The San Antonio Spurs were not supposed to be here.
Two weeks ago, this Finals looked settled. The Oklahoma City Thunder — back-to-back champions, led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the prohibitive favorite to win a third straight title — were widely expected to dispatch the young Spurs and meet New York in what looked like a Thunder-Knicks Finals. Then Victor Wembanyama got seven games against the best team in basketball, and what he did with them changed everything.
San Antonio held off the defending champions 111-103 on Saturday in Oklahoma City. Wembanyama scored 22 points and grabbed seven rebounds in Game 7, capping a Western Conference Finals in which he was the best player on the floor every night. The result sent the Spurs to the NBA Finals for the first time in 12 years and set up a championship series that almost no one saw coming.
The 2026 NBA Finals between the Spurs and the New York Knicks begins Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC. Game 1 is in San Antonio. The central question of this series has nothing to do with strategy, matchups, or rest — it has to do with whether a team of 22-year-olds can do what eleven consecutive playoff opponents failed to do: beat a Knicks team that has not lost since April 23.
The Spurs Weren’t Supposed to Be Here
Wembanyama was named the Western Conference Finals MVP unanimously. His averages through seven games against Oklahoma City: 27.3 points, 10.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 2.7 blocks per game. He shot 48.1 percent from the field and 40.0 percent from three-point range. When the Spurs needed their best basketball in the most important game of the season, he delivered 22 points and seven rebounds in a 111-103 win that was never comfortable but never in real doubt after halftime.
The Spurs are the youngest Finals team in NBA history. Their projected Game 1 starting lineup has an average age of 22 years and 346 days. Stephon Castle, the starting guard who will likely defend Jalen Brunson for most of this series, is 21. Dylan Harper, who has contributed off the bench, is 20. Wembanyama himself — the Defensive Player of the Year, the WCF MVP, the player who carried San Antonio past the defending champions — is 22.
It is the first time San Antonio has appeared in the Finals since 2014, when Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginóbili beat the Miami Heat in five games to claim the franchise’s fifth championship. That team was old and methodical. This one is improbable and young. After the final buzzer on Saturday, Wembanyama stood on the court in Oklahoma City and wept. He was overcome — the images circulated widely — with the recognition that a team this young had just eliminated the best team in basketball.
Eleven Games, No Answers
The New York Knicks have not lost a playoff game since April 23, the night they dropped Game 3 to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round. In the 27 days since, they have won eleven straight by an average of 23.8 points per game. The run includes a sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals — a four-game clinic that was not as close as its results suggested.
Jalen Brunson was named the Eastern Conference Finals MVP unanimously. He averaged 27.8 points and 6.7 assists through the postseason. He is just the fourth second-round pick in the last 45 years to lead his team in scoring entering the Finals, and he has been named All-NBA Second Team in three consecutive seasons. The point he has made, over and over, through this entire playoff run is that the Knicks do not require a spectacular performance from him on any given night — they require a good one, and they get it.
Their defense is the story. New York entered the Finals with a 104.3 defensive net rating — first in the playoffs — allowing 100.6 points per game. They are third in opponent field goal percentage at 43.3 percent. Against Cleveland, they held the Cavaliers to below 100 points in three of four games and won by margins of 25, 30, 37, and 37 points. The fourth game was the close one.
Karl-Anthony Towns controlled the interior. OG Anunoby defended wings. Josh Hart did everything that doesn’t appear in a box score. Mikal Bridges erased opponents from the perimeter. The Knicks are not a team that wins on one player’s brilliance — they are a machine that has been running at full capacity for more than a month with no indication it intends to stop.
The Matchups That Will Decide It
There is one fact around which all analysis of this series orbits: Victor Wembanyama is the best defensive player in the NBA. His 7-foot-3 frame, combined with an 8-foot wingspan and the footwork of a guard, allows him to contest shots from positions that should be impossible. New York has answered every question the 2026 playoffs asked of it. They have not yet faced someone like him at the rim.
Wembanyama vs. Karl-Anthony Towns is the series’ defining interior matchup. Towns — a 7-footer who can shoot contested threes, post smaller defenders, and dominate the offensive glass — is exactly the type of player capable of making Wembanyama’s life difficult. San Antonio will use inverted pick-and-rolls to pull Towns outside the paint, forcing him to defend Wembanyama on the perimeter and creating driving lanes for Castle. When Towns catches Wembanyama in a disadvantaged position at the basket, he has to finish through the noise. Those moments are scoreable. The question is whether they come often enough.
Stephon Castle vs. Jalen Brunson is the matchup most analysts are watching most closely. Castle is among the best on-ball defenders of his generation at his age. In the Western Conference Finals, he held Gilgeous-Alexander — the back-to-back MVP — to 45.5 percent shooting on possessions he defended him directly. Brunson is a different type of player: more reliant on mid-range pull-ups and isolation scoring, less dependent on speed to the rim. Castle will adjust. The question is whether Brunson can adjust first.
Josh Hart’s three-point shooting is the third variable that will determine how San Antonio manages its defensive alignment. The Spurs have not faced a genuine five-out offense in these playoffs — a team capable of spreading all five players beyond the arc and forcing the defense to choose. San Antonio’s opening adjustment will likely be to put Wembanyama on Hart and dare him to shoot. Hart made 43.3 percent of his wide-open threes during the regular season. If he makes them in the Finals, the Spurs lose their ability to collapse the paint with Wembanyama. If he misses, they load up on Brunson and make New York uncomfortable.
The Rest Advantage
The Knicks swept Cleveland on May 25. They enter Game 1 on nine days of rest — a recovery window that matters, in particular, for a team that will be playing its first Finals in 27 years.
The Spurs played their final game Saturday. Game 7 in Oklahoma City required a full, maximum-effort performance from a roster of players who have never been this deep into a postseason. Wembanyama played significant minutes across seven games against the defending champions. Whether nine days of preparation is enough to counteract that fatigue, and whether it manifests for San Antonio in the early games of the series, is a genuine variable.
Rest advantages in Finals history have been inconsistent — the more-rested team wins about as often as not — but for a young roster without Finals experience, the physical toll of a seven-game war against the reigning champions is worth tracking through the first two or three games.
What Comes Next
The schedule:
- Game 1: Wednesday, June 3, 8:30 p.m. ET — ABC — AT&T Center, San Antonio
- Game 2: Saturday, June 6, 8:30 p.m. ET — ABC — San Antonio
- Game 3: Tuesday, June 9 — Madison Square Garden, New York
- Game 4: Thursday, June 11 — New York
- Game 5 (if necessary): Sunday, June 14 — San Antonio
- Game 6 (if necessary): Wednesday, June 17 — New York
- Game 7 (if necessary): Sunday, June 21 — San Antonio
San Antonio holds home-court advantage as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference. New York was the No. 3 seed in the East. If the series reaches Game 7, it returns to AT&T Center — which means the Knicks would need to win in San Antonio to claim the championship. Doing that is how you can follow the full series on our sports coverage.
The last time New York appeared in the Finals was 1999, when the Spurs won in five games. Tim Duncan controlled that series from the first possession of Game 1. On Wednesday night, a 22-year-old from Paris who has already made the Spurs believe in the impossible will try to do something similar.
Whether he can is the only question that matters right now.
Sources 6 cited · 3 primary
- San Antonio Spurs win the West, beating Oklahoma City Thunder to head to NBA Finals
- Spurs' Victor Wembanyama named Western Conference Finals MVP
- Knicks blow out Cavaliers to complete sweep and reach first NBA Finals since 1999
- NBA Finals preview: Everything that will decide Knicks-Spurs
- New York Knicks vs. San Antonio Spurs NBA Finals preview: Can Wembanyama slow Knicks roll?
- Spurs Will Break NBA Finals Record That Has Stood for 49 Years
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