SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 32 points and the Oklahoma City Thunder opened their season with a 116-104 victory over the San Antonio Spurs, the team that ended their dreams of a title defense last season.<\/p>\n
San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama had 12 points but was 1 for 13 from the field. It was his fewest field goals since going 2 for 5 against Minnesota on May 10. Wembanyama’s lone field goal came on an alley-oop pass from De\u2019Aaron Fox as time expired in the third quarter. Wembanyama missed his first 12 shots, including having an alley-oop attempt blocked by 7-foot-3 rookie Aday Mara.<\/p>\n
Jared McCain added 20 points on 6-for-8 shooting on 3-pointers as Oklahoma City led for all but the opening five minutes of the game.<\/p>\n
The Spurs beat the Thunder 111-103 in Oklahoma City in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals on May 30 in their previous matchup.<\/p>\n
Nearly five months apart did not cool this heated rivalry.<\/p>\n
Three minutes into the second quarter Fox received a Flagrant Foul 1 for tossing Chet Holmgren to the court after they became entangled in the paint. The body slam led to a huge scrum with Wembanyama and Jaylin Williams having to be separated after pushing each other. Wembanyama, Williams, Jalen Williams and Kenrich Williams each received a technical for the dust up.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City went on a 9-0 run after the scuffle with Jalen and Kenrich Williams accounting for five points. Harrison Barnes’ 3-pointer ended the run, but the Thunder responded by scoring 13 straight capped by Cason Wallace’s 3-pointer for a 59-33 lead.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City outscored San Antonio 31-16 in the second quarter in taking a 65-44 lead at the half.<\/p>\n
The Spurs opened the second half on a 23-9 run to pull within single digits after trailing by 26 in the first half.<\/p>\n
Gilgeous-Alexander and McCain stepped up when San Antonio pulled close, combining for 25 points in the second half.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUp next<\/p>\n
Thunder: Host Denver on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Spurs: Host Houston in Austin on Friday night.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
\n See AP\u2019s full NBA coverage here\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 32 points and the Oklahoma City Thunder opened their season with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[160359,2724,355,99],"class_list":["post-889768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889768","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=889768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}