Mateo’s Hoop Diary: Notes on the Western Conference Finals between OKC and San Antonio

The Western Conference Finals are headed for Game 7 in Oklahoma City on Saturday, deciding which team will face off against the New York Knicks in the championship round.  As it was correctly pointed out on Game 6’s NBC/Peacock broadcast, it’s been the best WCF since 2018. 

Here are some quick stats ahead of Game 7:

1.The Spurs haven’t been able to punish OKC from the corners (29.8 percent).

2.OKC’s bench (49.1) has outscored San Antonio’s (28.8) in all but one game. 

3.The leading scorers for each team have been Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (24.3 on 37.9 percent shooting) and Victor Wembanyama (28.2 on 48.2 percent accuracy).

4.Before this postseason, home teams won a Game 7 74.2 percent of the time. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers were the only teams that won a Game 7 on the road this year.

5.The only road victories of the series were Game 1 for the Spurs and Game 3 for the Thunder. 

Naturally, both sides are sick of each other; the Thunder have flopped, plus Lu Dort has deployed dirty tactics, like recklessly jumping into De’Aaron Fox’s leg. Carter Bryant has given it back to them by ramming into Shai Gilgeous-Alexander twice in Game 6 and was lucky he didn’t get ejected. 

The champs are at a disadvantage because their second-best player (Jalen Williams) made an ineffective return from hamstring injury following a three-game absence, and Ajay Mitchell missed the last three outings with a calf strain, too. Yet Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is further validating his MVP crown by picking up the slack for them and others. While the sportsbooks favor the Thunder, it will still take a top-notch performance from SGA to eliminate the Spurs since Chet Holmgren has been physically overmatched for much of the series.

The same can be said for Wembanyama if he wants to put down the champs. The best way he can do that is to catch most of his passes from the middle to short range, so he doesn’t have to work as hard. Putting him in motion as the curler around stagger and down screens, or passing to him after using him as the screener, would help.

On top of that, since its Game 7, coach Mitch Johnson can’t conserve Wemby’s minutes, and has to be prepared to let him go into the 40s without overtime, especially when Fox has been having a rough series. Playing him below 40 was one of the reasons they lost Game 2, 3 and 5 as well.

The Thunder are chasing history to be the eighth team to repeat and the first since 2017 & 2018 (Golden State Warriors). The Spurs are the new kids on the block that want what they have. This will be a series that’s remembered.