The best Game 7 adjustment in NBA history

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How did Alex Caruso end up guarding Nikola Jokic in Game 7? This detailed film and breakdown discusses the incredible Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets 2025 playoff series, and the tactics and strategy that led to the game 7 adjustment to stop Denver’s MVP.

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It’s rare for NBA teams to make any meaningful adjustments late in a playoff series. By the time game seven rolls around, coaches have played their best cards. Opponents have seen those cards and countered and then everyone kind of just runs out of moves. But none of those teams had Alex Caruso. Caruso checked into game seven in the first quarter and immediately matched up with Nicoola Joic which wait that has to be some sort of mistake because Caruso is listed at 6’5 186 lb and Joic is 6’11 and 284 lb. Before we see why this works, let’s understand how crazy this idea is just based on this series alone. In the opening game, the Thunder guarded Joic with Cadet Homegrren, who’s a seven-footer, but clocks in at just 208 pounds. So, Joker could use his size to overpower Chad and get to his sweet spots. After that first game, the Thunder countered by keeping one of their beefier bigs on Jokic at basically all times. either 250 pounds of Isaiah Hartinstein or 240 pounds of Jay Will, that’s the other Jaylen Williams, who is basically built like a brick wall. With a sturdier big man in front of Jokic, OKC sent extra defenders into his airspace. Lou Dort just figning an all-out double. Chat creeps over under the hoop and Joker no looks it right out of bounds. And you might be thinking, why did he do that? And it’s because the Thunder are so fast that telegraphing passes is asking for interceptions and then the OKC defense becomes its best offense in transition. And that’s in the back of Joker’s mind. This is from game one. He has plenty of space to pound into chat and the Thunder never send a help defender. But after that game, they started sending bodies toward Joker. Jay Dub starts lurking and figning a double team. At the same time, Caruso leaves Russell Westbrook to come help in the lane, then doubles as Jdub leaves, so Westbrook’s the open man, but that’s a scary pass, so he ends up with a contested fadeaway. A minute later, they’re on the opposite block. Shay Gildas Alexander slides to clog the baseline. Caruso lurks at the foul line. Again, they just ignore Westbrook in the corner and OKC was happy to live with that shot. So, by matching him with a hefty defender and then mixing all kinds of possible double or triple teams from every direction, the Thunder bottled up Joic like no one ever has. They forced him into three of the worst statistical games of his entire prime with at least six turnovers in each of these contests. He shot under 33% from the field in all three games. And most importantly, they took away Joic’s cutters with speed and Chat Homegrren roaming behind the play. Joker had more turnovers than assists in game two through four, and it’s hard to overstate how much OKC’s speed killed all of his passing options. He usually carves teams up with his passes from the elbow, but even when Christian Brown slips this, Jaylen Williams sticks to him like he’s Deion Sanders. We’ve seen Joic head to the post and then dime up a cutter after catching it a hundred times. But against the Thunder, those passing routes were jammed or intercepted. And they even neutralize Denver’s pet handoff actions out of the corner by either switching or fighting through screens. And then all of their quick defenders can stay with penetrators like this. Caruso takes away a possible back door pass. And then absolutely nobody can get open. And that’s close to a coverage sack before a foul. So clearly the Thunder’s mix of size and speed solved Nola Jokic. Except of course it didn’t because greatness that’s why. No, I’m I’m simply saying that Jokic uh finds a way. Jokic responded with one of the great games of his career, a 44.81% 81% true shooting masterpiece where the man started off by just finding the smallest cracks to exploit and then turn that momentum into some video game shot making including the coldest nastiest spinning sombore shuffle ever to tie it at 103. He figured out the rare spots he could occasionally sliver a pass through to a teammate. And he learned over the course of the series when not to try it against OKC’s speed. That’s too dangerous with Shay sitting there, so he holds it. But when it’s someone who doesn’t play the passing lanes well, like Isaiah Joe, he lasers it by his ear for a layup. He also adjusted by going early and quickly moving it if the defense started to load up on him. And then if he could, he would look to make a scoring move before they could even send doubles, spinning away from the help for a lefty hook here. How is Caruso going to guard throughout this series, like the Thunder clogging up Joic’s actions by ignoring Russell Westbrook and just daring him to make threes, or how the Thunder were afraid of Joic’s role game. So, after he set a screen, his defender remained glued to him while other Thunder players helped. And this meant when someone like Jamal Murray played pick and roll with Joker, he had space to attack because the big man stayed with Joic. Joker’s gravity as a screener became a key part in helping Murray. Remember that it’ll be super important in a second because the Thunder were often relying on the guard to fight over the screen and have help roaming at the rim. And even that opened a Murray jumper in game six. But the most interesting development was hunting a switch against Cadet Homegrren so he could use his power to punish him. Going after chat like this killed two birds with one stone. The first is more obvious. They took one of those beefy bigs off of Jokic so he could just pound the slender chat into the basket. But the second’s more subtle. It pulled Homegrren away from the hoop so he couldn’t roam the paint as a shot blocker behind the play. There were a few times when OKC was able to protect chat. Joic calls for Homegrren’s man to come set a pick. Caruso sees this and tells him to switch to avoid Jokic. And because it’s Westbrook, there’s no advantage. Joker tries to force the switch as a screener, but they just go under and let Rush shoot. And that was almost as good as this pre- switch in game four from the other side of the floor where Caruso just teleports to switch out onto Murray. Then he can harass him. And fittingly, Chad is behind the play to protect the rim. The bald Mamba played tricks with Jokic all series. Briefly doubling or not doubling or doubling, who knows? Jokes on you. He’s playing the pass. Or the time Caruso pretended to double Joic on the inbounds just to bait him into a touch pass. And Joker must have had nightmares about this 185-lb pest after some of these games, even picking up an offensive foul in game two when Caruso fronted him in transition. Jookic then responded in game four by trying to manipulate Caruso first, faking the pass here to free the one-armed Michael Porter Jr. for three. And this culminated in game six where Homegrren came over to help on Joker’s roll, leaving Caruso on the block. So Joic went to hit the corner. AC went to close out, but it’s a fake. Only Caruso recovers to still block it anyway. How? So despite looking like he has absolutely no business guarding Joic directly, Mark Dagnel figured if the man is this dialed in off the ball, why not try him as Joic’s primary defender? His speed prevents Joker from catching it. Then look at what happens. Homegr is on Aaron Gordon and he ends up smothering Murray’s jumper. So the idea is for Caruso to front Joic in the post and take away entry passes. They can sag off Westbrook to box Joker in. And this activates OKC’s vaunted small ball lineup that we covered at the beginning of the season and is one of the best teams in NBA history at either forcing turnovers or just turning defense into offense with their blazing speed. And last, but certainly not least, is that Caruso on Yic kills the twoman game with Murray because the Thunder can switch the action. And with Westbrook in the game, an extra defender can roam to box in Joker and make entry pass as a roller coaster. And remember, this is nearly an identical philosophy to what JJ Reic and the Lakers cooked up a few months ago by denying Joic the ball by using speed. only the Thunder are on a different astral plane than any team maybe ever when it comes to flying around the floor, these coordinated dances and getting their hands on the ball to steal it. For instance, Caruso switches the pick and roll. Then he immediately goes and scram switches SGA away from Joic. With Westbrook in the game, they keep two defenders on Joker. Then when the ball hits Russ, Caruso jams his cut and the entry pass becomes an adventure. Usually it’s a big man protecting guards and switching them out of these matchups. But for OKC, it’s the 185-lb Caruso rescuing the 7T Homegrren from wrestling this big honeybear. Then he goes right back to fronting. Caruso is essentially using his quickness to bob and weave around the bigger player. So even if he ends up on Joic’s backside in space, he can swim around on the entry pass. Joker barely catches that and is swallowed by Chad’s length. And the pass is nearly another turnover. And this time, Caruso’s grappling with Joic and is quick enough for the steal. And this was part of a thunderstorm that blew the game wide open for OKC. Before Caruso switched on to Joic, the Nuggets were actually rolling, taking an early 11-point lead. But this adjustment changed everything, taking away all the advantages Denver had built up in the previous games by just switching and sandwiching Jokic. With the help behind him, Caruso guarded Joker quite well in man situations, specifically out on the perimeter. Because of his quickness edge, he made it harder for Joic to even dribble places. Then switching the screens completely killed those openings that were there for Murray in prior games. And there’s Chad roaming. This is probably the most significant game seven adjustment since 1968 when the Boston Celtics had the powerful Wayne Embry guard Wilt Chamberlain. I I don’t even think there’s footage of that game. But this last second move to get smaller players on the floor and completely nullify the Jokic Murray twoman action turned an 11point deficit into a 32point shellacking. And it was made possible by the incredible Alex Caruso who helped send the Oklahoma City Thunder to their first Western Conference Finals in 9 years. If you want to work in Thanks for watching all the way to the end on this one. Hope you enjoyed it and that you are having a great day.