With Victor Wembanyama out for a second consecutive game due to a knee injury, the San Antonio Spurs weren’t expected to put up much of a fight against the Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder in their Tuesday night NBA Cup tussle. Devin Vassell was also out, which would make life even more difficult for the Spurs. But clearly, no one told Keldon Johnson that they were just supposed to roll over for the Thunder.
Johnson, who plays with such physicality and ferocity, had one of the most incredible sequences of the season thus far for the Spurs late in the second quarter of their contest against the Thunder. He received the ball on the left wing and shook Aaron Wiggins off his shoes with a quick jab step, even dropping the Thunder defender to the floor. But he wasn’t done there. Johnson took it up strong at the rim, and with Chet Holmgren out for a few months, OKC does not have a true rim protector — with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ending up being the casualty of a nasty poster jam.
With two of the Spurs’ primary scoring options on the mend, Johnson was going to have to step up if they were to have a shot at an upset win against the Thunder. He has been rather inconsistent to start the 2024-25 season, and his stock has been falling gradually the more he has been entrenched in his bench role. But Johnson has shown in the past that he can be a source of an explosive brand of offense for the Spurs, and Gilgeous-Alexander learned that firsthand tonight.
This jam may have meant a little something extra; both Johnson and Gilgeous-Alexander are Kentucky one-and-done alums, and perhaps somewhere, John Calipari is beaming with pride.
Spurs on track to pull off major upset vs. Thunder
At the time of writing, the Spurs are leading the Thunder by double-digits in the fourth quarter. OKC is a young and energetic team that can pull off a comeback at any time, so Johnson and company will have to be very careful and continue to execute to prevent letting a winnable game slip from their fingertips.
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As the Spurs would have it, Keldon Johnson is currently their leading scorer despite coming off the bench, having tallied 22 points on an efficient 7-14 shooting at the time of writing. Johnson has made six triples, and his red-hot shooting has been contagious. Currently, the Spurs have 16 total threes as a team, with Chris Paul, Harrison Barnes, and Julian Champagnie nailing multiple threes of their own.
The Spurs will need to win this game if they were to keep their hopes of making it to the quarterfinals of the NBA Cup alive. Their first game in the competition resulted in a heartbreaking 120-115 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, but winning by double figures over the Thunder should improve their point differential to a point where they could conceivably make the quarterfinals as a wild card team.
Whatever the case ends up being, this performance from the Spurs is something that recovering head coach Gregg Popovich can be proud of.
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