A playoff series will eventually teach you how to watch it. Once the players have settled into their matchups and the coaches have made their big tactical adjustments, you can start to zero in on a few things that will decide the series. If Team A is able to do Y and prevent Team B from doing X, then they will win, etc. The nice thing about this year's Western Conference Finals is that you don't have to work very hard to find the series' hinge point. You just have to look at the 7-foot-5 guy standing in the middle of the court.
The Spurs won Game 4 on Sunday night, 103-82. If you are wondering how the defending champions were held to their lowest scoring mark of the entire season, look no further than Victor Wembanyama. His 33 points, eight rebounds, and three blocks speak for themselves, but as is always the case with Wembanyama, he has to be seen to be believed.
In hindsight, it was a bad sign for the Thunder that their first eight points of the game came via Isaiah Hartenstein's fuck-ass floater. It's a shot that he can hit with annoying consistency, and in the moment his 4-of-4 start to the game presented itself as found money for the Thunder. But the accuracy of Hartenstein's floater has always been less important than the frequency at which he is forced to huck it up there, because its arrival in a playoff game usually indicates that the Thunder are low on options. They led 8-7 after Hartenstein's final floater found the net; they wouldn't lead again.
The rest of the game was dictated by Wembanyama, who had complete control over what the Thunder could and could not do on offense. The Spurs, having been burned by a whole bunch of scoring from the Thunder's role players in Game 3, elected to send fewer double-teams at Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, trusting their gargantuan center to contain his drives while everyone else stuck closer to the Thunder's shooters. Gilgeous-Alexander was only able to get 15 shots up—four more than Hartenstein—because of how effectively Wembanyama warded him away from his preferred spots. Without room to get to the rim or operate out of the mid-range, and without as many open shooters to pass to, the MVP's night dissolved into a procession of turnovers and foul-baiting.
Having seen a 15-0 first-quarter lead evaporate in Game 3, Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson made an adjustment in Game 4 by delaying Wembanyama's first rest of the game. Johnson usually prefers to get his big man out of there around the seven-minute mark of the first quarter, but on Sunday Wembanyama played almost the entire first quarter, not subbing out until the 2:59 mark. By then, the Spurs had built a 13-point lead.
Johnson surely knows what everyone else does, which is that the story of this series is what happens when Wemby is on and off the court. Through four games, the Spurs are +50 when Wembanyama is on the court and -43 when he sits, which puts the Thunder in a race against the clock whenever he leaves the floor. They have to score as many points as possible, as quickly as possible, before the big Frenchman returns and fucks up their offense again. Johnson elected to push Wemby a little further in that first quarter in order to get a tighter grip on the game, and it paid off. The blowout was well underway by the start of the second half, and Wembanyama only had to play three minutes in the fourth quarter. He finished +29 in 31 minutes.
Wembanyama's court-devouring presence has put the Thunder in an unfamiliar position, in which they are the team that is having to react rather than dictate. If it is just a law of the universe that the Spurs will not cede an inch while Wembanyama is on the floor, then the Thunder are reduced to trying to squeeze wins from the margins. Having Hartenstein yank and bang Wembanyama got them a win in Game 2, and some great shot-making from role players got them one in Game 3. Wemby looked much more comfortable against Hartenstein in Game 4, though, and all those shots from Jared McCain and Jaylin Williams dried up.
This doesn't mean that the Thunder are out of the series, just that they have been somewhat diminished. The unstoppable basketball machine that rolled through the regular season and the first two rounds is suddenly having to deal with problems that most teams have to deal with in the playoffs. They need to find new ways to destabilize the other team's best player, even if for just a few minute at a time; they have to maximize the advantages they do have with as much efficiency as possible; they need the guys on the bench to hit some damn shots. That's the power of Victor Wembanyama: For the first time all season, the Thunder look like a normal team with real problems to solve.
