{"id":672893,"date":"2026-05-29T21:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/672893\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T21:29:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:29:14","slug":"stephen-a-smith-berates-thunder-for-game-6-play-vs-spurs-with-game-7-cushion-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/672893\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith Berates Thunder For Game 6 Play vs. Spurs with \u2018Game 7 Cushion\u2019 Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> will contest a pivotal Game 7 against the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> in order to advance to the NBA Finals, but they could have wrapped up things in Game 6. Indeed, this is the view of ESPN presenter Stephen A. Smith, who have called out the franchise for their performance.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for OKC, they didn\u2019t come out with the sense of urgency they needed, and the Spurs pretty much dominated the game from beginning to end.<\/p>\n

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Reacting after the matchup, Stephen A. Smith made his thoughts known on ESPN\u2019s First Take, saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Thunder] played like a team that had a Game 7 cushion, and you knew if San Antonio<\/a> came out early and punched them in the mouth, the level of urgency that you would anticipate wasn\u2019t going to be there, and that\u2019s exactly what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spurs were the better team in Game 6 vs. OKC Thunder<\/p>\n

It was obvious from the start that the San Antonio Spurs were going to attack, and forward-center Victor Wembanyama<\/a> set the tone with his two early 3-pointers.<\/p>\n

\"Victor<\/p>\n

IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n

Though the Oklahoma City Thunder got down quickly, they made a run in the second quarter to cut down their deficit, but it wasn\u2019t enough. Midway through the third quarter, the Spurs had opened the game up and were winning by 20+ points.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s been a chess match between both teams so far in this series, and in the past few games, both teams have gotten the best of each other. It will now come down to the final game, and the Thunder could feel as if they have the advantage being at home, but also having more experience in this situation.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City<\/a> were in two Game 7s last postseason and won both, but San Antonio have yet to see their backs against the wall until now. For the Thunder, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> will have to come alive after an up-and-down series, and the players around him have to step up as well.<\/p>\n

Related Headlines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oklahoma City Thunder will contest a pivotal Game 7 against the San Antonio Spurs in order to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,12205,6402,83044,6999,2116,6407,99,3692,60950,32090],"class_list":["post-672893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-pivotal-game","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","tag-sports","tag-stephen-a-smith","tag-the-spurs","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672893","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=672893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}