\u201cThis feeling, I can\u2019t explain it,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cIt\u2019s so powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephon Castle scored 16 points and De\u2019Aaron Fox had 15. Dylan Harper added 12 and Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell each finished with 11 for the Spurs, who are headed to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2014.<\/p>\n
They will host the New York Knicks in Game 1 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in October, we knew we had a chance to be pretty good,\u201d Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.<\/p>\n
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Correction \u2014 the Spurs have a chance to be great. Championship-level great.<\/p>\n
A huge moment came midway through the fourth, when San Antonio\u2019s Luke Kornet blocked Oklahoma City\u2019s Isaiah Hartenstein at the rim \u2014 denying a fast-break score that would have gotten the Thunder within four.<\/p>\n
It felt like the last gasp for the Thunder. Kornet played six minutes, missed all three of his shot attempts and finished with only two points, but the block by the former Celtic big man was an epic moment.<\/p>\n
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 35 points and nine assists, but for the eighth consecutive season the NBA will have a new champion. Cason Wallace scored 17 points, while Jared McCain and Alex Caruso had 12 apiece for the Thunder.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to grow from every experience, including the tough ones,\u201d Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s the NBA \u2014 there are tough ones. We can also be really disappointed. \u2026 There\u2019s nobody that we don\u2019t think we can beat, respectfully.\u201d<\/p>\n
After four straight games that were largely decided going into the fourth quarter \u2014 the Thunder led Game 3 by 11, the Spurs led Game 4 by 18, the Thunder led Game 5 by 10, and the Spurs led Game 6 by 26, those leads all holding up with relative ease \u2014 this one was different, worthy of a Game 7.<\/p>\n
The Spurs held an 80-77 lead going into the fourth, a bit of a back-and-forth contest where the Spurs led by as many as 14 in the first half and then by as many as 11 in the third, only to see the Thunder come roaring back both times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe players did what they\u2019ve been doing all year and they met the biggest moment,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
They pulled away in the fourth again, daring the Thunder to try to come back one more time. The champions \u2014 short-handed, with Jalen Williams sidelined with a bad hamstring \u2014 just didn\u2019t have anything left.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning an NBA championship is very hard in itself to do one time,\u201d Gilgeous-Alexander said. \u201cSo to do it all over again would just only make it harder.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Antonio won eight of the 12 meetings against the Thunder this season \u2014 and in the end, the only matchup that really mattered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want four more,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cWe\u2019re not done.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis feeling, I can\u2019t explain it,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cIt\u2019s so powerful.\u201d Stephon Castle scored 16 points and De\u2019Aaron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26181,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-316442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-celtics","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}