NBA Finals Set: OKC Thunder End Spurs' Run, Await Knicks in New York's First Finals Since '99

The Oklahoma City Thunder are going to the NBA Finals.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 36 points and the Thunder closed out the San Antonio Spurs 114-97 in Game 6 on Thursday afternoon at Paycom Center, completing a 4-2 Western Conference Finals series win. The victory sets up a NBA Finals matchup against the New York Knicks that begins June 4 — a series pitting two franchises whose Finals droughts stretch across decades and whose paths to the championship reflect opposite poles of team-building philosophy.

For Oklahoma City, it is the franchise’s first Finals appearance since 2012, when a Durant-and-Westbrook-era Thunder team lost to LeBron James and the Miami Heat in five games. For New York, it is the first Finals since 1999, when the Knicks — reaching the championship round as the eighth seed after Patrick Ewing went down with a torn Achilles tendon — lost to the San Antonio Spurs in five games. The same franchise that beat New York 27 years ago is the team the Thunder just eliminated to earn the right to face the Knicks again.

Game 6 in Oklahoma City

The Thunder took control in the second quarter and never fully relinquished it. San Antonio managed to pull within nine early in the fourth period, a brief run fueled by Victor Wembanyama, who finished with 31 points and 13 rebounds in a loss — a performance that underscored everything the Spurs showed in this series and everything that couldn’t get them over the line against Oklahoma City’s defensive depth and Gilgeous-Alexander’s relentless scoring.

Gilgeous-Alexander was 14 for 24 from the floor, 7 for 8 from the free-throw line. Jalen Williams added 22 points and six assists. Chet Holmgren shot 6 for 9 and swatted four Wembanyama attempts, a defensive subplot that ran through most of the series: a 24-year-old trying to contain a 22-year-old, two elite young big men who will be the most prominent members of their conference for years to come. On Thursday, Holmgren won the battle.

How the Thunder Were Built

No franchise in professional sports has used the modern draft lottery more deliberately than the Oklahoma City Thunder. After trading Kevin Durant to Golden State in 2016, general manager Sam Presti accumulated draft capital at a scale that became a running NBA storyline — at various points, the Thunder owned so many future first-round picks that analysts joked the league should change its rules.

Gilgeous-Alexander arrived first, acquired from the Los Angeles Clippers in the Paul George trade in 2019 and gradually developed into one of the three best players in the NBA. Williams came in the 2022 draft, chosen 12th overall. Holmgren was the second overall pick in 2022, a season he missed entirely due to injury before emerging as one of the league’s best defensive bigs. The 2024-25 season, when Oklahoma City finished with the best record in the Western Conference, felt like an arrival. This postseason removed the qualifier.

The Thunder lost three consecutive playoff series between 2019 and 2024 — each one a step farther than the previous — before reaching this WCF against a Spurs team that, built entirely around Wembanyama, presented the most unusual defensive problem they had faced. Oklahoma City’s answer was depth and pace: the Thunder switch almost everything, run a pace that average teams struggle to maintain over six games, and allow Gilgeous-Alexander to generate advantages in situations that don’t reveal themselves in film study.

Coach Mark Daigneault, 38, was promoted from the G League Charge to the Oklahoma City sideline during the 2020-21 season and has spent most of his tenure building a team culture that the league now uses as a reference point for how to grow through youth rather than around veterans.

What the Knicks Bring

The New York Knicks present a fundamentally different problem from the Spurs. San Antonio’s identity was Wembanyama — a singular talent that required specific defensive attention from nearly every possession. The Knicks have five legitimate playoff-level contributors and a coach, Tom Thibodeau, who has been drilling defensive schemes for twenty years and has never run from a fight.

Point guard Jalen Brunson averaged 25.5 points and 7.8 assists across the four-game sweep of Cleveland in the Eastern Conference Finals — a display of consistency and shot creation that earned him the Larry Bird Trophy as ECF MVP. Brunson, 30, was not a high lottery pick. Dallas selected him 33rd overall in 2018. He spent four years as a complementary piece for the Mavericks before signing with New York, where he has transformed into the first Knicks star in a generation capable of carrying a postseason run. The Eastern Conference Finals sweep of Cleveland was the kind of performance that happens once or twice a decade for a franchise that hasn’t known this kind of winning in a very long time.

The Knicks also reached the Finals only after Philadelphia’s stunning Game 7 upset of the Boston Celtics cleared the path for what became a more open Eastern bracket than anyone expected entering the postseason. Boston, the two-time defending Eastern Conference champion, was eliminated by Joel Embiid and the 76ers in the second round. The Knicks, who had beaten Philadelphia in the first round by taking the final two games in Philadelphia, then handled the Cavaliers with methodical ease.

Karl-Anthony Towns, the 7-foot center New York acquired in a trade with Minnesota in 2024, gives the Knicks a legitimate answer to Holmgren — a stretch big who can operate in the paint and shoot from range. OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, and Landry Shamet off the bench provide the depth Thibodeau will need if this series stretches to six or seven games.

Madison Square Garden in June

Both teams have reasons to believe this is their moment. The case for Oklahoma City is arithmetic: the Thunder had the best record in the Western Conference, their best player is the reigning MVP, and they are built for playoff basketball in a way that goes beyond any single player’s contribution. This franchise has been assembled brick by brick for eight years with the Finals as the specific destination.

The case for New York is older and louder. Madison Square Garden has not hosted an NBA Finals game since 1999. A generation of Knicks fans who grew up watching Patrick Ewing and Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell — who watched the franchise decay through the Isiah Thomas years, the Carmelo Anthony years, the triangle-offense years — is now watching a team that genuinely might win. The city does not take those moments quietly. Game 3, scheduled for June 10 at Madison Square Garden, will be played in front of the loudest arena in professional basketball.

The Thunder enter the Finals as road favorites in most early-market lines, owing primarily to the margin of talent advantage that Gilgeous-Alexander creates game by game. The Knicks have the home court split that comes with the East’s higher seed meeting the West’s — Games 1 and 2 in Oklahoma City, Games 3 and 4 at MSG, any remaining games alternating.

The Matchup That Defines the Series

Point guard play will set the terms of this Finals. Gilgeous-Alexander and Brunson are different players — SGA longer and more explosive, Brunson more deliberately precise in pick-and-roll decisions — but both are elite at creating offense for themselves and for others in the late-clock situations that define playoff basketball. Neither has appeared in the Finals before. Both have been carrying postseason runs that look increasingly like a permanent resume entry rather than a career peak.

Thibodeau’s defenses are built to slow that kind of ball-handler. He will guard SGA with a combination of switching, drop coverage, and controlled fouling that limits the open looks OKC’s shooters normally see off Gilgeous-Alexander pick-and-rolls. Whether Brunson can exploit the defensive attention Oklahoma City will need to pay to stop him — drawing enough attention to open Williams and Holmgren, or drawing enough fouls to get to the free-throw line against an already-thin Thunder bench — is the primary tactical question of the series.

What Happens Next

The 2026 NBA Finals begin Thursday, June 4, at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. Game 2 is June 7. The series moves to Madison Square Garden for Game 3 on June 10 and Game 4 on June 12. If needed, Games 5 and 7 return to Oklahoma City; Game 6 would be in New York. All games air on ABC.

The Thunder have been building toward this for eight years. The Knicks have been waiting 27. On a Memorial Day that opened with Felix Rosenqvist winning the closest Indianapolis 500 in race history, it closed with the NBA’s biggest remaining question settled.

The opening tip is fourteen days away.