There was a time in the 2025-26 NBA season that the Oklahoma City Thunder appeared to be the perfect team. Despite starting the year without their second-best player, Jalen Williams, they propelled to a 24-1 record. It felt as if a consecutive championship was already in their grasp. However, once they faced the San Antonio Spurs, that idea went for a toss.
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The two teams went head-to-head for the first time in the semifinals of the NBA Cup. In that game, the Spurs played a beautiful brand of basketball, exploiting holes within the Thunder’s offense, which had earlier seemed nonexistent. They forced the ball out of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s hand and forced the supporting cast to beat them. It didn’t help the Thunder that Victor Wembanyama appeared to be OKC’s kryptonite as he finished with 22 points in just 21 minutes of action.
These two teams would go on to face each other four more times, with the Spurs prevailing in three of those matchups. San Antonio clearly has the Thunder’s number, which has drawn the attention of many fans and experts. In an exclusive interview with The SportsRush’s Nickeem Khan, former NBA star Rashad McCants revealed that he was high on the Spurs far before their dominance over the Thunder.
“I picked the Spurs from the beginning, I’m gonna ride with them to the end,” McCants confessed. “I felt like they just had the best training camp, and they came into it with high hopes, inspiration and motivation to actually get this thing on track.”
Ahead of the season, the Spurs were one of the more polarizing teams to get a handle on as far as championship aspirations were concerned. They certainly had the talent between Wembanyama, De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper to do something special. However, winning together at a high level consistently had been alien to them.
Wembanyama and Fox only played a handful of games together before the French superstar was diagnosed with blood clots and was ruled out for the rest of the season. The team as a whole finished with a 34-48 record in the 2024-25 season. It would be a massive jump to go from out of the Play-In to a championship favorite in a single offseason. Yet the Spurs have done it.
“Mitch Johnson has his own era of Spurs basketball that he’s implementing that they’ve all bought into,” McCants added. “I think De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell have something to prove. They have a team full of guys that go out there with a chip on their shoulders.”
That hunger for greatness is apparent in every game. San Antonio currently sits at the second seed with a 48-18 record. Unlike other championship contenders who take their foot off the gas, the Spurs are stomping on the pedal even harder. It’ll be interesting to witness whether McCants’s title favorite pick ages well or turns into a near miss.
