least until he starts to cook.
So that’s what he needs to do. Especially because Ajay Mitchell has already been ruled out for Game 5, and Jalen Williams is questionable. Mitchell and Williams are OKC’s only true one-on-one scorers outside of SGA, which provides a viable third option for the half-court offense if the shooters aren’t shooting and Gilgeous-Alexander isn’t dominating.
If Williams can’t go, Gilgeous-Alexander really has to play huge. Even if Williams can, how much can you rely on someone who has been banged up for most of the season against this kind of San Antonio defense and start creating consistent solo buckets?
Bottom line: It’s time for SGA to be the MVP. It’s not to say he hasn’t been worthy of that award in these playoffs, or even in this series. He has. Again, he’s the reason all those shooters mentioned above, none of whom are even remotely capable of creating postseason offense for themselves, have produced at such an outlier rate.
That’s what MVPs do. They draw all the attention. Sometimes they still score 35, but even when their box scores don’t jump off the page, their impact is all over. Stephen Curry got absolutely robbed of Finals MVP in 2015 by a bunch of voters who apparently don’t understand this dynamic and just decided that Andre Iguodala was a more important player in that series because he scored more than he usually did. It was all created by Curry, who was still the leading scorer on the team by a wide margin.
All of which is to say, this is not an indictment in any way on SGA’s MVP status. It’s just to say the Spurs have flipped the equation by the way they defended him in Game 4, and he has to flip it back. The only way San Antonio is even going to consider going back to trapping him with multiple defenders and opening back up all of OKC’s shooters is if SGA punishes their single coverage to a meaningful enough degree that they don’t have a choice.
Until then, why would they go back to leaving Caruso and company open? OKC has proved it can beat that formula. Now it’s on SGA to prove that he, and by extension the Thunder, can beat the new one.
And it won’t be easy. San Antonio has elite perimeter defenders who are being extremely physical with Gilgeous-Alexander and, for the most part, proving they can stay in front of him one-on-one. We’re talking about Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell and Dylan Harper, specifically. Even De’Aaron Fox has held up reasonably well in switches.
And behind all of them is the greatest paint protector in history in Victor Wembanyama, which allows them to pressure even harder knowing they have cover if they get beat. It begs the question why San Antonio felt it had to double team SGA so far out on the court in the first place. That just shows you the respect opposing coaches have for him. Even when they have elite defenders at their disposal, they don’t think any single one of them can handle the MVP.
In this way, maybe it’s the Spurs who are proving something to themselves in real time. That they don’t have to abandon traditional defensive principles and totally sell out to contain even arguably the best scorer in the world. My guess is they’re still scared of Gilgeous-Alexander eventually burning them, and they should be.
In the end, he hasn’t won back-to-back MVPs and averaged north of 30 PPG in each of the past four seasons by being easily solved. The Spurs made their move. It worked in Game 4. Can it work in Game 5 and for the rest of this series? That’s a question only SGA can answer.
