De’Aaron Fox Makes The Game Fun For The Spurs

Down 58-41 at halftime on Sunday, the San Antonio Spurs were facing the most pressure they had in the brief but spectacular Victor Wembanyama playoff era. That said more about the team's inexperience with this kind of pressure than it did about needing to avoid a 2-2 first-round series against the Portland Trail Blazers, a team they should easily put away. While Wembanyama is the focal point of everything the Spurs do, somebody else on the team needed to step up to overcome such a deficit in Game 4. Yesterday, it was De'Aaron Fox, for a 114-93 victory and 3-1 series lead. Correlated with the concerns about pressure management is the matter of how Wembanyama would hold up against the ravages of the NBA playoffs. Game 4 marked his return from a concussion—which he obliquely indicated was mishandled, though he did not specify in what way—and though he announced himself with a huge dunk in the game's opening minutes, his team's offense was flat in the first half. San Antonio shot 16-for-46 over the first two quarters, struggling to get to the rim or finish there as Portland's sludgy defense gunked up the works. Toumani Camara and Jrue Holiday hounded ballhandlers and blew up actions early, and a bunch of nasty veterans supported them for 48 minutes of solid rim protection. The impact of all that defensive excellence was applied unevenly through the first three games; while Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle have both been balling, Fox's first three playoff games as a Spur were underwhelming. His young charges have gotten to go at Scoot Henderson and Jerami Grant, while he's been stalked by Camara and Holiday almost the entire time he's been on the court. Harper was scorching in Game 3, briefly and spectacularly materializing the lofty comp of Ethical James Harden With Bounce.