The Thunder evened up their Western Conference finals with the Spurs on Wednesday.
But it wasn’t thanks to Isaiah Hartenstein’s defense against Victor Wembanyama, at least in the mind of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The two-time NBA MVP seemingly joked in a sideline interview with NBC after host Oklahoma City’s 122-113 win over San Antonio in Game 2 on Wednesday night that the former Knicks big man’s defense against the Spurs superstar wasn’t up to snuff.
“I’m not sure if it was good, to be honest, yeah,” Gilgeous-Alexander said when asked about Hartenstein’s impact.
When asked in a follow-up to break down why the impact was not good, Gilgeous-Alexander smiled and backtracked a bit. “It was alright, it was good, it was good,” he said.
One game after Wembanyama scored 41 points in a Game 1 Spurs win, he was held to 21 points on 8-for-16 shooting from the field.
Hartenstein did get into some foul trouble with four on the night and was plenty physical with the towering Wembanyama, which the NBC broadcast made sure to point out in a highlight package during the action.
The lowlight for Hartenstein, however, came in the second quarter when the Spurs Stephon Castle posterized him with a vicious dunk.
Hartenstein was limited to 12 minutes and two points in Game 1 but scored 10 points with 13 rebounds across 27 minutes in Game 2.
Whoever gets tasked with guarding Wembanyama next will have a day off to figure things out before the series resumes in San Antonio on Friday night.
