On center stage in San Antonio, Game 2 between the host Spurs and visiting Portland Trail Blazers was approaching its apex.
Battling to avoid an 0-2 hole in the series last Tuesday night, the Blazers rallied behind guard Scoot Henderson, who scored 31 points in the most important game of his young career. The Spurs, meanwhile, had to weather the loss of Victor Wembanyama to a concussion. Both teams held -- and blew -- double-digit leads in the back-and-forth affair.
All of that rising action built toward a climax, as San Antonio inbounded the ball down by three points with 11.4 seconds left. The Spurs designed a potential game-tying play, inbounded the ball to leading 3-point shooter Devin Vassell... and heard a whistle, as Trail Blazers guard Jrue Holiday committed a take foul.
What had once been breathless clutch time, with just one stoppage amid nearly three straight minutes of furious action, thus ground down into a free throw duel. The Trail Blazers maintained their lead and evened the series with a 106-103 win -- but a potential classic ended not with a bang but a whimper.
"That's just my gut feeling," interim Trail Blazers coach Tiago Splitter told ESPN earlier this season about the logic of fouling in this circumstance. "The numbers, when you ask analytical people in our team, in other teams that I've been part of, also say that you should foul."
Ironically, that approach must have seemed familiar to the Spurs, too. In another spotlight event this season, the NBA Cup semifinal in Las Vegas, the Spurs fouled Oklahoma City three consecutive times in the same situation. Both games offered concrete examples of the "foul up three" strategy, which is growing simultaneously in popularity and controversy in the NBA.
For years, coaches have considered how to defend when leading by three points late in a game: They could guard the 3-point line, or they could commit an intentional foul, ceding two free throws in exchange for cutting off the chance for a game-tying triple.
They've increasingly chosen the second option. In 2010, a Synergy Sports analysis found that teams took only 11.5% of their foul up three opportunities. But film study shows that over the last two seasons, teams have chosen to intentionally foul 34.2% of the time with a three-point lead in the final 10 seconds.
Those extra fouls add more strategic decisions for coaches -- and more complaints from critics who decry every game that ends with more free throws in lieu of 3s. The 2026 postseason is only a week old and has already added another to the pile; more playoff games this spring are bound to yield yet more outrage.