The San Antonio Spurs have pulled off a resilient win in Game 6 after defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder 118-91 to force a Game 7 in their Western Conference Finals series. Victor Wembanyama pulled off a dominant performance to lead all scorers with 28 points, 10 rebounds, two assists, two steals, and three blocks while shooting 10-21 from the field (47.6 FG%) and 4-9 from behind the three-point line (44.4 3P%).
Players are often encouraged to do everything they possibly can to win; that is the competitive spirit of sports. But the line of morality is often what defines the sportsman spirit.
During Game 6, several plays from the Spurs came under public scrutiny as the intensity of the players’ physicality reached new heights. Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs’ rookie Carter Bryant were the targets of that criticism. Here’s a compilation of all the contentious plays in the game that reflected poorly on Wembanyama and Bryant.
“OKC is allowed to play football” pic.twitter.com/ge5kXbrCYw
— Kemper Ball (@KemperBall) May 29, 2026
From Victor Wembanyama shoving Cason Wallace to the ground, pulling Lu Dort back by his hair, to Carter Bryant bulldozing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to the floor on separate occasions led to a lot of uproar on social media.
Media members were extremely unhappy with what the Spurs were being allowed to get away with since only Carter Bryant was penalized on one of the two instances, and that too with just a common foul.
“It’s hilarious the Spurs are actually the dirty team. Wemby is instructing “hard foul” in garbage time, Bryant just bulldozes Shai… the list goes on. They are the team to hate,” wrote Carson Cunningham, a former sports anchor on X, after a leaked video revealed Victor Wembanyama told his teammates to foul the Thunder hard in Game 5.
“These Spurs are a bunch of home front-running, cheap-shotting, fake tough guys led by Wembanyama who sent his goons after the Thunder when he got his a– kicked in OKC,” wrote Skip Bayless on X.
However, most NBA fans took an opposing stance to this as they believed it was the Thunder who brought the Spurs to this level of intensity on the court. And now, the fans believed that the Spurs are giving the defending champions a taste of their own medicine.
“Someone make a compilation for OKC. It will be two hours long.”
“OKC is just as dirty. I don’t know why you guys are complaining.”
“I believe this is what laymen call ‘a taste of your own medicine’.”
“That’s what happens when you’re fed up with the flops.”
Several such reactions from NBA fans flooded social media, even when the Thunder’s fans tried to criticize the Spurs. Earlier in this series, we have seen incidents ranging from hair-pulling to intentionally stepping on a player’s foot to stop them from contesting a rebound. So it is natural that NBA fans feel that this is a form of karmic justice for the Thunder.
The Spurs’ physical defense held the Thunder to under 100 points scored for the second time in these playoffs. No other team did that in the entire season. However, in my opinion, that does not mean that two wrongs do not make a right.
But I am optimistic that the NBA is looking to rain down upon such controversial physicality in the game. Just last night, NBA commissioner Adam Silver confirmed that they will introduce an Artificial Intelligence-based technology into officiating so that the human officials can focus on eradicating or appropriately penalizing such questionable plays.
Three of the four plays mentioned in the video did not have any consequences for the offender because the officials seemingly missed the points of contact. If artificial intelligence is introduced so that the human officials can focus on the physical contact element of officiating, such incidents can be avoided in the future altogether.
