Film Rewatch: Spurs vs Rockets Regular Season Game 2

Let's dive into some film from the Spurs' victory Saturday against Houston.

Saturday the San Antonio Spurs won their first game of the season with a 3-point win over the Houston Rockets.

For this film rewatch, I rewatched each individual quarter and pulled some clips from both ends of the floor for the Spurs. There’s also some individual player clips on Victor Wembanyama, Jeremy Sochan, Stephon Castle and other Spurs players.

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1Q Defense

Drop Defense into Hedge and Recover

The Spurs started the game by having the bigs drop on the Rockets’ pick-and-roll sets. This was allowing some of Houston’s shooters like Jalen Green and Fred VanVleet to get good looks off pull-up threes. The Spurs made an adjustment, by having their bigs begin to throw in some hedge-and-recover defense, as illustrated at the end of the clip by Zach Collins.

After the first, the Spurs went to a combo of mixing in drop, hedge-and-recover, and switch defense for the rest of the game against the Rockets’ P&R or dribble hand off actions.

Wemby Blocks Sengun Twice

Wembanyama showed off his new strength twice on two different post-ups from Alperen Sengun. Wemby was able to absorb the contact from Sengun, and then with his length he was able to first pin the block off the backboard, and the second time get a tip on Sengun’s hook shot.

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1Q Offense

Wemby’s Two Made 3s in the 1Q

Following the Spurs’ loss to Dallas Thursday, Victor talked about how if he doesn’t feel like he’s in a rhythm, he’s likely to be less accurate with his jump shot. He seemed to feel like he had a shooting groove early in this game, with him taking the 29-foot logo three when given some space by Dillon Brooks.

After making the deep bomb, he saw he had Sengun 1-on-1, so he took him off the dribble and made the pull-up three out of the crossover.

Sochan Paint Scoring Illustration

Sochan scored 14 of his 17 points in the paint Saturday. I feel these three clips show how he’s getting good looks close to the rim, either attacking off the secondary action, rolling and having a size mismatch, or running the break and being an outlet as he cuts off the ball.

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2Q Defense

Team Collapsing and Rotating Well Defensively