{"id":347684,"date":"2025-12-14T05:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T05:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347684\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T05:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T05:23:07","slug":"victor-wembanyama-spurs-shock-thunder-to-make-nba-cup-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347684\/","title":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama, Spurs shock Thunder to make NBA Cup final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dec 14, 2025, 12:19 AM ET<\/p>\n

LAS VEGAS — Victor Wembanyama<\/a> returned from a 12-game absence with 22 points and nine rebounds, giving San Antonio a surge and the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> just its second loss with the 111-109 victory Saturday night putting the Spurs in the NBA Cup final.<\/p>\n

The Spurs play the New York Knicks<\/a> in Tuesday night’s final.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma’s last defeat was Nov. 5 at Portland, and the Thunder carried a 16-game winning streak into this game. They now are 24-2, the second-best start behind only the 25-1 record by Golden State in 2015-16.<\/p>\n

This is the Thunder’s second loss in a row in Las Vegas. They also lost last year’s final to Milwaukee 97-81.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

1 Related<\/p>\n

Wembanyama, who received “M-V-P” chants from the pro-Spurs crowd, had a plus-21 rating in 21 minutes. Teammate Devin Vassell<\/a> scored 23 points and De’Aaron Fox<\/a> and Stephon Castle<\/a> each scored 22.<\/p>\n

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> led the Thunder with 29 points, Chet Holmgren<\/a> and Jalen Williams<\/a> each totaled 17.<\/p>\n

Wembanyama had been out because of a strained left calf, though the Spurs went 9-3 in his absence. He was placed on a minutes restriction against the Thunder, but that didn’t limit his impact.<\/p>\n

Wembanyama, who entered the game averaging 26.2 points and 12.9 rebounds, gave the Spurs an immediate boost and sent a surge into the crowd. Fans began to roar when he removed his sweatpants before the second quarter, and Wembanyama had a plus-20 rating in just seven minutes even with his team trailing by three points at halftime.<\/p>\n

But San Antonio ended the first half with a 13-point run to make it a contest. The Spurs used a 10-point run in the third quarter to go up 62-56 and set the stage for a tense fourth period.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec 14, 2025, 12:19 AM ET LAS VEGAS — Victor Wembanyama returned from a 12-game absence with 22…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-347684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}