Before Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams played the blame game following Tuesday’s loss, head coach Mark Daigneault credited Keldon Johnson and the San Antonio Spurs. Without their star, Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs outscored the Thunder 33-9, including a 16-0 run from the end of the second quarter into the second half, punctuated by Johnson’s 22 first-half points.
After the game, Daigneault zeroed in on what went wrong against the Spurs.
“I just thought on both ends of the floor we didn’t play, clearly, good enough to win. Give San Antonio credit. I thought they played really hard from the jump,” Daigneaulg said. “[They]played with great effort. Mitch is doing a great job. They played with a lot of confidence from the beginning of the game. They went and earned that game. They deserved to win.”
Spurs assistant coach Mitchell Johnson, filling in for head coach Gregg Popovich amid a medical leave of absence, guided San Antonio from its first and only double-digit deficit in the second quarter. The Thunder, ahead 48-38 in the second quarter, were on the wrong end of a 16-0 run that stretched into the third quarter and eventually gave the Spurs a 21-point lead (98-77) with 10:05 left in the fourth quarter.
Jalen Williams, Thunder fourth-quarter rally falls short vs Spurs
From a 21-point deficit, Mark Daigneault, Jalen Williams, and the Thunder played catch-up before falling six points short against the Spurs toward the end of the final frame. With Thunder’s All-Defensive First Team guard Alex Caruso back, Oklahoma City rallied defensive stops while Williams scored 11 of his 27 points in the final ten minutes of regulation. Still, it wasn’t enough to overcome Keldon Johnson’s first-half play and the Spurs’ collective effort.
After the game, Daigneault talked about Johnson’s impact.
“I think he got some confidence going in the first half. I thought we had control of the game. We were up by like ten, and then they got some confidence going and rhythm going,” Daigneault added. “They had us on our heels. He was in the middle of all that. He got some clean looks early to fall. And then, his confidence lifted as he finished the first half. I thought we did a decent job on him in the second half.
“That’s when the game started to get away from us a little bit, during that stretch in the second quarter, and he had everything to do with that,” Daigneault concluded.
On the second night of a back-to-back, the Thunder will host the Trail Blazers on Wednesday.
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