The Oklahoma City Thunder, who opened the season like an unstoppable force with 24 wins in their first 25 games, will not defend their championship. The San Antonio Spurs ended that reign with a 111-103 victory in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, a road win that hinged on depth, youth, and one crucial blocked shot in the final period.
The decisive moment came when Victor Wembanyama fouled out early in the fourth quarter. With the Spurs clinging to a six-point lead, conventional wisdom suggested the Thunder would exploit his absence. Instead, Luke Kornet, a capable but limited reserve, soared to block Isaiah Hartenstein's layup attempt, keeping the Spurs ahead by eight. Kornet's 54-second appearance in the fourth quarter may have been the turning point of the entire series.
Throughout the matchup, this pattern had repeated: when Wembanyama rested, Oklahoma City ate. The Spurs' extraordinary young talent needed everyone else to step up when he sat, and in Game 7, that happened. Keldon Johnson hit three-pointers. Julian Champagnie, who struggled for much of the series, made six of 10 shots. DeAaron Fox and Dylan Harper each splashed important three-pointers. The Spurs won because they got contributions from every corner of their rotation.
The Thunder lost for the opposite reason. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander carried an enormous load, outscoring his teammates 35-31 and exhausting himself in the process. By the fourth quarter, nobody else could deliver. Even Cason Wallace's 14 fourth-quarter points weren't enough. The team that had made its reputation on suffocating depth suddenly couldn't find a second source of offense when their star needed help.
This raises an obvious question: how great a team are the Thunder, really? The case for their excellence remains strong. Gilgeous-Alexander was generally poor throughout the series until Game 7. Chet Holmgren disappeared for stretches. Even with both players underperforming, Oklahoma City forced a Game 7 and nearly won it on the road. Their defense is still the standard in the league, a coordinated scramble of hands and arms that pushes every rule without breaking it. They came closer to repeating than any team since the peak Golden State Warriors.
The Thunder also have an injury excuse. Jalen Williams, their second-best player, missed games with injuries. Ajay Mitchell, a vital offensive weapon, was unavailable. Yet the roster was so loaded that their absence barely mattered for much of the season.
What cannot be ignored is how they lost popularity while they were winning. Gilgeous-Alexander's habit of drawing fouls by falling or manufacturing contact has never sat well with fans, but this season the criticism reached fever pitch. ESPN's Jay Williams produced a segment about his flopping. Earlier in the series, Isaiah Hartenstein pulled Stephon Castle's hair under the basket without consequence. No team manipulates referees as consistently, shamelessly, or successfully as Oklahoma City. They play effective basketball that much of the league's fanbase finds utterly insufferable.
Expect them back. Healthier. Hungrier. The Spurs had to survive a brutal series and pull off a road Game 7 victory just to beat them. San Antonio now faces the New York Knicks in the finals, a team that is better rested, performed well against the Spurs in the regular season, and is riding an 11-game winning streak. For San Antonio's young core, especially Wembanyama, that blockshot by Kornet and the collective effort that followed felt like everything. The Thunder, meanwhile, are down but not diminished, and few around the league should sleep easy knowing Oklahoma City gets another offseason to reload.
Author James Rodriguez: "The Thunder are shameless about how they operate, and the basketball world is right to call it out, but pretending they're not still among the league's best teams is just wishful thinking."
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