{"id":308248,"date":"2026-05-25T19:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T19:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/308248\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T19:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T19:09:10","slug":"san-antonio-switches-up-defensive-scheme-as-they-even-their-series-with-the-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/308248\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio switches up defensive scheme as they even their series with the Thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O\u2019Connor explains how the San Antonio Spurs’ defensive scheme change against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander helped even the Western Conference final with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Check out the full conversation on \u201cThe Kevin O\u2019Connor Show\u201d and subscribe on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, YouTube<\/a> or wherever you listen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Video Transcript<\/p>\n

Starting with the Spurs and the Thunder.<\/p>\n

San Antonio won Game 4, 103-82, tied up two to two.<\/p>\n

And number one thought, San Antonio changed up their coverage against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.<\/p>\n

This was the key to this victory.<\/p>\n

We saw in Games 1, 2, and 3, the Spurs sending two pretty frequently against SGA when he got a touch outside the three-point line.<\/p>\n

This was to try to force the ball out of his hands, prevent him from penetrating, but that didn’t work.<\/p>\n

It led to a lot of open catch-and-shoots, lobs for the Oklahoma City Thunder, and it was different in Game 4.<\/p>\n

They played him more one-on-one.<\/p>\n

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They weren’t sending two as hard.<\/p>\n

Sometimes they would late, but it worked to great effect in forcing him just to take some really tough, heavily contested pull-up jumpers, and sometimes, you know, Victor would even help over and get a hand on it.<\/p>\n

But this was the key for San Antonio in this Game 4, in what is looking like a series of adjustments.<\/p>\n

Because if you look at Game 1, Game 2, and Game 3 combined, of the catch-and-shoot three-point jumpers that Oklahoma City got, 75% of those were labeled as unguarded threes according to Synergy Sports.<\/p>\n

So that means three-fourths of their catch-and-shoot threes were unguarded.<\/p>\n

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In Game 4, that dropped to 44%.<\/p>\n

Fourteen of their three-pointers were guarded, 11 were unguarded, and that is as a result of the adjustment the Spurs made to their defense.<\/p>\n

Now, San Antonio was able to do this in part because no Jalen Williams, he’s out with a hamstring, and no AJ Mitchell, he’s out with a calf strain.<\/p>\n

And so Oklahoma City, they got SGA.<\/p>\n

They don’t have their second ball handler.<\/p>\n

They don’t have their third ball handler.<\/p>\n

They’re down to Jared McCain, Chet Holmgren.<\/p>\n

I mean, these other guys on this team that aren’t up to snuff to handle that responsibility next to SGA.<\/p>\n

And this was really the story of those Spurs-Thunder games over the course of the regular season, too.<\/p>\n

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In the games AJ Mitchell played, Oklahoma City had a really hard time generating quality shot opportunities.<\/p>\n

In the game that he did play, they looked a lot better.<\/p>\n

Very similar result so far in the fir- in this series so far.<\/p>\n

And I think for SGA, Games 1, 2, and 3, he generated 1.25 points per drive, and that’s in part because of the defense San Antonio was playing.<\/p>\n

In Game 4, that fell to 0.94.<\/p>\n

Close<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O\u2019Connor explains how the San Antonio Spurs’ defensive scheme change against Shai…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11244,10135,78719,2926,6378,6382,82,84,83,41611,4847],"class_list":["post-308248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-chet-holmgren","tag-jalen-williams","tag-jared-mccain","tag-oklahoma","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","tag-the-spurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}