who had been critical of his performance<\/a> in their game three defeat, led from the front with 33 points, eight rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals.<\/p>\n“We just responded,” said the 22-year-old Frenchman. “It was nothing amazing. It wasn’t magic. We just did what we needed to do.”<\/p>\n
“The series is far from over.”<\/p>\n
The Spurs built up an early 15-point lead before the Thunder cut the deficit to five with just over a minute remaining in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
But the Spurs hit back with seven points before the break, topped by a mid-court three-pointer from Wembanyama.<\/p>\n
It was also a solid defensive display from the Spurs with the Thunder’s 38 first-half points their lowest of the season.<\/p>\n
The reigning NBA champions’ game total was also the fewest for the franchise since 2 December 2021, and the lowest in a play-off game since 2020.<\/p>\n
With the result virtually decided, Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who top-scored on 19 points, sat out the entire fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
No other Thunder player scored more than 12.<\/p>\n
Game five takes place on Tuesday (01:30 BST Wednesday) in Oklahoma City with game six back in San Antonio on Thursday (01:30 BST Friday).<\/p>\n
In the Eastern Conference, the New York Knicks lead the Cleveland Cavaliers 3-0<\/a> and can wrap up that series in Cleveland on Monday (01:00 BST, Tuesday), with the NBA Finals starting on 4 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Antonio Spurs bounced back in style with an impressive 103-82 home win over the Oklahoma City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-693401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}