Victor Wembanyama turned Game 1 of the Western Conference finals into a Spurs Game for the ages, scoring 41 points and grabbing 24 rebounds as the San Antonio Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 122-115 in double overtime. He forced the extra session with a 3-pointer from near the midcourt logo, then kept delivering when the game tightened again.
Wembanyama played 49 minutes and scored nine points in the final five minutes, the kind of late surge that decided a game between two teams that had spent the night refusing to go away. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had received his second straight MVP before tipoff, finished with 24 points on 7-of-23 shooting, and Oklahoma City was outscored by 15 while he was on the floor. The Thunder came in as the reigning champions, and the loss snapped a playoff run that had not included a defeat since Game 6 of the 2025 Finals.
That backdrop made the ending matter beyond one opener. Gilgeous-Alexander had led the league’s biggest stage into the night with the hardware in hand, but San Antonio was the team that produced the decisive shot, then the next one, then the next stop. Wembanyama’s range changed the game, and his rebounding kept it from slipping away when the Thunder tried to take control in the first overtime and again in the second.
The tension for Oklahoma City is simple: if Gilgeous-Alexander cannot tilt a game this tight, a series against a Spurs team with this kind of force from Wembanyama becomes much harder to manage. For San Antonio, the next step is to try to make one statement win count for more than that. Their next meeting is already on the board, including the follow-up matchup listed in the team schedule and the Game 6 timing note that points fans to Friday night.
For one night, though, the story belonged to Wembanyama and a Spurs Game that never gave the Thunder a clean escape.
