A playoff series can turn at any time. The San Antonio Spurs handled the Portland Trail Blazers at home in Game One on the back of a historic playoff debut from Victor Wembanyama. There were moments, however, where it looked like the Blazers could make it an interesting game, including big runs in the third and fourth quarters, that cut into the Spurs\u2019 lead. Despite the convincing Game One victory, San Antonio has to come out with the same sense of urgency to take care of business on their home floor.<\/p>\n
In order to take care of business, they\u2019ll have to find a way to slow down Deni Advija. The Blazers\u2019 star was one of the only Portland players who could get into a real rhythm in Game One, scoring 30 points on 12 of 21 shooting. San Antonio did a solid job defending the rim on Sunday, allowing just 42 points in the paint, but Advija was the one Blazer they couldn\u2019t keep away from the rim. The Spurs will have to make some adjustments to decrease Advija\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n
The Spurs will look to leave some first-playoff-game jitters in the rearview, cut down on some turnovers, and make more easy shots in game two. If they can do that while continuing to play good defense, they will likely be heading to Portland with a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
April 21st, 2026 | 7 PM CT<\/p>\n
Watch: NBC\/Peacock | Listen: WOAI (1200 AM)<\/p>\n
Spurs Injuries: Jordan McLaughlin \u2013 Out (ankle)<\/p>\n
Trail Blazers Injuries: Damian Lillard \u2013 Out (achilles)<\/p>\n
Taking advantage of bigs guarding Castle<\/p>\n
Portland used an interesting defensive approach to guarding Wembanyama and Stephon Castle on Sunday. They put Donovan Clingan on Castle, and Toumani Camara on Wemby. It makes sense from the Blazers\u2019 perspective. Camara is their best defender, and teams have found some success using wings to guard Wembanyama. Given Castle\u2019s inconsistent jump shot, they can have the big man guarding him sag way off to provide more interior defense. Unfortunately for the Blazers, that strategy didn\u2019t work on Wembanyama, who had a monster 35-point game. It did, however, throw Castle out of rhythm. Castle had 17 points on 4-13 shooting.<\/p>\n
These matchups are crucial in this series. If Castle can make the Blazers pay for not guarding him from outside, the strategy fails for Portland. But if he continues to score easy buckets, it slows down a key cog in the Spurs\u2019 offense. It will be interesting to see how Mitch Johnson and the Spurs staff counter this defense in Game Two.<\/p>\n
The Blazers are not a good three-point shooting team. They\u2019ve shot just 34.3% from deep this season, and hit only 26% of their 38 attempts in Game One. The Spurs seemed fine with players like Clingan, Robert Williams III, and Matisse Thybulle firing up shots from deep. The Blazers\u2019 missing open shots were one of the reasons the Spurs\u2019 defense looked so effective. However, as we saw in the play-in game against the Phoenix Suns, Portland can hit a three-point shooting hot streak. If Portland\u2019s shaky shooters start to hit shots, Game Two could get interesting in a hurry.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t feel like the Blazers sent a lot of double-teams at Wembanyama in Game One. For most of the game, he was able to operate independently in the pick-and-roll, on the block, or behind the three-point line. After his dominant game on Sunday, it\u2019s likely he starts to see multiple defenders when he catches the ball. That means it will be on De\u2019Aaron Fox, Castle, Dylan Harper, and Devin Vassell to take the pressure off. Fox and Vassell were excellent in Game One, coming up with big plays, especially in the second half. San Antonio will need its guards to come up big to maintain homecourt advantage in this series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A playoff series can turn at any time. The San Antonio Spurs handled the Portland Trail Blazers at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534,5595],"class_list":{"0":"post-715041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-spurs","15":"tag-spurs-game-previews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116441688418337314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}