Coming off a grueling seven-game series against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, many had their doubts about the San Antonio Spurs‘ chances in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. These fears were only realized after Mitch Johnson‘s Spurs suffered a 105-95 loss to the New York Knicks on Wednesday night.
San Antonio’s fatigue was evident in Game 1. While most players struggled to get going offensively, the team as a whole could not sustain its momentum on both ends of the floor. Needless to say, these are only a fraction of the overall problems, as Mitch Johnson addressed the key issues during his postgame media availability.
Johnson began by addressing Victor Wembanyama‘s (26 PTS, 12 REB, 3 BLK, 6-21 FG) slow scoring and offensive struggles in Game 1.
“Felt like he missed a few shots early, but we’ve got to get him moving in space and towards the rim. Whether that’s on the rolls or running in transition, but we need the pressure on the rim and the force in the paint.”
“They did a good job, obviously being physical and showing crowds, but you know, we need to do a better job of establishing that early on.”
Wembanyama’s reduced impact due to Karl-Anthony Towns’ defensive effort was one of the talking points of the game. With the superstar recording one of his worst shooting nights in this year’s postseason run, Mitch Johnson had to give credit where it was due.
In a follow-up question, Johnson was also asked about the team’s early-clock three-pointers and how they affected their overall momentum. The Spurs’ head coach responded:
“I don’t have any right now that I thought were egregious. There was definitely a stretch there in the second quarter where… We want to play with pace, and we want to hunt for threes in transition, but we also want those to be in rhythm and feel like they’re our shot.”
“There might have been some questionable ones… We’ve got to make sure we put more force in the paint, and we’ll still get our threes up with that. But we can’t work outside-in. We’ve got to go more inside-out.”
The Spurs shot a miserable 11-43 (~26%) from beyond the arc and 32-89 (~36%) from the field. Considering that, despite having Wembanyama, they only scored 42 points in the paint on Wednesday night, Mitch Johnson’s concerns seem justified.
While these issues were legitimate, Mitch Johnson pointed out something far more pressing, mainly because it deviated from the Spurs’ identity as a basketball team.
“Apart from everything, missing shots or not, 16 assists for us is not our brand of basketball… There’s a lot of things that we’ve discussed in this press conference that we can get better at and clean up, but that’s something that is not up to the standard, even anywhere close to what we’re used to and how we play.”
The Spurs were immensely successful in the regular season because of the trust within the roster in moving the ball around. With an average of 28.1 assists per game in the regular season and 24.6 assists per game in the playoffs, San Antonio routinely shared the ball to get the best look. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case on Wednesday night, as both the ball movement and offense stagnated at different points of the game.
Despite losing Game 1, Mitch Johnson and the Spurs remain confident about their chances heading into the remaining games of the series. Having developed a penchant for bouncing back from losses, San Antonio is likely to make the necessary adjustments before Game 2.
