The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Spurs comeback shows HOW they can extend NBA Finals vs. Knicks
08 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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all right welcome to hoops tonight here at the volume happy sunday everybody hope all you guys are having an incredible weekend gonna keep it super simple today for our film session i'm gonna focus on every single play from the spurs comeback from down 14 in the fourth quarter of game two obviously the knicks end up winning the game which we'll talk about when we get to those final sequences but i really want to dive into what specifically they did differently what can translate forward into the series and whether or not it means the spurs have much of a chance to try to make this thing a series you
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That helps us a lot. All right, let's talk some basketball. Let's get right into it. We're going to be starting with the first bucket. OG Ananobi gets the dunk driving on Wemby in a closeout situation. And look at how fast the Spurs get up the floor after a made basket. And this really is the story of how they got going here down the stretch. Harper draws a foul in the open floor.
This is the biggest thing that can translate forward to them. they've got to play with as much pace as possible to weaponize some of that youthful exuberance and athleticism they have because of the troubles that they're having in the half court, because of how the, how big of a jump shooting gap there is.
We talked about this a little bit last night, but the Knicks have been the very best jump shooting team in the NBA. In this playoff run, the Spurs have been more of a middle of the pack jump shooting team among the playoff team. So like, it's very important to,
for them to avoid that slowdown half-court environment where in the driving kick setting where the physical dynamic isn't as advantageous for the Spurs as it was in the last round, they need to be in the open floor more. In the half-court, the Knicks can really load up on the ball and can kind of counter that advantage. So this is the difference in the defensive look.
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Chapter 2: What key strategies did the Spurs use for their comeback in Game 2?
This double drag is going to end up forcing a switch with Jalen Brunson on De'Aaron Fox. This was one of the other stories of the late run in this game. In the half court, the Spurs indexed more towards trying to attack Brunson in action. Here, De'Aaron Fox just gets into a step back three over the top and knocks it down. Gets tons of separation. Much more comfortable there.
when you're allowing Brunson to work, you don't want to just let him work solely one-on-one. If he gets any sort of deep dribble penetration, you want to try to shrink the floor on him a little bit instead of an outright double team. Like if champagne, let's talk about what this looks like after the switch. So Brunson likes the champagne matchup. He goes at champagne Foxes on McHale bridges. So
If De'Aaron Fox just outright goes and double-teams Jalen Brunson, Brunson has the easiest decision in the world. I'm not shooting this thing. I'm just throwing the ball to McHale. I throw the ball to McHale, he's going to take a shot. You'll see an example of that here in a minute where the Spurs end up leaving McHale Bridges wide open. He just happens to miss a shot.
But by virtue of sending more of a dig down, see how it's a dig down? by virtue of sending a dig down rather than a hard double team. Cause see how he like lunges at the ball, but then he lunges back out into the passing lane. Of course, McHale back cuts him and he's actually wide open. But the point is, is you made this a more complicated decision.
Now it's like, well, I might just shoot anyway, even though there's an open man here that can prey on Jalen Brunson making the wrong decision and being overly aggressive, which is what he does here. The right read is to Mikhail Bridges, who's wide open on the wing. But because you sent a dig down instead of an early double, you made him make a tougher decision. He makes the wrong decision.
He forces it up. and ends up missing Carl Anthony towns ends up keeping it alive. I'm not going to show the next clip, but with four seconds left, they just run a baseline out of balance play that goes nowhere. Deuce McBride gets the ball in the wing. He ends up forcing up a tough 15 footer and misses it. Actually I'm showing you the play. So Deuce McBride misses the little shot.
Good box out from Wemby. They get the rebound in the push ahead in transition. We get a cross match. That transition cross match ends up with Jalen Brunson on deer and Fox deer and Fox ends up working in one-on-one goes to this nasty little step through move towards his left hand to score off the glass. Something to keep in mind there. If the Spurs do try going to their all guard lineup.
So Vassell Fox castle and Harper all together is, There's going, he's going to start on the cell who, by the way, the cells, a better movement shooter than champagne. So the hedge and recover will be less effective there. But in these situations, there will just be more possessions because there's three great ball handlers on the floor.
There will be more possessions where Brunson just ends up on a ball handler in a transition cross match.
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Chapter 3: How did Victor Wembanyama impact the Spurs' performance?
And you have an opportunity to quick attack him one-on-one. This is that play where they leave McHale bridges open. So this is kind of like a weird, confusing sequence where I think when B was starting the possession of McHale bridges, but then he was like moving over. Nevermind. I'm going to get cat.
The cell gets kind of caught in between, but this is an example of when you make the decision tree easy, uh, Brunson's not going to mess around. He's just going to throw the pass. That's why you don't, even though this wasn't a double team, that's why you don't double team though. So you don't have just a very simple, easy decision to an open shooter. He gets for sale with a basic pump bake.
He just happens to miss the shot going the other way though. Look at Victor women. Yeah. I'm a plane off two feet. I don't like these Victor ISOs too much right now, just because he's given up too much strength, but this is an example of how it can work for him in the long run. Watch him make a hard move and dislodge cat. Boom. Dislodge his cat.
But instead of rumbling, stumbling off of one foot plays off of two feet, keeps a strong base and is able to pivot and get back to his left hand for a layup. That's why it's important to play off of two feet. This is an example of the one play down the stretch where they went to cat with off ball action.
And they just never went back to this for whatever reason, but they ended up getting what should have been an open shot. So watch cat gets the ball. Brunson's going to set a back screen on Fox when he does back screen. Now he's got inside position. Great read from Brunson. He slips out of it. Cat sees him. Boom. Great read, right?
Now, from here, Brunson, once again, is in the decision-making zone, and he has two great opportunities. Wemby's going to come over late here, which you'll see in a second, but Mikhail Bridges is butt naked in the right corner, wide open. Brunson, though, continues to force the issue and goes up against two guys. As you can see here, as he starts to attack, even Blanger Shamit is open, too.
But this is a little bit harder. This is why late help is good. When I talk about late help, when you send late help rather than early help, it's more likely that the ball handler will miss it and fail to make the correct read when he ends up swatting his ass off the glass. But again, you put Brunson into the decision making zone here. He's making a lot of poor pass shoot decisions.
That's a big part of how the Spurs came back down the stretch of this game. It's a big adjustment that Brunson needs to make as he heads into the next game. When these help decisions are coming later, Brunson's fucking up. When you make the mistake out 25, 30 feet from the basket, the double team or the mistake, like we saw in the McHale Bridges one, it's just a much easier decision for Brunson.
He's not going to make that mistake as often. Five on four, because Brunson's on the ground, we get in transition the advantage of Devin Vassell trailing the play. Classic great lift jump shot from Devin Vassell goes in. Here's another force from Brunson. So earlier on, we saw Wemby switching ball screens. We're going to see another example of it here later on in a few minutes.
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Chapter 4: What adjustments did the Spurs make to counter the Knicks' defense?
And Mikhail bridges is wide open with five seconds on the shot clock. But once again, because you sent the, the help late, uh, rather than sending the help or the double team early, it puts Brunson into a shot pass decision, which is a little bit more complicated. And he continues to make the wrong decision basically every single time here down the stretch.
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Chapter 5: How did De'Aaron Fox contribute to the Spurs' success in the fourth quarter?
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Darren Fox ends up having a turnover here in the open court. This was an example of why I didn't love the lack of a timeout for Mitchell Robinson. The Spurs were just kind of a little chaotic in transition. So on a final possession, I would have slowed down. He ends up turning it over, throwing it back to McHale. McHale ends up making a nice read at the rim that goes to a wide open Jalen Brunson.
He just smokes the three. But in transition off the cross match, after that missed three, Here we get our transition cross match. Harper has Brunson now as he snakes through the lane, pulls it out. Now he's got his cross match. And this is again, why I want to see that four guard lineup. I want to see more of this. M Harper goes right at Brunson, scores easily, ties the game.
Bad play here from Julian Champagny. I'm going to fast forward through it. Brunson ends up giving up the ball to Shamit. After he gives up the ball to Shamit, Shamit drives. He's going nowhere. He's locked up. At this point, Champagny has one job. Fox doesn't need help here. Your one job is to make sure this easiest pass is not available. Champagny ends up losing sight of OG Ananobi. Big mistake.
Leaves his feet. That puts himself in a predicament where OG relocates. He ends up fouling a shooter. Big, big, big mistake from Julian Champagny. They're done.
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Chapter 6: What role did Dylan Harper play in the Spurs' comeback?
OG has got the ball 30 feet from the basket with 2.1 on the shot clock. And look at how he screams downhill and get something off the glass, which forces Dylan Harper to step up, which then leaves cat and offensive rebound position. Cat keeps it alive. Champagne hits it out of bounds. So two seconds on the shot clock, that possession is dead.
Probably ended up with a jacked up shot with a matched up player against cat who can at least box them out. The Spurs might have a chance to get a rebound. Now they could be going down to take the lead. Instead, OG turns a nothing into something, get something up off the glass forces help gets Carl Anthony towns, the offensive rebound opportunity.
Then on the sideline out about our baseline out of bounds, look at this play. Mikael Bridges coming off. Wemby doesn't want to help because he doesn't want to come off of Cat. Fox gets wiped out on the screen. Because he gets wiped out on the screen, Dylan Harper steps up. Because Dylan Harper steps up, Mikael hits Jalen Brunson coming back inbounds.
There's champagne in the late couple of things there. Champagne is probably a little too locked in on Josh Hart. They're probably needs to come over further. And then also if I'm Dylan Harper, I'd rather have McHale bridges, take a contested pull up MIDI here than give up a layup to Brunson. So another kind of defensive breakdown from the Spurs.
But again, that's a layup that made it one Oh two 99 because OGN and OB and Carl Anthony towns turned a broken possession into an extra possession. On this play, this was kind of a chaotic transition sequence. I think if I remember correctly, Wemby air balls a corner three. Wemby air balls a corner three in transition going the other way. Brunson smokes the layup on Fox. We go out the other way.
Dylan Harper in transition gets downhill and puts it up on the glass and gets the goaltending call on cat. Brunson on this entire possession. I'm going back here because I'm connecting the transition piece here. Brunson on this entire possession just basically takes the possession off and he goes and stands in the corner.
They run through McHale Bridges to get the little slip screen here with OG and Anobi that allows McHale to turn the corner. We get a nice block in this case from Devin Vassell who comes off of Josh Hart in the corner. So he gets the stop on McHale Bridges. Spurs run out the other way. You have Wemby trailing the play and he draws the foul for the end one. Big, big play.
This is the Jalen Brunson tough bucket. This is the stuff you got to live with though. Again, Brunson has been putrid down the stretch of this game. So like I get it. He tied the game here, but like, this is where you got to trust your process and not go into game three thinking, Oh, we need to double team Brunson. Cause he hit a clutch shot. No, the, the, the Spurs were down 14.
And now they're up by two, in large part because this guy keeps shooting bad shots. So you need to continue to trust the process here. He does like the Champagny matchup, gets downhill into Champagny's chest with this hard drive. and goes into a very, very nifty one-like fadeaway. Big-time shot from Jalen Brunson, tip of the cap.
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Chapter 7: How did the Spurs' transition game affect their chances in the series?
He's just trying to take a foul here because they have a foul to give. So Brunson drives, and he just rakes him reaching in, he's just being super aggressive. You pick up that foul. Now you don't have a foul to give, which is precisely what sends Brunson to the foul line after the turnover that Wemby has in a minute. My thing is like play him straight up, give him more space.
And yeah, if you're compromised, take the foul. Like if Brunson beats you with a good move and you think he's going to score by all means, commit a foul. But this is just giving a foul for the sake of giving a foul, which then puts them in the penalty the rest of the way. Now we go to the final possession.
I skipped ahead for this clip so you can see the transition sequence, but we get the ball screen and it's a switch, okay? So now we're going back to switching the ball screen. Wemby's on Jalen Brunson, forces him into a tough pull-up, misses it, gets the rebound, boom. Now, Wemby has the ball. There's 13 seconds on the shot clock.
But Wemby has the ball literally 92 feet from the basket with his back turned towards his own rim facing his own bench. Call a timeout. Call a timeout, get a good shot. I was talking about this on the All-NBA pod with Adam Mares on Saturday, but I've been thinking a lot about this concept because I went right after the game last night and I thought there was less time left.
I ended up thinking there was seven seconds left at the time of this timeout. It ends up being that there's 13, so there's more time. But I still feel the same way. And the main reason why is I think that you... Trust your guys to go make something happen in a situation like that. If they are rock solid ball handlers. And I like Wemby. I think he's the best player in the world.
He is not a rock solid ball handler. Neither is deer and Fox. Neither is Steph castle. Neither is Dylan Harper. This is a timeout team, not a let them play team. The list of guys I would trust in a situation like that is only like a half dozen long. It's like Luca, uh, Yoke, itch, Shea, LeBron, you know, there's a handful of guys. Jalen Brunson's one of them.
There's a handful of guys that I trust in a situation like that to walk the ball up the floor. If it's a player that's not necessarily a super steady ball handler, call a timeout. Now, as you guys can see, Steph is looking, because now I'm already saying it's Mitch's fault. It's Mitch's fault. It's Mitch's fault. But now that we're playing, let's look at what happened.
You guys might have seen a clip from a camera that was down here facing this way, where you see Steph Castle is looking for the ball. But even above and beyond anything having to do with whether or not Steph is looking because he turns his head and Wemby throws it to him. But the other problem here is look at where Jalen Brunson is.
Even if you hit Castle and he catches this ball, he's got a defender right in front of him who is notorious for trying to take charges and swipe down at the basketball. If Brunson's not here and Brunson's over here, by all means, throw the ball to Castle. He's got a lane. He's got advantage. But this is just a poor decision from Wemby under these circumstances.
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