The Thunder Spurs opener saw Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hang 32 on San Antonio as Oklahoma City avenged last spring’s playoff exit on opening night.
By The Beat Writer — CelebnMusic247
Revenge, served on night one. The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs 116-104 in San Antonio on Tuesday, opening the 2026-27 NBA season by beating the team that eliminated them in a seven-game Western Conference finals last spring, per USA Today.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the best player on the floor and it was not close: 32 points, six rebounds, four assists, three steals and three blocks. It was his 141st straight game with 20-plus points, the longest streak in NBA history, per the NBC broadcast. Victor Wembanyama, last season’s Defensive Player of the Year, had the strangest night of his young career — he started 0-for-12 from the field, the longest drought of his career, and his only field-goal points came on an alley-oop dunk late in the third quarter. He still finished with 12 points, 13 rebounds, three assists and six blocks, a stat line that tells you how a superstar can be shut down as a scorer and still bend a game.
The one flash of real heat came in the third quarter, when De’Aaron Fox committed a hard foul on Chet Holmgren and the rivalry turned chippy — Bleacher Report counted four technicals and a flagrant assessed across the night’s friction. For two young cores that expect to see each other every May, that edge is not a bug. It is the point.
Gilgeous-Alexander, to his credit, refused to oversell it afterward. “Obviously, it’s the team that eliminated us from achieving our goal, but for us, I think it was more we’re just happy to be back,” he said on the NBC broadcast. “One of 82. This doesn’t prove anything… We gotta do it 81 more times.” Wembanyama, 22 and ranked No. 3 on USA Today’s preseason top-100, and Gilgeous-Alexander, 28 and ranked No. 1, open the season as the MVP race’s twin poles — and if Tuesday is the template, the race runs through this matchup all year.
San Antonio was playing without the safety net of last June’s Finals run to lean on in this Thunder Spurs opener, and the Spurs’ offense never found a second gear once Wembanyama’s jumper deserted him. Oklahoma City, riding in off Gilgeous-Alexander’s second MVP season and their 2025 championship pedigree, controlled most of the night — the kind of businesslike road win contenders stack in October and cash in during April seeding tiebreakers.
The 247 Take — One game proves nothing, as SGA said, but the gap Tuesday was real: Oklahoma City has a closer in his prime, and San Antonio still needs Wembanyama’s shot to travel with his defense. Round one of the league’s best new rivalry goes to the Thunder.
More sports news at CelebnMusic247.com.
Sources: USA Today (Oct. 20, 2026); Bleacher Report (opening-night coverage, Oct. 20, 2026)
