On March 1, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued, and the Spurs faced the Thunder at home. There seemed to be no suspense in this game, but Spurs showed excellent touch in this game and kept the initiative. In the early days, the Thunder maintained a relative balance with their opponents, but in the final quarter, the Thunder's performance suddenly went downhill, and the Spurs took advantage of the victory to chase and widen the difference. In the end, the Spurs defeated the Thunder by a shocking score of 132-118 and broke out an upset.
The Thunder have been in a very good season and have been on a winning streak lately, battling the Timberwolves for the first spot in the West. At the beginning of this game, the Thunder's performance was not bad, but they failed to break the Spurs, and the score remained tense. Then, Spurs gradually took the initiative at home. The Thunder relied on Alexander's scoring to keep up with the chase for a while, but in the final quarter they couldn't keep up with the pace of the game, the outside feel was sluggish, and the other players failed to step up, the difference was widened by the Spurs, and the game lost suspense, and finally suffered a 14-point defeat.
The result can be said to be a bit of a surprise, after all, the Thunder have been on a good momentum lately. And the team's new Big Three continued to perform well, contributing together 80 points, but it was in vain. Alexander had 31 points and six rebounds, Holmgren had 23 points, seven rebounds and five assists, and Jalen Williams contributed 26 points and six rebounds. However, apart from these three players, only one player on the team had a double-double, with Joe scoring 15 points off the bench and the rest of the players performing sluggishly. The team's three-point shooting rate was 9-of-31, and it was difficult to win with a shooting percentage of less than 30%.
Unlike the Thunder, who are facing a sluggish hand, the Spurs are very hot. Throughout the game, they made 39 of 19 shots from beyond the three-point line, nearly 50 percent shooting, making them very difficult to beat. In addition, the Spurs are also very spread out in scoring, with six players reaching double figures, and Wembanyama has the upper hand in the matchup against Holmgren, contributing excellent statistics of 28 points, 13 rebounds, 7 assists and 5 blocks. This match seems to confirm that the race for the best rookie is no longer in suspense.
In addition to Wembanyama, the Spurs had 28 points and nine assists, Sochan contributed 21 points and 10 rebounds, Jones had 17 points, six rebounds and eight assists, Collins contributed 13 points and Keldon contributed 10 points. Every player contributed to the victory, which culminated in an unexpected big victory. Wins like this are very important for the team, at least to show them that winning is possible if they play at a high level.