Inside The Spurs

Film Breakdown: How Wembanyama, Castle and the Spurs Flipped the Physicality in Houston

Amid criticisms of soft play, Mitch Johnson changed the game with a bold coaching adjustment that allowed Wembanyama and Castle to show their toughness and crush the Rockets.
Tom Petrini|
Jan 28, 2026; Houston, Texas, USA; San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) and guard Stephon Castle (5) react after a play during the fourth quarter against the Houston Rockets at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-Imagn Images
Jan 28, 2026; Houston, Texas, USA; San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) and guard Stephon Castle (5) react after a play during the fourth quarter against the Houston Rockets at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-Imagn Images | Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

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San Antonio Spurs

During an underwhelming month-long stretch of .500 ball, the Spurs have struggled against opponents who pack the paint and get rough, especially with Victor Wembanyama.

San Antonio got outmuscled in recent losses to the Rockets and Pelicans, leading Devin Vassell to a blunt assessment of the main area for improvement.

"You don't want to be a team that's looked at as being soft," he said.

READ MORE: Spurs Pushed Around by Pelicans in 104-95 Loss

The Rockets certainly treated them that way at the start of the next game, and the Spurs did little to disprove the notion. Houston fired all engines right out of the gate and hit their first eight shots, but more importantly they set the tone physically.

Alperen Sengun used his strength and lower center of gravity to push Wembanyama around in the post. He forced a turnover on the first possession and set screens that would draw 10-yard holding penalties on most football fields. He bullied and bulldozed his way to 14 first-half points.

Wembanyama twisted his right foot 90 degrees perpendicular to his leg before a Sengun slam, but walked it off and stayed in the game. It used to fill Spurs fans with dread each time Wembanyama hit the deck or tweaked a joint in the wrong direction, but he's trained himself to fall gracefully and bend in ways that would put most humans on a strict regiment of ice and bed rest. Despite the persistent hacking from Houston, Wemby told Shaq after the game that he can handle it.

"Eventually I'm gonna run out of place in my body for scars," said a scratched-up Wembanyama, who may send some nail clippers to the Houston locker room as a gift. "The rest of my body, my joints, my muscles, they're fine."

Houston's offense around Sengun whirred and blurred like a blender on high and converted open shots from near and far. The Rockets built a 16-point lead, punctuated by a Reed Sheppard layup when nobody stopped the ball in transition.

On Gregg Popovich's 77th birthday, his successor Mitch Johnson called a frustrated timeout with just a few minutes left in the half. More than just imploring his team to play harder, he made a tactical switch that completely swung the game.

READ MORE: 'Horrified' Victor Wembanyama Reacts to Minneapolis ICE Shootings

Instead of letting Wembanyama risk picking up a fourth foul banging with Sengun in the paint, he switched him onto Houston's least dangerous outside shooting threat in Amen Thompson. Thompson is one of the best wing defenders on the planet and uses his otherworldly athleticism to finish at the rim, but his jumper remains a liability.

READ MORE: Report: Spurs Looking to Move Jeremy Sochan Before NBA Trade Deadline

Unless Thompson was actively threatening to dunk the basketball, Wembanyama pretended like he did not exist. He instead sank toward the basket and acted as a 7-foot-4 nuclear deterrent against any would-be drivers, staying close enough to the rim that if at any point Thompson threatened it he could rotate over in one small step for alien to contest any giant leaps from mankind.

The Spurs closed the half on a 7-0 run, and Johnson added an unexpected wrinkle at halftime. He hit Sengun with the Uno reverse card, sending a smaller player with a low center of gravity to push the big man around and disrupt his rhythm. Steph Castle rose to the defensive challenge, as he always seems to do.

"I try to hang my hat on that end," Castle said after the game. "Any challenges that the coaches give me on that end, I kind of accept it. So I thought we did a great job team defending. Those guys, you can't guard them, really, one on one. We had great communication behind me when I was guarding those guys, so I was able to get a few stops."

Early on Sengun tried to post Castle up using his size advantage, and though he managed to back down the feisty 6-foot-5 point guard without coughing it up, Wembanyama lurked at the basket and obliterated the attempt off the backboard.

"That's his worth," Wembanyama said about his point guard after the game. "He can shut down guys, and he did tonight. Having a guy so good on both sides of the floor is just amazing. Every game, I'm so glad we got him in the draft. It's amazing."

The strategy did leave the opportunity for Thompson to slash in and soar for a dunk, as he did just seconds into the second half, but Johnson stuck to his guns and the players adjusted in a way that gave Houston's offense very little outside of jump shots for a guy who notably struggles with his jumper. Luke Kornet guarded Thompson the same way with Wembanyama on the bench.

In the second half Thompson shot 5-6 in the restricted area but just 1-10 beyond that range without a single 3-point attempt. Sengun struggled similarly, his only basket of the half a putback as he shot 0-8 in the paint outside of the restricted area. He usually has pretty good touch in the close mid-range area, but the combination of Castle's grit and Wembanyama's intimidation factor knocked his accuracy off balance.

Choosing to guard (or, rather, not guard) Thompson in this way did more than just force bad jumpers from a bad jump shooter. Shutting off the rim for everyone ground the blender blades to a halt, which made Houston's offense stagnant and predictable. That allowed the Spurs other than Wemby to play with more aggression everywhere, fronting bigs in the post and running shooters off the line. That, in turn, made Wembanyama's job easier.

"It's something we've done before against other teams," Mitch Johnson said about the strategy of using Wembanyama as a rover. "I think obviously Victor is a deterrent at the rim, and that's where Thompson does a lot of his damage, so that's pretty self explanatory, but honestly, I think the job that everybody else was doing around that allowed Victor also to be that impactful at the rim because he wasn't chasing a bunch of other actions or guys getting loose."

Johnson praised the other defenders' ability to stay attached and stay in front, and acknowledged Wembanyama's ability to erase anything they missed.

"Even if guys are penetrating, he's at the rim," Johnson said.

Down the stretch Castle guarded Kevin Durant, who could not shake the kid. On one eyebrow-raising possession the reigning Rookie of the Year stayed in Durant's jersey until the final moments of the shot clock, forcing him into a contested jumper at the elbow. As KD raised up, so did the lurking Wembanyama who went for the volleyball spike at the buzzer.

A few moments later Thompson caught the ball at the top of the arc with Wembanyama guarding him from about 15 feet away. He took a hesitant dribble forward before backing off and handing to Durant. Keldon Johnson chased him over the screen, and Durant settled for an elbow jumper over Wembanyama who was in help position to deter the drive.

Durant didn't attempt a shot inside the paint in the second half, with that area shut off and his team needing as much spacing as he could provide.

"He's still working on his jump shot," Durant said about Wembanyama after the previous game. "You can tell he's trying to figure his jump shot out. We made him shoot tough fadeaways over us all night. He made a couple early on, but for the most part we made him shoot over us. He's more dangerous when he gets layups and dunks and plays around the rim, that's more of his game I think than floating around the perimeter and shooting jump shots."

San Antonio flipped the script in the rematch and dominated the paint by a score of 72-48, adding 21 fastbreak points as stops fueled buckets. Once they flipped the switch on the strategy and upped the physicality as a result, the rough and tumble tone that Houston set began to favor San Antonio.

Wembanyama finished with 28 points, 16 rebounds, and 5 blocks, doing most of his damage in the second half. He didn't hit a 3 in the game, but he did offer several slam dunks directly onto the heads of his defenders.

Keldon Johnson barreled his way into the paint all night, along with Slash Brothers Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper who combined for 32 points, 9 assists and 9 rebounds. De'Aaron Fox added 18 points, 8 assists and 5 rebounds. That guard trio shot 18-24 in the paint for the game, while the entire Rockets team went 24-59. Notably, the smaller guys looked completely unfazed when they attacked the trees.

After that timeout and adjustment by Mitch Johnson, the Spurs outscored Houston 68-40. The Rockets shot just 26% from the floor and 1-10 from 3 in that stretch, and San Antonio held them to a paltry 13 points in the decisive fourth quarter.

READ MORE: Spurs Land Trio of Guards in 2026 NBA Rising Stars Challenge

Johnson said that he did a bit of yelling in the locker room at halftime, and Castle confirmed that the players yelled at each other as well.

"Pretty much just stop being soft," Castle said. "I feel like beginning of the game, they were kind of punking us a little bit. And I feel like that's not the identity of our team, hasn't been all year. So we were down. We knew why we were down. So, I mean, just yelling at each other to fix it. Nobody in our locker room takes anything personal, we all kind of get better together. All the stuff that we were, quote unquote, 'yelling' at each other, it was just to help."

Past the halfway point of the season, the Spurs seem to have a clear understanding of what they struggle with and how teams are going to attempt to exploit that. The intensity will only ramp up in the postseason, and San Antonio has no doubt about their biggest flaw and how to address it.

"We know how teams want to play us, and this team plays that way anyway," Johnson said. "So we knew this was going to be a game of physicality, and if we didn't match it, we were going to get punked. And we've had enough games now that there's no secret that that's going to be part of the blueprint, and we're more than capable of holding our own in our own way, and we have to continue to do that more of the 48 minutes. And it was just nice to see that we did it enough tonight, especially as the game went on."

"I think one of the main reasons we won that game is because we especially in the second half, like we were first to hit on every position the fourth quarter," Wembanyama said. "The goal is to have every night this level of dedication."

The Spurs also overcame a different trend that has caused them to lose games this year. Whether they lead or find themselves in a hole, this team has a tendency to rush instead of taking things possession by possession.

"It felt like we were a little frantic, rushed, in a hurry... freaking out early on," Johnson said. "At times in the game, it felt like we're down 25 just the way we were acting. And it wasn't necessarily the self pity or down in our body language, we just hadn't settled into the game... Then we just started executing on both ends, and put some physicality into it, obviously, and you have to match that team's physicality or they will steamroll you."

READ MORE: Wembanyama, Spurs 'Putting Minds' Toward Breaking Bad Habits

"We were patient," Wembanyama said of his team's approach during the comeback. "We didn't try to rush, and we didn't overreact, because we do need to react, which we did, but often we overreact."

That ability to stay calm and composed during a brawl of a game makes this one of San Antonio's best wins of the year. And with their strategy, they asked one of their biggest rivals a basketball question it seems they will struggle to answer.

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Tom Petrini
TOM PETRINI

Tom Petrini has covered Spurs basketball for the last decade, first for Project Spurs and then for KENS 5 in San Antonio. After leaving the newsroom he co-founded the Silver and Black Coffee Hour, a weekly podcast where he catches up on Spurs news with friends Aaron Blackerby and Zach Montana. Tom lives in Austin with his partner Jess and their dogs Dottie and Guppy. His other interests include motorsports and making a nice marinara sauce.

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