The 2026 Western Conference Finals opened with a bang as the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder traded a chaotic, double-overtime Game 1 that ended 122-115 in San Antonio. Victor Wembanyama launched a jaw-dropping, well-behind-the-line three to force extra time, a shot that drew immediate comparisons to Stephen Curry’s famous near-halfcourt pull-up in Oklahoma City a decade earlier. Wembanyama finished with a monster stat line while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder fought back hard, and role players like Alex Caruso showed up in ways that made this series feel like a defining rivalry for the decade.
Stephen Curry’s 2016 shot in Oklahoma City still lives in highlight reels; he had already collected a championship and an MVP by then and would go on to become the league’s first unanimous MVP as the Warriors logged a record 73-win regular season. That season’s arc — a 3-1 Finals collapse to LeBron James and the Cavaliers, followed by the Warriors signing Kevin Durant in free agency — changed the NBA’s balance of power for years. Curry’s knockdown from ridiculous range became one of those benchmark moments that tells you something big is happening in the sport.
The Spurs-Thunder matchup in 2026 felt instantly electric, the kind of series that makes casual fans sit up and die-hard fans call their friends. Game 1 delivered that feeling, a back-and-forth chess match and then sudden chaos, with San Antonio stealing homecourt by surviving double overtime. I called this the series before the pandemic, and the opening game only reinforced the sense that we might be witnessing a rivalry built for the 2020s.
Late in the first overtime, trailing by three with under 30 seconds to go, Victor Wembanyama caught the ball in transition and heaved a three from what looked like another zip code. It went down, the Spurs forced a stop on the other end, and we were headed to double overtime. That single swing — a raw, audacious long-range bucket — changed the tone of the whole arena and, for a moment, felt like a time machine back to those wild, era-defining Curry moments.
San Antonio followed up the highlight with relentless team defense and timely offense in double OT, while Oklahoma City scraped and clawed to stay in it. The Spurs’ veterans and rotation pieces made plays when they had to, and the crowd fed off each swing of momentum. That final stretch, with everything on the line, underlined how razor-thin postseason basketball can be.
Same exact miss by JDub and Westbrook.
Same exact shot by Wemby and Curry.
The resemblance is uncanny 🤯 pic.twitter.com/o4yuWDkKbg
— WembyMuse (@Wemby_Muse) May 19, 2026
Wembanyama’s stat line for the night read like a video game: 41 points, 24 rebounds, three assists, three blocks, one steal, and only three turnovers. He also logged a career-high 49 minutes, a massive workload that proved decisive in a game the Spurs desperately needed to win. San Antonio has accounted for five of their six wins against Oklahoma City this season, and watching Wembanyama carry the team in crunch time raised more than a few eyebrows across the league.
On the other side, Alex Caruso knocked down eight threes in the game after shooting just 29 percent from beyond the arc during the regular season, an unlikely flurry that still wasn’t enough to secure the win. If the Thunder’s shooters heat up and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander continues to deliver at an MVP-caliber level, this series will flip right back into a toss-up. For now, though, it feels like a moment where the balance of power nudged toward San Antonio — and every game from here on out is must-see.
