The NBA rarely produces playoff series like the 2026 Western Conference Finals. The bout between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder was the first series to feature two teams that won 62 or more games since the 1998 NBA Finals between the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz. We haven’t seen a series hyped to quite the extent that this one was since, at least, the 2018 Western Conference Finals between the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors.
Well, the series — thanks to an unforgettable opener and dramatic closer — lived up to that hype. Game 1 was one of the greatest playoff games in NBA history, and the series went the full seven. In the end, the Spurs were crowned Western Conference champions with a 111-103 victory in Saturday’s Game 7. They will face the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals starting on Wednesday.
That’s four days away, and given both the stakes of this matchup and the quality of basketball that was played, we’re not ready to turn the page quite yet. So with this momentous series now in the books, let’s name some winners and losers for perhaps the most anticipated playoff series of the decade.
Winner: Victor Wembanyama
This isn’t supposed to happen. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won the championship in his second season, but he had a full college career. Magic Johnson did it as a rookie… but on Abdul-Jabbar’s team. It took LeBron James four years to make the Finals and four more to make it back after he got swept.
But Wembanyama is headed to the Finals in just his third NBA season. In getting there, he took down the two-time reigning NBA MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. More than that, he essentially neutralized his competition. Gilgeous-Alexander got to the basket at only slightly better than half of the rate he did so in the regular season. That forced him to live off of tough, contested mid-range jumpers. He made plenty of them in his 35-point Game 7, but not nearly enough in the rest of the series to move on.
Wembanyama is in rarified air now. He’s claimed the mantle of “best player in the NBA” at such a young age and with so much room left to grow that, if he remains healthy, it’s a title he might hold for another decade or more. His Spurs are favored in the NBA Finals, he plays for a young and asset-rich team, and he’ll have a chance to hold his coronation at Madison Square Garden, the world’s most famous arena.
Now seems like the perfect moment to truly begin his campaign to unseat James and Michael Jordan as the greatest players of all time. He has a long way to go, but he’s hitting the checkpoints he needs to earlier than either of them did.
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Loser: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Look, we can be reasonable here. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was at an enormous disadvantage in this series when Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell got hurt. He was the last high-level shot-creator standing for the Thunder, and Wembanyama taking away the rim as he did forced him into a very uncomfortable position. The series boiled down to him making tough shots off the dribble. He didn’t make enough of them for six games.
But here’s the thing about being a two-time MVP: you’re sometimes expected to do unreasonable things. Gilgeous-Alexander has spent the year getting compared to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Well, players of that caliber have won through adversity. Gilgeous-Alexander hasn’t. He won a championship last season that may well have boiled down to injuries suffered by the Nuggets and Pacers before and during their matchups. He has the best roster in the NBA surrounding him, and that probably contributes to why casual fans don’t regard him as highly as his numbers suggest they should.
And the agonizing thing here is that he did those unreasonable things in Game 7. He was genuinely spectacular. It’s hard to ask for much more than 35 points and nine assists on 12-of-21 shooting when you’re getting doubled as frequently as he was. This could have been the game that changed the way he was perceived forever, yet most of his teammates didn’t join him. There’s not much anyone can do when three of their fellow starters score 14 combined points.
It’s not as though his career or prime are over. The Thunder will be back in the mix next year and beyond, and Wembanyama’s ascent means that they’ll probably be underdogs. But this was a chance for Gilgeous-Alexander to shed some labels, to win a championship that frankly would have been more meaningful than the one he already had and legitimately launched him into those exclusive clubs occupied by the other multiple-time MVP winners. As good as he was in Game 7, he just wasn’t at this level for most of the series, and it’s hard not to be somewhat disappointed by that. He may one day push his way through those doors, but he missed a chance to barge into the Pantheon with a victory in Game 7.
Winner: De’Aaron Fox
This series almost went very, very badly for De’Aaron Fox. He missed the first two games with a high ankle sprain, and Dylan Harper laid out the case that he should be the starting point guard next year with a huge Game 1. Fox returned for Game 3, but wasn’t especially effective. The Thunder barely guarded him from deep, and his struggles culminated with a 5-of-24 shooting stretch in Games 5 and 6. With a max contract kicking in this offseason and Harper potentially rendering him obsolete, Game 7 was undoubtedly the biggest game of Fox’s career.
The numbers weren’t gaudy, but every single one of them counted. It’d be hard to score 15 bigger points than Fox did against the Thunder on Saturday. Seemingly every one of them came to slow a Thunder run or accentuate one of San Antonio’s. His 3s started going in. And the one thing he’s done well really all series? He basically never turns the ball over. One of the stories of the games Fox missed early on were the 20 turnovers Stephon Castle committed. Oklahoma City lives off of the transition opportunities those live-ball turnovers create, but putting Fox back in the mix helped minimize them.
All of the long-term questions here still linger. Harper probably does have to be the long-term starter. Fox probably is overpaid. It might not be possible to play the three-man combination of Fox, Harper and Castle together too much because of their shooting deficiencies. But the trade for Fox and the contract that followed justified itself in Game 7. He was the difference between the Spurs reaching the NBA Finals and going home. They can address everything else later. For now, they are four wins away from a championship because he is on their team.
Loser: Chet Holmgren
Most of the time, the Thunder are perfectly happy to have a passive Chet Holmgren on offense. He’s among the NBA’s best defenders and his presence usually spaces the floor. When you have the best roster in the NBA, you can get away without much more out of him.
Well, the Thunder couldn’t get away with less in this series. Without Williams and Mitchell, they needed some measure of shot-creation out of Holmgren. He didn’t offer much of it. Like Gilgeous-Alexander, he was limited at the basket by Wembanyama’s presence. But he just doesn’t have a quick enough trigger to really scare the Spurs from deep, either. After launching four 3s in Game 1, he took only seven in the next six games. He was, by and large, invisible offensively for large stretches of this series.
This culminated with one of the worst Game 7s you’ll ever see. Holmgren played 33 minutes and attempted two shots. Two. For reference, do you remember the infamous Ben Simmons Game 7 against the Hawks in which he passed up an open dunk? He took four shots in that game. Holmgren had as many turnovers as he had field goal attempts. He couldn’t hold onto passes or rebounds. He was a mess.
Years ago, Holmgren vs. Wembanyama was treated as one of the great impending rivalries in basketball. There’s not a rivalry right now. Wembanyama is the best player in the world. Holmgren is an enormously valuable overall player who shares a similar physical profile but couldn’t adjust to the adverse circumstances this series presented. Like Gilgeous-Alexander, he’ll probably have more chances with a healthier overall roster, but we got a glimpse of what Holmgren looks like on something resembling a normal playoff-caliber team in this series, and what we saw was pretty underwhelming.
Loser: Lu Dort
We have to discuss another OKC starter in a negative light. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that Lu Dort might’ve been playing for his job in this series. The Thunder are far above the second apron for next season, and Dort’s $18.2 million team option is one of their easiest paths to saving money. The Thunder have one of the deepest group of 3-and-D wings in the entire NBA. Even at his best, he might have been a luxury here.
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Well, he wasn’t at his best in this series. His offense has always been up and down, but it became a real problem against the Spurs. He shot just 20% on 3s, and in the first six games of the series, Oklahoma City’s offense was more than eight points per 100 possessions worse with him on the floor. Part of the reason the Spurs kept jumping out to those huge first-quarter leads was the Thunder’s continued insistence on starting Dort. It was as if the game started for Oklahoma City four or five minutes into the first quarter when the team finally pulled him out.
Dort has specific functions in Oklahoma City. He’s great on the ball. He’s burlier than Cason Wallace and therefore better suited to taking on certain matchups. But Wallace and Alex Caruso are both better players than he is, and the continued decision to start Dort over Wallace was one of the reasons the Thunder lost this series. If they have to choose between the three of them as financial fits moving forward, Dort is the odd man out.
Winner: New York Knicks
Look, the Knicks were going to be underdogs against either of these teams (they are +172 underdogs against the Spurs on FanDuel). There’s an argument to be made that they would have preferred the Thunder purely because of the injuries they’ve endured. But the Knicks haven’t beaten the Thunder since November of 2022. Conveniently enough, they faced off in early March under eerily similar circumstances as they may have in the Finals: no Mitchell Robinson for the Knicks, no Jalen Williams or Ajay Mitchell for the Thunder. Oklahoma City won the game at Madison Square Garden. Jalen Brunson shot 5 of 18.
The Knicks faced the Spurs three times this season and beat them twice, including in the NBA Cup final. Now, Wembanyama didn’t play his typical minutes load in that game, but it’s worth noting here that across those three games, the Knicks won the Wembanyama minutes by 16 total points.
Potentially missing Robinson or having a limited version of him stings against a star opposing center, but OG Anunoby is about as well-equipped to guard San Antonio’s martian as anyone in the NBA. Oklahoma City’s deep group of perimeter defenders likely would’ve been harder for Brunson to deal with than just Stephon Castle. The Spurs have more slightly weak links for him to seek out. Avoiding Isaiah Hartenstein‘s screens will probably help the typically contact-averse Mikal Bridges defensively. The Thunder have been there before. The Spurs haven’t.
On balance, San Antonio is just a slightly more favorable matchup for New York. Really, though, New York’s victory came before the game even began. This is now the third consecutive series in which they will face an opponent coming off of a seven-game series… and the second in which they were coming off of a sweep. Their rest advantage cannot be overstated. The longer the Finals go, the better for them. If they pull off the Finals upset, they’ll be sure to send the Thunder a card for pushing the Spurs this hard.
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