By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer
OKLAHOMA CITY — Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs started the Western Conference finals with a win in Oklahoma City, then ended the series the same way.
The champions are dethroned. Wembanyama and the Spurs are headed to the NBA Finals.
Wembanyama scored 22 points, Julian Champagnie got 18 of his 20 on 3-pointers and the Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, 111-103, on Saturday night – bucking heavy odds to win a Game 7 on the road.
“This feeling, I can’t explain it,” Wembanyama said. “It’s so powerful.”
Stephon Castle scored 16 points and De’Aaron Fox had 15. Dylan Harper added 12 and Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell each finished with 11 for the Spurs, who are headed to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2014.
They will host the New York Knicks in Game 1 on Wednesday night.
“Back in October, we knew we had a chance to be pretty good,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.
Correction – the Spurs have a chance to be great. Championship-level great.
A huge moment came midway through the fourth, when San Antonio’s Luke Kornet blocked Oklahoma City’s Isaiah Hartenstein at the rim – denying a fast-break score that would have pulled the Thunder within four.
It felt like the last gasp for the Thunder. Kornet played six minutes, missed all three of his shot attempts and finished with only two points, but the block was an epic moment.
“Biggest play of the game,” Johnson said.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 35 points and nine assists, but for the eighth consecutive season the NBA will have a new champion. Cason Wallace scored 17 points, while Jared McCain and Alex Caruso had 12 apiece for the Thunder.
“You have to grow from every experience, including the tough ones,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “And it’s the NBA – there are tough ones. We can also be really disappointed. … There’s nobody that we don’t think we can beat, respectfully.”
After four straight games that were largely decided going into the fourth quarter – the Thunder led Game 3 by 11, the Spurs led Game 4 by 18, the Thunder led Game 5 by 10 and the Spurs led Game 6 by 26, those leads all holding up with relative ease – this one was different, worthy of a Game 7.
Spurs 80, Thunder 77 was the score going into the fourth, a bit of a back-and-forth contest in which the Spurs led by as many as 14 in the first half and then by as many as 11 in the third, only to see the Thunder come roaring back both times.
“The players did what they’ve been doing all year and they met the biggest moment,” Johnson said.
They pulled away in the fourth again, daring the Thunder to try to come back one more time. The champions – short-handed, with Jalen Williams sidelined with a bad hamstring – just didn’t have anything left.
“Winning an NBA championship is very hard in itself to do one time,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “So to do it all over again would just only make it harder.”
San Antonio won eight of the 12 meetings against the Thunder this season – and in the end, the only matchup that really mattered.
“We want four more,” Wembanyama said. “We’re not done.”
SGA TIPS CAP TO SPURS
When the season ended, and when his team’s reign as NBA champions ended along with it, Gilgeous-Alexander tipped his cap.
The Oklahoma City guard – the back-to-back NBA MVP – was great in Game 7. The Spurs were greater. And that meant there won’t be a repeat champion in the NBA this year.
Gilgeous-Alexander was his normal brilliant self with an array of mid-range scores, paint attacks, even stepbacks over Wembanyama. It wasn’t enough and Gilgeous-Alexander made no excuses.
“So many things go into it,” Gilgeous-Alexander said when asked about the difficulty of winning a championship – and trying to go back-to-back. “Sometimes it’s like things you can’t control, sometimes it’s things you can control. Yeah, it’s a hard task to do one time, so to do it twice will only make it even more challenging.”
The Thunder played all season to have home-court advantage in Game 7 and got it by two games, winning 64 to San Antonio’s 62. But the Spurs beat the Thunder four out of five in the regular season, then got four more out of seven in the West finals. And Oklahoma City, to be fair, was not at its best – with both Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell out with injuries.
“Not to make any excuses, but they’re a really good team over there,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “And losing Ajay and Dub the way we did in the midst of a series, you would think it would be a lot harder for us.”
Oklahoma City looks like a team that is built to contend for years. So, too, do the Spurs. A rivalry seems very much born.
“Yeah, they’re young, they’re talented, well-coached,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Play the right way, play together, seems like they like each other. They have the makeup, for sure. You don’t beat us without the makeup and they beat us. They have the makeup to go get one.”
The Thunder will have some roster decisions to make and have multiple first-round draft picks to either use to add talent – or perhaps combine in a trade if they want to move up for a chance to draft a specific person.
Those decisions aren’t for Gilgeous-Alexander to make. Canada is hoping he’ll play a little bit of FIBA World Cup qualifying this summer – basketball’s next World Cup is in 2027 – and he’ll be looking to add to his game, as elite players always do.
“We just have to take it one day at a time from here on out,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Try to get better this summer, be a better team than we were this season – and try to get back over the hump.”