Oklahoma City Thunder Defense Innovates With Sneaker Block
For two seasons now, NBA viewers have bemoaned the league-best Oklahoma City Thunder defense. Not because it's physically talented or schematically savvy—it is both—but because it's seemingly built on the premise that officials cannot detect and call every single foul that occurs on a basketball court. No previous team seems to have realized that a defense could simply play this way the entire game; they are angry, swarming, and handsy. As of Tuesday night, they are also shoesy.
In the second quarter of a 113-108 win over the Orlando Magic, Alex Caruso, whose defensive chops are as peculiar and savant-like as Steph Curry's shooting, innovated by blocking a Tristan da Silva layup attempt with a foreign object: the shoe that had fallen off Caruso's left foot earlier in the possession. The Thunder guard reached out with his right arm, extended his wingspan by swinging his sneaker, and clipped the ball. It was clean in the sense that Caruso didn't make illegal contact with da Silva's body, but dirty in the sense that he used his shoe.
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