{"id":348196,"date":"2025-12-14T12:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T12:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/348196\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T12:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T12:28:09","slug":"nba-cup-victor-wembanyama-returns-as-san-antionio-spurs-beat-oklahoma-city-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/348196\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Cup: Victor Wembanyama returns as San Antionio Spurs beat Oklahoma City Thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The NBA Cup is the competition&#8217;s annual in-season tournament, with all matches except the final also counting towards the regular season standings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Thunder were beaten in last year&#8217;s final by the Milwaukee Bucks and had a 16-game winning run ended by the Spurs as they exited this season&#8217;s competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/basketball\/articles\/cdj8rpmrd98o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Oklahoma City had equalled the best 25-game start to a season<\/a> when they went 24-1 by beating the Phoenix Suns in the quarter-finals, but they have now made the second best start to a campaign after 26 games as the Golden State Warriors were 25-1 at the same stage in 2015-16.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA&#8217;s reigning Most Valuable Player, top scored for the Thunder against the Spurs with a game-high 29 points.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">San Antonio will play the New York Knicks in the final after they beat the Orlando Magic 132-120.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jalen Brunson scored a season-high 40 points to inspire the Knicks to victory, while team-mate Karl-Anthony Towns added 29 points.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We came out here and did exactly what we said we wanted to do, which was play Knicks basketball,&#8221; said Towns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA Cup is the competition&#8217;s annual in-season tournament, with all matches except the final also counting towards&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-348196","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\/348196","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=348196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}