Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- The Western Conference Finals has delivered intense battles and unexpected turns since its dramatic opening game between the Spurs and Thunder.
- Key players have been sidelined, but the series remains fiercely competitive with both teams responding powerfully to each other's challenges.
- One decisive game remains, promising a climactic conclusion that will define the rivalry for years to come.
Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals had everything. Drama, overtimes (plural), Victor Wembanyama astral projection. It had the statement that the San Antonio Spurs would not be bullied, the promise of a rivalry that would endure and spawned visions of basketball nirvana in your mind’s eye. You could make a religion out of this.
The rest of the series, though, has not been the enlightening basketball experience we all hoped for. It has instead seen wild swings in momentum and asked many more questions than we have answers for. Attrition has robbed us of some of the series’ most important players — Jalen Williams, Ajay Mitchell and De’Aaron Fox have all been limited or absent. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been spectacular in its own way.
The Spurs and Thunder have traded heavy blows like only they could
“Spurs versus Thunder” will hopefully not refer to the 2026 Western Conference Finals alone; ideally, we will think of it as the rivalry that defined the second half of the 2020s, with this series representing the opening salvo in, say, a 35-game series to determine who the better squad ultimately is. Because right now, we’re not super close to figuring that out.
Since Game 2, these teams have been trading “blowouts,” even though some of the games were better than their final scores. It has, in that way, been much like a war between armies rather than a set of basketball games. Whoever lost the previous battle would regroup, reorganize and push their overextended adversary back. And we’re not fighting with spears and pea-shooters; both these teams have major firepower, so the defeats have been crushing.
What we’re left with is carnage, physicality, mocking Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with board games, two cities that know they have what it takes and two teams that have certainly had enough of each other. And after six long, grueling, destructive games, we’re right back where we started. One game, all the marbles. We have no more marbles in reserve.
Game 7 will bring the abstract energy this series has thrived on
In a way, this is the only way we could have made it to Game 7. Had each game been closer, the margin for error would have been too small — someone surely would have snagged their fourth win earlier, robbing us of the ultimate throwdown and the right to host Game 1 of the NBA Finals. These teams are too good, and have been too able to respond to each other’s assaults for this to have gone any other way.
This series has also resisted understanding from analysts like myself, often feeling that after each game the winner had solved the loser and the rest of the series would fall into place. It was never that. It embraced the randomness of a basketball in the air, acknowledging each shot is essentially a coin flip and this is a war of many coins. It’s been abstract and expressive like a drip and splatter painting, communicating the energy of its world without necessarily explaining it.
Because for a Game 7, it really doesn’t matter how we got here. It doesn’t even matter where we are, who the teams are or what they’ve done so far. Game 7s are the closest thing we have to sacred sporting events, in which almost two weeks of data boils down to one single point in the spacetime continuum. It’s pure creation and destruction, and the Spurs and Thunder have fought and earned their right and their chance. We, conversely, have earned simply the right to watch and enjoy it.
More NBA news and analysis:
Add us as a preferred source on Google