The Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs have been heading toward this matchup since the NBA Cup semifinals, when a defending Thunder team that started 24-1 ran into Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs in Las Vegas. San Antonio eked out a two-point win in that meeting and then beat Oklahoma City twice more later that month by a combined 35 points, finishing 4-1 against the Thunder this season, according to ESPN.
The series pairs the unanimous Defensive Player of the Year, Wembanyama, against the back-to-back MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and the matchup has been billed as a duel between two of the best players in the world and two of the league’s most promising supporting casts and balanced two-way rosters, according to ESPN.
Both teams carry significant momentum into the conference finals. The Thunder have a plus-16.6 point differential in the playoffs and, excluding end-of-season rest games, finished the regular season on a 19-1 run before continuing with an 8-0 playoff stretch, according to ESPN. The Spurs enter at plus-15.9 in the playoffs after a 30-3 run down the stretch and sit at 8-3 in the postseason; two of those losses came in games Wembanyama left early and the third was by two points, according to ESPN.
This meeting is rare in historical context. The Western Conference finals will be the first playoff matchup this century, and just the seventh in NBA history, between teams that won at least 62 games, according to ESPN Research. It is also only the seventh playoff series in which both clubs posted a regular-season point differential of plus-8 or better, with Oklahoma City at plus-11.1 and San Antonio at plus-8.3, according to ESPN Research. Prior meetings between 62-win teams have gone at least six games and included several memorable moments in league history, according to ESPN Research.
The Spurs-Thunder pairing is further distinguished by youth: Oklahoma City and San Antonio were the two youngest teams to win a playoff round this season, even though several reserves such as Harrison Barnes, Alex Caruso and Luke Kornet are in their 30s. According to ESPN, the oldest of the 10 likely starters in this series is De’Aaron Fox at 28.
