Completely left wide open, Alex Caruso had several good looks from the corner. Clank. Clank. Clank. The onomatopoeia echoed throughout the OKC crowd. Hand-delivered several quality looks, OKC’s role players let it slip through their fingers.

The Oklahoma City Thunder officially have a San Antonio Spurs problem after their 117-102 loss on Christmas. Three straight losses in two weeks to the up-and-coming squad have most at the very least alarmed about that matchup.

Caruso finished with 12 points on 3-of-13 shooting and one rebound. He shot 2-of-12 from 3 and went 4-of-4 on free throws. He also had one block.

The Spurs join the long list of teams over the years that have deployed that strategy. As awesome as Caruso is on the defensive end, his inconsistent outshot shooting is equally a disadvantage. That’s a theme throughout the Thunder’s roster. Same goes for guys like Cason Wallace and Lu Dort.

They’ll keep shooting the open shots because duh. You kinda have to. But you can’t help but feel like you’re playing right into the Spurs’ game plan. Caruso insisted that he’s too good an outside shooter to keep up with the misses. Let’s see what happens with a larger sample size down the road when the playoffs start rolling. He did shoot 41% from deep on four attempts in last year’s playoff run. So maybe he’s earned some benefit of the doubt.

“I think they have a very clear mission and mindset within their team coming from the beginning of the year to be a great team. I think we had that through the entire season last year and this year it’s been hit or miss,” Caruso said. “Some of that being to the top and understanding it’s Game 30 of the regular season. Some of that you have to step up and throw your fastball against good teams to give yourself a measuring stick.”

The Thunder simply don’t have enough real shooters to force teams to play honestly with them in the halfcourt. They won an NBA championship in spite of it. But that was because they played all-time great defense to ugly up the game. If they’re not bringing that level of defense, then they look more vulnerable.

We’ve known that for years, though. The Thunder consciously made that trade-off when constructing this championship roster. Any slippage on that end, though, exposes them to losses like these. It’s still a long way away, but it feels like OKC will need to win close, low-scoring games once again in the playoffs.

Hey, the formula worked once. Let’s see if it can work again. If not, they have several roster decisions to make this upcoming offseason that’ll give the Thunder a chance to tweak their philosophy if needed. The NBA is an ever-evolving sport where you need to be ahead of the curve.

Alex Caruso on needing to match the intensity of the Spurs (or any team) in games like this:

“I think they have a very clear mission & mindset within their team…I think we had that through the entire season last year & this year it’s been hit or miss” pic.twitter.com/7lYHCXLEc2

— The Daniel Bell© (@BasketballGuruD) December 25, 2025