The OKC Thunder managed to pull away victorious from a must-win Game 2 on Wednesday night, besting the Spurs 122-113 and successfully tying this conference finals up at 1-1.
And while such an outcome should have been enough to brighten the spirits of fans, players, and team personnel alike, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander still seems a bit unhappy with Oklahoma City's overall play, particularly when it came to Isaiah Hartenstein's defensive efforts against Victor Wembanyama.
During his on-court postgame interview, the reigning two-time MVP was asked to describe the "type of impact" switching I-Hart onto the Spurs' 7-foot-4 wunderkind had on the game.
Surprisingly, Shai responded bluntly, "I'm not sure if it was good, to be honest."
Thunder star wasn't a fan of Isaiah Hartenstein's efforts against Wemby
After essentially being played off the floor in Game 1, logging just 12 minutes of action, the Thunder pivot saw himself being tasked with the major objective of shadowing Wembanyama in his follow-up outing, a job that, clearly, even proved hard for the 7-footer, as he still finished with 21 points and 17 boards on 50.0 percent shooting from the floor and 42.9 percent shooting from deep.
Of course, even though this was still a tremendous showing from Wemby, it was technically a major step in the wrong direction compared to his previous game, in which he dropped a historic 41 points and 24 boards with the 6-foot-5 Alex Caruso as his primary defender.
Now, though Gilgeous-Alexander did try to roll things back by saying "It was alright, it was good," followed by "we wanted to switch it up, give [Wembanyama] different looks" than what he saw the previous night, frankly, the surprising shot at Hartenstein had already left the chamber at that point.
Despite the superstar's remarks, it's undeniable that, from an overall impact standpoint, Hartenstein was certainly a game-changer in Game 2.
In 27 minutes on the night, the big man went on to drop an impressive 10 points and 13 boards, eight of which came on the offensive side of the ball. He also proved to be far more of a menace while boxing out and holding off Wembanyama than the visibly timid Chet Holmgren has proven to be so far this series.
Perhaps the most outstanding takeaway from his performance was that he was able to quiet the outside noise suggesting he would be unplayable against the Spurs moving forward due to his lack of floor spacing.
Even though Gilgeous-Alexander may seem to disagree, Hartenstein certainly flipped that narrative on its head on Wednesday.
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