{"id":743628,"date":"2026-05-25T14:18:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T14:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/743628\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T14:18:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T14:18:17","slug":"how-gregg-popovich-spurred-san-antonio-to-blowout-game-4-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/743628\/","title":{"rendered":"How Gregg Popovich spurred San Antonio to blowout Game 4 win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gregg Popovich officially retired as the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> head coach a year ago,but he\u2019s still making a big impact on the team.<\/p>\n

Popovich spoke to the team in a closed-door meeting following their 123-108 loss at home in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals on Friday night, basically telling them with some colorful language their effort wasn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPop\u2019s been around throughout the course of the season, but that was the first time he walked into the locker room and was like, \u2018Nah, that\u2019s B.S. That\u2019s not how we play basketball,\u2019\u201d point guard De\u2019Aaron Fox<\/a> said on NBC\u2019s \u201cNBA Showtime\u201d after the Spurs evened the series at 2-2 with a 103-82 rout in Game 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd obviously he had some choice words for us, but that was the first time all season that he came into the locker room right after a game and told us how he felt. And everybody felt that…<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve ever seen that, trainers, everybody\u2019s in there. We close the doors, we don\u2019t let anybody know what\u2019s going on. But that\u2019s the first time. He opened that door, we see Pop come in and it\u2019s like awww…\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox went for 12 points and 10 rebounds and Victor Wembanyama<\/a> returned to his dominant self with 33 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 blocks and 2 steals, including a 3-pointer from halfcourt just before halftime.<\/p>\n

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The Spurs held the defending NBA champions to their fewest points in a game since December 2021. It was the Thunder\u2019s first road loss this postseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t do nothing unexpected, but the truth is that we had never been in this kind of situation before,\u201d Wembanyama told reporters.<\/p>\n

MORE BY<\/p>\n

ADAM ZAGORIA<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was our first deficit and we just responded. It was nothing amazing, it wasn\u2019t magic. We just did what we needed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Said Thunder star and two-time NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a>: \u201cThey just punched us in our face early. It\u2019s two games in a row they\u2019ve come out the aggressors. Last game we were able to course-correct. Tonight we just didn\u2019t do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game 5 is set for Tuesday night back in Oklahoma City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read the original article on NJ.com<\/a>. Add NJ.com<\/a> as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gregg Popovich officially retired as the San Antonio Spurs head coach a year ago,but he\u2019s still making a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,1314,3349,6,475,969,474,4075,4074,209,534,693,3460],"class_list":["post-743628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio-spurs","tag-basketball","tag-deaaron-fox","tag-gregg-popovich","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-sanantonio","tag-sanantoniospurs","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","tag-spurs","tag-victor-wembanyama","tag-western-conference-finals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116635651512989022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743628","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=743628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}