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When a team beats you three times in two weeks, you kind of have to tip your cap to them. So that’s exactly what the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player did.
“We have to get better, as a group,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told reporters after the Spurs vanquished his Thunder on Christmas Day — San Antonio’s third consecutive victory over the defending NBA champions. “You don’t lose to a team three times in a row in a short span without them being better than you. So we have to get better. We have to look in the mirror. And that’s everybody, from top to bottom, if we want to reach our ultimate goal.”
Oklahoma City might not necessarily love what it’s seen in the mirror over the past few weeks — a reflection decidedly more mortal than the nearly unmarked visage that had opened its title defense with 24 wins in 25 tries. But after winning three straight to enter Tuesday’s highly anticipated rematch with the Spurs atop the West at 33-7, the Thunder have the opportunity to show what they’ve taken from those bracing defeats at the hands of their conference rival — the lessons they’ve learned about themselves and what’s proven to be an awfully worthy adversary.
“We’ve got to win — just like every other night,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after Sunday’s win over the Heat. “You wake up and you want to win a basketball game. That’s obviously a very good team who’s gotten the better of us recently.”
But why, exactly, has San Antonio been so successful against a Thunder team that’s won nearly 90% of its games against the rest of the NBA? Let’s take a look at three reasons why the Spurs have proven a particularly difficult matchup for Oklahoma City — starting with the literal and figurative biggest one:
The Spurs have Victor Wembanyama, who is huge and good
The Spurs and Thunder have shared the floor for 144 minutes across three games this season. In the 70 minutes that Wembanyama has played, San Antonio has outscored Oklahoma City by 47 points; in the 74 that he’s sat, the Thunder are plus-10. Sometimes, the explanation is as easy to see as the 7-foot-4 monument striding imperiously around the court.
Before these two teams squared off in the NBA Cup semifinals, I wrote this: “Hardly anybody has made Oklahoma City feel uncomfortable throughout its historic rampage to a 24-1 record. Well, a 7-foot-whatever ambulatory eclipse has a way of unsettling an offense: Just 27.2% of San Antonio opponents’ shot attempts have come at the basket with Wembanyama on the floor, which would be the second-lowest mark in the NBA over the course of the season.”
That pattern has held against the Thunder. Overall this season, Oklahoma City has taken 31% of its field-goal attempts at the rim — just south of league average, according to Cleaning the Glass — and scored 51.7 points per 100 possessions in the paint, tied for eighth in the NBA. Against the Spurs, though? That’s dropped to just 22.2% of OKC’s shots, a mark that would rival the Celtics for dead last in the NBA, and 46 points-per-100 in the paint, which would rank 25th.
Narrow the aperture down to just the minutes when Wembanyama’s been on the floor, stalking menacingly around the half-court, and that plunges to 33.3 points-per-100 in the paint — galactically, laughably below the least potent interior attacks in the league. The Thunder have shot a dismal 35.7% from the field in Wembanyama’s floor time, with 19 turnovers against 24 assists.
Perhaps the loudest thing about the impact Wembanyama makes, though, is how quiet the Thunder are around the basket. Oklahoma City has attempted just four shots at the rim with Wemby as the nearest defender in 70 minutes of floor time, according to Second Spectrum. Sometimes, dominance looks like a would-be layup pinned against the glass or tossed into the 10th row. Sometimes, though, it looks like one of the highest-volume and highest-scoring driving teams in the NBA repeatedly deciding to get out of a kitchen that’s too damn hot, resulting in a steady stream of 3-point shots by players — chiefly Alex Caruso, Luguentz Dort and Cason Wallace — you’d much rather see hoisting than SGA:
That, as my podcast partner Tom Haberstroh noted, is the Wemby Effect: the ability to set, determine and enforce the terms of engagement against an offense that consistently generates points at an elite level against damn near everybody else. And yes, if Caruso, Dort and Wallace make those frequently wide-open shots they’re getting served up, then you probably lose. When they go a combined 13-for-51 (25.5%) from long distance, though? You probably don’t.
The Spurs’ defensive success against the Thunder isn’t only about Big Vic — the Spurs’ excellent positional size on the wing (headlined by the 6-6 Castle matching up damn nearly perfectly with SGA) allows them to switch assignments along the perimeter, limiting driving opportunities and forcing OKC to grind out possessions without a clear advantage created up top — but ultimately, it all comes back to the big fella. Oklahoma City scores 118 points per 100 possessions against the league at large; against Wembanyama, that free falls to 88.9 points-per-100.
Combine that with the impact he can have on the offensive end, where Wemby’s averaging 27.4 points per 36 minutes on .657 true shooting against OKC …
… and you’ve got the sort of game-breaker capable of fundamentally dislocating even the best team in the NBA.
The Spurs don’t turn the ball over
As much as anything besides SGA’s drives to the basket, this era of Oklahoma City basketball has been defined by an ability to generate mistakes. (Well, if you’re Chris Finch, maybe it’s by how much they foul. To-may-to, to-mah-to.)
When the Thunder rose out of the West’s basement to win 40 games and make the play-in tournament in 2022-23, they finished second in both opponent turnover percentage and points scored off turnovers. They led the NBA in those categories in each of the last two seasons. They’re on pace to do it again this season, averaging more than 25 points per game after opponents lose the ball and 1.42 points per possession following a steal — a rate of offensive efficiency head and shoulders above what even the very best operations in the NBA average in the half-court.
This is the theory on which the Thunder’s defense rests. Deploy demons like Dort, Wallace and Caruso to harass and harangue opposing ball-handlers all over the floor; watch as the collective ball pressure bursts the offense’s pipes; pick up the loose change and deposit it at the other end; lather, rinse, repeat.
As you’ve probably noticed over the past few seasons, it’s been a wildly profitable approach. In this matchup, though — against a Spurs team that has the fourth-lowest turnover rate in the NBA — it hasn’t.
This, in part, is the theory on which the Spurs’ offense rests this season. Deploy three top-shelf facilitators: a bona fide All-Star/All-NBA-caliber lead guard in De’Aaron Fox; a rising star in sophomore phenom Stephon Castle; and Dylan Harper, the second pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, who’s near the top of the leaderboard in assist-to-turnover ratio among rookies (and top-15 among all reserve guards). Trust them to steer professionally and confidently through traffic, consistently touch the paint and distribute the playmaking responsibilities widely enough that OKC’s pressure can’t break anything:
Head coach Mitch Johnson has kept at least two of Fox, Castle and Harper on the floor for 121 of the 144 minutes the Spurs have played against the Thunder this season, according to PBP Stats — ensuring that he’s got multiple high-level ball-handlers on the floor at nearly all times. It’s paid off: San Antonio has committed just 41 turnovers across those 144 minutes, good for a 12.3% turnover rate — which would be the second-lowest rate in the NBA over the course of the full season, just behind the Thunder themselves.
(Also quietly big in this matchup? The forward trio of Harrison Barnes, Keldon Johnson and Julian Champagnie, which firmly understands its collective assignment: If you’ve got the shot, let it fly; if there’s a gap, drive it hard; if there’s not, keep the ball moving.)
Without its customary diet of opportunities to scoop up a live-ball turnover and take it the other way, Oklahoma City has scored 16.3 points per game off turnovers against the Spurs; that would rank 26th in the NBA for the season, and is nearly nine points per game below the Thunder’s season average. Remove that superpower, and you’ve done the bulk of the work in making the champs look mortal.
The Spurs make you play Whac-A-Mole
Here’s a fun one: The Spurs are 3-0 against the Thunder despite their supernatural, extraterrestrial best player not leading them in scoring in any of the three wins.
In the NBA Cup semifinals, it was Devin Vassell (who’ll miss Tuesday’s tilt with the left adductor strain that’s cost him the last seven games) who led four Spurs in double figures with 23 points.
In the Dec. 23 win, it was Johnson, who drilled five 3-pointers on his way to 25 points in 22 minutes off the bench.
On Christmas Day, it was Fox, keeping the ball and the OKC defense on a string, alternately splashing jumpers and slicing to the rack for a game-high 29.
And the Spurs’ leading scorer overall against the Thunder? That’d be Castle, averaging 21.7 points per game while shooting a scorching 61.5% from the field, 46.2% from 3-point range and 84.6% from the foul line:
That balance — six players averaging double-figures against the best defense in the land, a number that doesn’t include second-unit playmaker Harper — is a critical component of what makes San Antonio so tough to deal with.
The Spurs’ ball-handlers and wings are big, long and strong enough to play through the physicality of Oklahoma City’s armada of maulers. Their drivers have absolutely no compunction about taking the ball straight into the chests of Chet Holmgren, Isaiah Hartenstein or anyone else in a Thunder jersey who might be waiting for them at the rim. And their fast-paced offensive style — tied for 13th in seconds per touch, ninth in dribbles per touch, tied for eighth in average time to shot, about 22 more passes per game than OKC — both prioritizes and rewards sharing.
The Thunder have arguably the best isolation player in the world, but if you can load up on Gilgeous-Alexander and force somebody else to try to beat you, they can be had — especially with All-NBA No. 2 option Jalen Williams continuing to work his way back from offseason surgery to his shooting wrist. With the Spurs, if you lean too far into taking one option away, a handful of others will be waiting to make you pay.
“What matters is to press where it hurts on the defense,” Wembanyama told reporters after the Christmas Day win.
The Spurs have done that more effectively than any other team in the NBA this season. If they can do it again on Tuesday, they’ll cement themselves as an eminently credible threat to do what nobody was able to do last spring: beat Oklahoma City four times in a seven-game series.
“Just like anybody would be, and just like we would be if they had beaten us three times — maybe they’re going to be pissed off, but they’re already a good team before getting pissed off,” Wembanyama told reporters . “[…] It’s going to be a good challenge to go there again. I know we’re ready.”
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Dan Devine has covered the NBA since 2009 for Yahoo Sports and The Ringer. He graduated from Providence College. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children, and he tweets a lot.
