San Antonio responded to a double-digit loss with a resounding double-digit win in the Western Conference Finals. El Jefe himself might have played a role.
SAN ANTONIO — The Spurs didn’t just grab Western Conference Finals momentum with their Game 4 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday night—they held the defending NBA champions to their lowest points output in four and a half years.
The team said it clearly recognized the importance of the night and of not entering Game 5 in Oklahoma City on the brink of elimination. As San Antonio’s De’Aaron Fox puts it, Coach Pop himself helped right the Spurs’ mindset mere moments after their 123-108 loss in Game 3.
That marked the first time since mid-January that the Silver & Black lost consecutive games.
“Pop came in after the game, that was actually the first time he came into the locker room and spoke after the game (this regular season),” Fox said after the team’s Game 4 win on Sunday. “He saw it, we all saw it, we all felt it. Coming into this game, we wanted to make sure that mentality was out the door.”
Gregg Popovich’s pep talk paid off: San Antonio submitted a double-digit victory that head coach Mitch Johnson said might have been the team’s best outing of the year given the stakes.
Fox himself, while dealing with a sore ankle, grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds to go along with 12 points and five assists. Victor Wembanyama led the way with 33 points as San Antonio shot 39% of the field to Oklahoma City’s 33%, but Johnsons said the team rediscovering its gritty defensive identity proved the key.
“Anytime we can turn defense into offense – that’s turnovers, that’s rebounding – that’s when we’re at our best,” the head coach said. “We can get out and run and play in space and momentum and share the ball, and we did that tonight.”
Popovich has been regularly seen at games and during practice sessions over the course of San Antonio’s playoff run. He retired from head coaching duties last year following his November 2024 stroke, shifting gears into the role of president of basketball operations.
Or, as he so famously put it during that announcement, the role of “El Jefe.” In the aftermath of the Spurs’ big-time Game 4 victory, Fox made it clear how much El Jefe has been on hand to ensure the team is performing to the standard he helped set over the decades of his Hall of Fame coaching career.