The foul that reserve Spurs center Mason Plumlee committed against Thunder guard Jared McCain with less than two minutes left in Oklahoma City’s Game 5 win was retroactively upgraded from a standard personal to a flagrant 1, according to the league (Twitter link).
Plumlee, who had just checked into the game for the first time a couple possessions earlier, delivered an elbow to McCain’s back as the Thunder guard looked to set a screen to help free up teammate Alex Caruso (video link via NBA.com).
Here’s more on the Spurs ahead of a do-or-die Game 6:
- After years of speculation about which big-name head coach might succeed Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, a relatively unheralded assistant has taken the job and run with it. Marc J. Spears of Andscape takes an in-depth look at what first-time head coach Mitch Johnson has done during his first two seasons on the job to help convince the organization he was the right choice for the long term.
- If the Spurs can win a championship with their current core, they’ll become something of an outlier by modern NBA standards, according to ESPN’s Zach Kram. As Kram details, during the 21st century, it’s actually been pretty rare for a top-five pick to win a title with the team that drafted and developed him — and several of the players who do fit that bill were acquired via another team’s draft pick (e.g. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in Boston; Kyrie Irving in Cleveland) rather than as a result of tanking. The Spurs have three players – Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, and Dylan Harper – whom they drafted with their own top-five selections.
- Michael C. Wright of ESPN explores how 28-year-old De’Aaron Fox has emerged as the veteran leader of a young Spurs team both on and off the court. “I felt like I could come in, fall in line,” Fox said of his thinking after he was traded from Sacramento to San Antonio last season. “But then everybody’s like, ‘No, you do you.’ So, there are times where I do that, and then there are times where I want to make sure everybody’s touching the ball, everybody’s fine, everybody’s comfortable.”
So did they go back and give Hartenstein a flagrant 2 after the fact on the Castle hair pull?
No, but SGA is headed to the line for two free throws thanks to this post.
Not Hartenstein’s fault that the dude has braids. It should’ve a regular foul though he did smack him in the forehead a couple times while trying to get the rebound.