{"id":701715,"date":"2026-05-29T14:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/701715\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T14:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:28:11","slug":"nba-players-have-never-lost-a-game-7-on-their-birthday-and-1-spurs-thunder-player-has-theirs-this-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/701715\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA players have never lost a Game 7 on their birthday, and 1 Spurs-Thunder player has theirs this time"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA players have never lost a Game 7 on their birthday, and 1 Spurs-Thunder player has theirs this time<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s one of the quirkiest stats in NBA history — a player has never lost a Game 7 on their birthday.<\/p>\n

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The sample size, entering Saturday night’s Western Conference Final finale between the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> and Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>, is currently 7-0.<\/p>\n

Walt Hazzard started it in 1966.<\/p>\n

Scott Hastings made it 2-0 in 1990.<\/p>\n

Kevin Garnett got a Game 7 birthday win in 2004.<\/p>\n

Udonis Haslem joined the party in 2012.<\/p>\n

Pablo Prigioni came aboard the trend in 2015.<\/p>\n

Harrison Barnes did it with the Warriors<\/a> in 2016.<\/p>\n

And Paul George already made it happen in the first round this year to keep the streak alive.<\/p>\n

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MORE:\u00a0There’s a 7th-grade hooper named Kobe Bryant<\/a><\/p>\n

On Saturday, when the Spurs and Thunder clash for a spot in the NBA Finals, there’s a good omen on the side of San Antonio.<\/p>\n

That’s because it’s Barnes’ birthday. He’s already on this list, and he’ll have the chance to be the first NBA player to win two Game 7s on his birthday.<\/p>\n

Barnes was born on May 30, 1992, so he’ll turn 34 on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The last time he played a Game 7 on his birthday was 10 years ago, when he turned 24 — that was when the Warriors beat the Thunder in an epic series finale, and now Barnes is going against OKC again.<\/p>\n

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Barnes is a much less pivotal player now for San Antonio than he was back then for Golden State, but this trend doesn’t seem to care how crucial a player is to his team. It’s just about the birthday.<\/p>\n

Will the Spurs have something to celebrate on Saturday? Barnes’ birthday certainly suggests that they will.<\/p>\n

More NBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA players have never lost a Game 7 on their birthday, and 1 Spurs-Thunder player has theirs this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,56688,141904,35474,459,2087,3555,14103,19748,24616,2696,255379,82,17875,255378,47621],"class_list":["post-701715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-harrison-barnes","tag-kevin-garnett","tag-kobe-bryant","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-pablo-prigioni","tag-paul-george","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-scott-hastings","tag-sports","tag-udonis-haslem","tag-walt-hazzard","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}