Often times, NBA fans want a deep, descriptive reason why their team lost.
A crucial flaw in the plan, an off game from a star player, or maybe a disastrous showing from the officials. But, in the modern day NBA, it typically comes down to one thing — shooting variance.
Coming into Thursday’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the San Antonio Spurs were the worst three point shooting team in the league, posting a miserable 34% from beyond the arc on the season. Against Oklahoma City, the Spurs seemingly couldn’t miss. San Antonio shot 19-39 from three, canning 49% of it’s attempts on the night, including a slew of deep or heavily contested looks. The shooting dominance gave the Spurs a 132-118 win, and sent OKC home with a sour taste in it’s mouth.
Most of the game can be summed up to little more than a hot night from the Spurs, but there was still a few red flags for the Thunder.
OKC, the NBA’s best three point shooting team in the NBA heading into the game, shot a porous 29% from beyond the arc, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander made and attempted only one shot from deep despite being one of the associations premier shooters from downtown in the month of February.
Gilgeous-Alexander got off to an oddly slow start, and it put the Thunder behind the eight ball early. Typically the most reliable offensive force in the NBA, SGA started just 1-8, despite getting looks he typically takes to the bank.
Chet Holmgren picked up the slack as well as he could, but with SGA struggling by his standard, and everyone outside of Isaiah Joe seeming to be unable to hit a shot from deep regardless of how tight the defense was, OKC was working from behind from the start.
In short, if you are a fan of OKC, don’t sweat this one too much. It never feels good to lose to a bad team, but this one was won by the Spurs much more than it was lost by the Thunder. If the Spurs shoot 10% better than their season average instead of 15%, we would probably be talking about an OKC win.
No fan ever wants to blame shooting variance, but that is what this one came down to, and it worked against the Thunder in the end.
