Oklahoma City Thunder guard Alex Caruso (9) celebrates with guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (2) after a 3-pointer through the first half of Game 2 within the Western Conference finals NBA basketball playoffs series against the San Antonio Spurs Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo\/Tony Gutierrez)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 The MVP looked just like the MVP again, and the NBA Western Conference finals are twisted up.<\/p>\n
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bounced back from a subpar series opener to attain 30 points, Alex Caruso added 17 off the bench and the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs 122-113 on Wednesday night in Game 2.<\/p>\n
Chet Holmgren scored 13 points and reserves Jared McCain and Cason Wallace each had 12 for Oklahoma City. The Thunder finished with a 57-25 edge in bench scoring, plus a 27-10 edge in points off turnovers.<\/p>\n
Stephon Castle scored 25 points for the Spurs, who got 22 points from Devin Vassell and a 21-point, 17-rebound, six-assist, four-block night from Victor Wembanyama.<\/p>\n
Game 3 is Friday in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe blokes brought it tonight. Knowing what it will have meant if we lost this one, we brought the energy from the jump,\u201d Gilgeous-Alexander said.<\/p>\n
![\"NBA](\"https:\/\/sports.inquirer.net\/files\/2026\/05\/AP26141058505622-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSan Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama, right, and guard Dylan Harper (2) defend against Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (2) through the first half of Game 2 within the Western Conference finals NBA basketball playoffs series Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo\/Nate Billings)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Isaiah Hartenstein \u2014 who barely played in Game 1 \u2014 had 10 points and 13 rebounds for the Thunder, who improved to 14-5 after a loss this season \u2014 and beat the Spurs for just the second time in seven meetings.<\/p>\n
The win was not without cost for the Thunder, who lost guard Jalen Williams \u2014 who had already missed six games in these playoffs with a left hamstring strain \u2014 in the primary half with a reoccurrence of the hamstring issue. The Thunder said it was tightness, but even that may figure to place his availability for Friday into doubt.<\/p>\n
And the Spurs got banged up as well. Already without All-Star guard De\u2019Aaron Fox due to ankle soreness, San Antonio lost his substitute within the starting lineup \u2014 Dylan Harper \u2014 to a right leg injury after he took a few awkward falls within the third quarter.<\/p>\n
San Antonio was down by 11 on the half and trailed by eight going into the fourth quarter, then got inside 99-97 off a corner 3-pointer by Harrison Barnes with 9:06 left.<\/p>\n
The subsequent 2 1\/2 minutes saved the Thunder. An 11-0 run by the defending champions \u2014 including a banked-in 3-pointer by Jared McCain midway through the burst \u2014 pushed OKC\u2019s result in 13.<\/p>\n
However the Spurs were removed from done. Wembanyama scored down low to make it 118-113 with 1:25 remaining, but Gilgeous-Alexander got one last basket to settle things down and send the series to San Antonio tied.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Oklahoma City Thunder guard Alex Caruso (9) celebrates with guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (2) after a 3-pointer through the first half of Game 2 within the Western Conference finals NBA basketball playoffs series against the San Antonio Spurs Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo\/Tony Gutierrez) OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 The MVP looked just like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[4216,1206,2178,9728,1111],"class_list":["post-338263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-series","tag-spurs","tag-thunder","tag-tie","tag-top"],"aioseo_notices":[{"message":"The permalink for this post just changed! This could result in 404 errors for your site visitors.","status":"warning","options":{"id":"0a2ae5f84bc2c0423042ed7ec22d2e40","isDismissible":true,"actions":[{"url":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/wp-admin\/admin.php?page=aioseo-redirects","label":"Add Redirect to improve SEO","class":"aioseo-redirects-slug-changed"}]},"allowedContexts":["posts"]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338263"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338266,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338263\/revisions\/338266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}