Victor Wembanyama and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander have now met eight times in Spurs vs. Thunder games, and the series has split down the middle. The latest chapter is still to come in the 2026 Western Conference Finals, where the two teams are set to meet again in a rivalry that has quickly become one of the league’s most compelling individual matchups.
That tension started on Nov. 14, 2023, when the Thunder beat the Spurs 123-87 in the first game between the two stars. Wembanyama scored eight points that night in his rookie season, while Gilgeous-Alexander, then in his sixth season and fifth with the Thunder, had 28. It was the kind of opener that made the matchup feel bigger than a single regular-season result, because both players were already forcing the other side to account for everything they did on the floor.
The importance of the rivalry sharpened in the 2025-26 season, when San Antonio and Oklahoma City played five times — four regular-season games and one NBA Cup game — and the Spurs won four of them. The Thunder were missing Gilgeous-Alexander in the Feb. 4 game that San Antonio won, but the other meetings kept building the same argument: the Spurs could challenge the defending champions, and Wembanyama was no longer just a prospect in the room. He has emerged as a superstar, and the head-to-head with Gilgeous-Alexander now sits near the top of the sport’s must-watch pairings.
San Antonio’s most pointed statement came early in December, when it beat Oklahoma City 111-109 in the in-season tournament and Wembanyama scored 22 points off the bench. Gilgeous-Alexander answered with 29 points in the loss, but the result showed the Spurs could survive the Thunder’s best response. A few weeks later, San Antonio won again, 130-110 on Dec. 23, with Wembanyama scoring 12 points and Gilgeous-Alexander 33. Then came Christmas Day, when the Spurs beat the Thunder 117-102 as Wembanyama finished with 19 points and Gilgeous-Alexander had 22.
The split across eight meetings leaves the matchup exactly where elite rivalries often land: no one side has broken it open, and neither player has taken permanent control. The Thunder are still the defending champions and had lost just 18 total games all season in 2025-26, which only makes San Antonio’s four wins in five tries more striking. The next meeting will not settle the rivalry, but it will add another clean data point to a duel that has become basketball’s version of ethical basketball — hard, direct and judged possession by possession.
For now, the bigger story is not just that the Spurs and Thunder are headed for the 2026 Western Conference Finals. It is that the game’s present and future are already meeting there, and Wembanyama and Gilgeous-Alexander have made sure everyone knows how much is at stake when they share the floor.
