San Antonio is going to the Finals. The Spurs beat Oklahoma City 111-103 in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals on Saturday night, eliminating the defending champions in their own building. Victor Wembanyama, named WCF MVP, will face the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals starting Wednesday – a matchup few predicted when this season began.
Champagnie and Castle rise under pressure
Julian Champagnie hit six 3-pointers and scored 20 points. Stephon Castle added 16 points, six rebounds and six assists – a stat line that reads like a point guard fifteen years into his career, not one at the start of his second season. De’Aaron Fox rounded out the five starters in double figures with 10 points. Dylan Harper contributed off the bench. When the pressure peaked in Oklahoma City, the Spurs shared the load with disarming ease.
Wembanyama posted 22 points and knocked down three triples in Game 7. For the full series, he averaged 27.3 points, 10.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.7 blocks – the kind of numbers that make the MVP vote brief. The 22-year-old French center has now stepped into the Finals as more than a promising rebuild piece. He’s the reason this team is here.
SGA’s 35 points not enough for a shorthanded Thunder
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander did what he could. A game-high 35 points on 12-of-21 shooting, nine assists. Elite, again, and not enough. Oklahoma City played this entire series without Jalen Williams, and the gap in secondary scoring proved too wide to bridge. Cason Wallace was the only other Thunder starter in double figures. The rest of the rotation gave Gilgeous-Alexander very little to work with when the fourth quarter arrived, and San Antonio closed it out without drama.
For a team that entered this season as the consensus favorite to repeat, the exit is hard. Daigneault’s group faces a summer of honest questions about whether the gap between them and San Antonio has shifted permanently – or whether Williams’ absence changed the entire calculus of this series.
Knicks vs. Spurs: a Finals the league will sell hard
The 1999 Finals rematch, this time with Wembanyama on one side and a New York roster that swept Cleveland and has been building toward this moment for four years. Game 1 tips off Wednesday night in San Antonio, with the Spurs hosting for the first time since 2014.
Five championships in the trophy case. Wembanyama as the face of a sixth run. Whatever this Finals holds, the biggest question in basketball – whether the league’s most extraordinary young talent can win it all in year three – finally has a stage to answer itself.
