The NBA’s new season kicked off Tuesday with exactly the kind of matchup the league wanted for opening night, and it delivered. Oklahoma City beat San Antonio 93-79 at Frost Bank Center, a rematch of last season’s Western Conference finals that the Spurs won in seven games on their way to their first title since 1999.
This time, the Thunder made sure there was no late drama.
The game started close enough. Oklahoma City led 34-28 after a scrappy first quarter in which they shot a remarkable 5-of-6 from three-point range to stay ahead of a feisty Spurs squad. Then the second quarter happened, and it basically settled things. The Thunder outscored San Antonio 31-16 over that stretch, turning a six-point edge into a 21-point cushion, 65-44, at halftime.
San Antonio clawed back some ground in the third, cutting it down to 13 at one stretch, and had a real push going in the fourth behind a Stephon Castle three that triggered a 14-3 run. But Oklahoma City had banked enough of a cushion from that second-quarter explosion to absorb the push and close it out, 93-79.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander looked every bit the reigning MVP-caliber player he’s been for the past couple seasons, finishing with 26 points, efficient shooting, and his usual mix of pull-up jumpers and trips to the free-throw line. It was a quietly dominant performance rather than a flashy one, the kind that’s defined a lot of his recent run against this exact opponent.
Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams chipped in down low and on the wing, with Oklahoma City shooting 52% from the field for the game, a sharp contrast to San Antonio’s 29% clip. That shooting gap, more than any single sequence, was really the story of the night.
Victor Wembanyama wasn’t invisible. He racked up multiple blocks well before halftime and remained the one Spurs player Oklahoma City had to design its offense around, but San Antonio’s supporting cast struggled badly from the field, particularly from three, where they shot just 25% as a team. Stephon Castle gave the Spurs a spark late, especially during that fourth-quarter run, but it wasn’t enough to erase a deficit that had ballooned to over 20 points at its peak.
This wasn’t just two good teams playing a random opener. These two have genuine recent history. Oklahoma City posted the NBA’s best record for the second straight season a year ago at 64-18, only to run into a Spurs team that had quietly put together its best season since 2015-16, 62 wins, and then beat the Thunder in a seven-game classic in the Western Conference finals. San Antonio went on to beat the New York Knicks for the title, becoming the first Finals since at least recent memory where every game stayed within five points in the final five minutes.
For Oklahoma City, Tuesday’s win doesn’t erase that Game 7 loss, but it’s a meaningful way to open a new season against the team that ended the last one. For San Antonio, it’s an early reminder that last year’s magic doesn’t automatically carry over, especially on the road, in a building that wasn’t actually their own.
One game, even an opening-night statement win, doesn’t define an 82-game season. But symbolically, this one mattered. Oklahoma City entered with real questions about depth, missing Nikola Topic, Thomas Sorber and Otega Oweh to various injuries, and still found a way to blow the doors off a defending champion on the road. San Antonio, meanwhile, now has an early data point suggesting last year’s seven-game war with Oklahoma City might not be a one-off rivalry, but a genuine, ongoing measuring stick for both franchises.
Both teams move on to the rest of an 82-game schedule that’s sure to feature this matchup again, likely more than once, before the postseason even arrives. For Oklahoma City, Tuesday was a statement that last spring’s disappointment hasn’t knocked them off course. For San Antonio, it’s a early lesson that defending a title starts with closing out games they’d led by double digits just a season ago, something they weren’t able to do on opening night.
