Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 26 points and 12 assists, and the Oklahoma City Thunder climbed out of a 15-point hole minutes into the game to beat the host San Antonio Spurs 123-108 on Friday night and take a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference finals.
Oklahoma City’s bench outscored San Antonio’s 76-23, including 15 points by Alex Caruso. Victor Wembanyama had 26 points for San Antonio. Devin Vassell added 20 and De’Aaron Fox had 15 in his series debut.
For the first time since Wembanyama came to San Antonio, he and the Spurs are trailing in a playoff series. Friday was San Antonio’s second consecutive loss after winning Game 1 in a double-overtime classic.
“It’s my first playoffs. It was the first playoffs for many of us,” the 22-year-old French phenom said. “Of course, there was going to be hard trials. It is to be expected. But now, we’re going to see what we’re made of.”
Wembanyama’s 26 points came in 39 minutes, during which the Spurs outscored the Thunder by four points. The problem was the other nine minutes, during which the Thunder outscored the Spurs by 19.
But Wembanyama – as he tends to do – found plenty of fault in his own game, after finishing with only four rebounds and three assists.
“I have trouble making my teammates better right now,” Wembanyama said. “I should do better. My shooting splits aren’t terrible. I need to be more of a team player.”
He was asked what that means.
“Facilitate better, rebound the ball better,” Wembanyama said. “Push their defense a little bit more, to fight further and see how much they’re willing to help off of my teammates and feed them.”
Jared McCain had 24 points and Jaylin Williams added 18 for Oklahoma City. The Thunder were without Jalen Williams, who sat out with left hamstring soreness.
“We just went out there and competed,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “They obviously jumped on us early. First game in their building, their crowd behind them, they were excited to play. We just wanted to make sure we competed from that point on. We obviously didn’t give our best effort to start that game, but can’t do nothing about it. It’s behind us. All we can do is focus on the next possession, and we did that.”
The Spurs raced to a 15-0 lead, the longest run to open a game in the conference finals since the play-by-play era began in 1997. Then they got outscored by 30 the rest of the way.
The series continued to be chippy with emotions boiling over early in the second half. Stephon Castle hit the court on back-to-back dunk attempts. The second resulted in a flagrant 1 foul against Ajay Mitchell and technical fouls on Mitchell and Vassell after the two exchanged words following the foul.