bench outscored San Antonio\u2019s 76-23<\/a>, including 15 points by Alex Caruso.<\/p>\n\u201cWe just went out there and competed,\u201d Gilgeous-Alexander said. \u201cThey obviously jumped on us early. First game in their building, their crowd behind them, they were excited to play. We just wanted to make sure we competed from that point on. We obviously didn\u2019t give our best effort to start that game, but can\u2019t do nothing about it. It\u2019s behind us. All we can do is focus on the next possession, and we did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Victor Wembanyama had 24 points for San Antonio. Devin Vassell added 20 and De’Aaron Fox had 15 in his series debut.<\/p>\n
The Thunder have won two straight after the Spurs’ double-overtime victory in Game 1. Game 4 is Sunday.<\/p>\n
Fox (sprained right ankle) and Dylan Harper (right adductor soreness) were cleared to play 45 minutes prior to tipoff.<\/p>\n
Fox’s return sparked a historic start.<\/p>\n
The Spurs raced to a 15-0 lead, the longest run to open a game in the conference finals since the play-by-play era began in 1997.<\/p>\n
Fox opened the run by wrapping in a driving layup and Wembanyama followed by crossing over Isaiah Hartenstein to drill a 3-pointer. Vassell\u2019s 3-pointer put the Spurs up 10-0, leading to an early timeout by Thunder coach Mark Daigneault.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther than the first 15 points, our defense was really tight,\u201d Daigneault said. \u201cWe got back, settled down into the halfcourt. Our offense had something to do with that. We ran good offense tonight, despite the fact that they were amped up and ready to go, the Spurs were. It\u2019s a discipline series. We did that. We couldn\u2019t be reckless against them, they are too good with the ball, too well coached, too talented. So you\u2019ve got to be able to do it with discipline. I thought we really were disciplined tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isaiah Hartenstein broke the drought with a runner over Wembanyama, but the center was immediately greeted with thunderous boos after his physical play against the Spurs in Game 2.<\/p>\n
The Thunder went on a 13-2 run when Wembanyama went to the bench and closed the first quarter trailing 31-26.<\/p>\n
It was a pattern the Spurs could not overcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my first playoffs,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cIt\u2019s the first playoffs for many of us. Of course, there was going to be hard trials. It\u2019s to be expected, but now we\u2019re going to see what we\u2019re made of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The series continued to be chippy with emotions boiling over early in the second half. Stephon Castle hit the court on back-to-back dunk attempts. The second resulted in a flagrant 1 foul against Ajay Mitchell and technical fouls on Mitchell and Vassell after the two exchanged words following the foul. <\/p>\n
Back-to-back 3-pointers by Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams extended Oklahoma City’s first lead to 35-31.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\nCopyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 26 points and 12 assists, and the Oklahoma City Thunder climbed out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[56233,32235,28138,99528,49952,21976,7625,60517,56216,120882,355,6407,99,40552,32090],"class_list":["post-659934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ajay-mitchell","tag-alex-caruso","tag-deaaron-fox","tag-devin-vassell","tag-dylan-harper","tag-isaiah-hartenstein","tag-jalen-williams","tag-jared-mccain","tag-jaylin-williams","tag-mark-daigneault","tag-nba","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","tag-sports","tag-stephon-castle","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659934","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=659934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}