Thunder silence Spurs, take 3-2 lead in Game 5

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 32 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs 127-114 in Game 5 to move one win away from the NBA Finals.

For most of the early going Tuesday night, the Thunder didn’t look like a team walking through turbulence. They looked like a team ready to respond.

By the time the first free throws finally started to roll in—nearly 10 minutes in—Oklahoma City had already established a rhythm. and when the foul parade began. it didn’t stop. The Thunder’s 127-114 win over the San Antonio Spurs moved them one win away from returning to the NBA Finals. with Oklahoma City leading the Western Conference finals 3-2.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 32 points, while Alex Caruso spearheaded another strong bench effort with 22. Jared McCain. getting the call in his first playoff start for the defending NBA champion Thunder. scored 20 after Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell were sidelined. Chet Holmgren had 16 points and 11 rebounds, and Isaiah Hartenstein posted 12 points and 15 rebounds.

Thunder coach Mark Daigneault framed it as bounce-back basketball—about showing up the next day with adjustments instead of lingering on the previous loss. Oklahoma City had been held to 82 points in Game 4 two days earlier. On Tuesday, they already had 82 points before the third quarter was 3 1/2 minutes old.

“We obviously played a lot better, in terms of our process and then also the outcome,” Daigneault said. “It’s a playoff series. If you look at any playoff series that goes to six games. at least. there’s going to be some tough games. We had a tough game the other night. This team does a great job of just coming back in the next day in a very neutral way. taking whatever the lessons are. applying them forward and getting into the next opportunity.”.

San Antonio had its own answers. Stephon Castle scored 24 points, Julian Champagnie added 22, and Victor Wembanyama contributed 20 points. But Wembanyama was held to 4-of-15 shooting, and the Spurs couldn’t find enough consistent scoring to keep pace.

Keldon Johnson scored 15 off the bench for San Antonio. The Spurs missed 29 of their 41 3-point tries, a number that became harder to overcome as the Thunder pushed the tempo.

Oklahoma City scored 40 points in the second quarter to take control and kept the lead for the rest of the night. In the third, the Thunder went up by 20. San Antonio did close within eight. but the Spurs still finished the evening short of the kind of comeback that would have flipped the series momentum.

In the final minute of the third quarter, frustrations surfaced. The Spurs appeared upset with missed calls. and the sequence ended with a technical foul for Johnson after he attempted to challenge an out-of-bounds decision. Luke Kornet tipped in a try with about 56 seconds left; it was knocked off the rim by Oklahoma City’s Cason Wallace and should have been goaltending. Then. on the next Spurs possession. an out-of-bounds call that appeared—based on replays—should have gone San Antonio did not. Johnson tried to challenge the call, got ignored, then argued and was assessed a technical foul.

“They just said they didn’t see me,” Johnson said.

After that, Oklahoma City carried a 101-91 lead into the fourth and kept a double-digit cushion for all but 25 seconds. The margin underscored just how different Tuesday looked from Sunday, when the Thunder suffered a 21-point loss in San Antonio.

“We definitely got better from the last game,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We just played to who we were tonight.”

The second quarter itself became a defining stretch. The teams combined to make 29 free throws in that period— the most in any NBA game’s second quarter since the bubble playoffs nearly six years ago. It wasn’t lopsided: the Spurs were 15 for 17 in the quarter, and the Thunder were 14 for 14.

For San Antonio, the task now is clear. Game 6 is Thursday in San Antonio. If there is a Game 7, it will be back in Oklahoma City on Saturday.

Across the NBA landscape, the postseason picture is beginning to form. The Knicks will visit either the Thunder or Spurs in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on June 3.

For the Spurs, the message from Tuesday was blunt: to beat a team of this caliber, in its building, with the stakes this high, they need to put themselves in position on each possession—something their coach said they didn’t do enough.

“It just felt like it was a little bit of everything in terms of we did not put ourselves in position enough to be successful on each possession. ” Mitch Johnson said. “And so. to beat a team of this caliber. in their building. with the stakes. we’ll need to be a lot better to give yourself a chance.”.

NBA Western Conference finals Oklahoma City Thunder San Antonio Spurs Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Alex Caruso Game 5 Chet Holmgren Isaiah Hartenstein Victor Wembanyama Mitch Johnson