There were certainly some sour grapes on Alex Caruso’s end after Game 7.
Caruso and the Oklahoma City Thunder fell on Saturday night to the San Antonio Spurs in the winner-take-all game of the Western Conference Finals. They lost to the Spurs by a final score of 111-103 at home at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Okla. to formally end their championship defense.
After the defeat, Caruso was asked by reporters about whether or not the Spurs posed a matchup problem for that the Thunder needed to solve moving forward. In response, Caruso dropped some salty comments.
“There’s nothing that needs to be solved,” said Caruso, per Joel Lorenzi of The Athletic. “We could’ve won the game tonight. You would’ve been asking them the same thing. I don’t think there’s this narrative that this is a bugaboo. We should’ve played better and won the game and been in the NBA Finals.
“They’re a good team, they’re young,” Caruso added. “[We’ll] both probably be around for a while. But we’ve gotta get better and try and win next time.”
While Caruso did try to cover it up there with some light praise for the Spurs at the end, he clearly did not want to give San Antonio too much credit. That said, the question was definitely a fair one.
San Antonio beat the Thunder four out of five times during the regular season (including in the NBA Cup) and then proceeded to knock them out of the playoffs despite OKC having homecourt advantage. Meanwhile, the Thunder had looked almost invincible against every other Western Conference opponent, winning their last five straight conference playoff series by a total game margin of 20-4.
OKC’s loss was through no fault of Caruso’s as he finished the WCF series with 14.9 points per game on stellar 48/50/82 shooting splits despite coming off the bench the entire way. But Caruso is obviously no fan of the Spurs and even had multiple heated moments with them throughout the seven-game set.
