The Oklahoma City Thunder have crashed out of the 2026 NBA Playoffs after a 111-103 Game 7 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals. While the Spurs move on to face the New York Knicks, the Thunder can only watch as spectators, with San Antonio’s emergence potentially ending their burgeoning dynasty after one championship run.
It’s obvious to fans that the Thunder and Spurs will be dominating the Western Conference for years to come, with their young cores already coming off 60-win seasons where everyone else looked miles off their level. But the advantage has gone to San Antonio, who have a famous series win over the Thunder in their first-ever Playoff run with Victor Wembanyama leading the franchise.
The 22-year-old Wembanyama is surrounded by 21-year-old Stephon Castle and 20-year-old Dylan Harper, which has many thinking that the Spurs might be a problem for a very long time. However, Thunder guard Alex Caruso dismissed the Spurs as an unbeatable team in his post-game media interview, claiming that there is ‘nothing that needs to be solved’ about San Antonio’s style of play.
“There’s nothing that needs to be solved. We could’ve won the game tonight. You would’ve been asking them the same thing. I don’t think there’s this narrative that this is a bugaboo. We should’ve played better and won the game and been in the NBA Finals. They’re a good team, they’re young. We’ll both probably be around for a while. But we’ve gotta get better and try and win next time.”
Caruso averaged 14.9 points on 50.0% from three in a strong series, but his poor impact in the losses in Games 4, 6, and 7 definitely played a role in OKC’s exit. He’s still going to be a core player for them going forward, so his estimation of the Spurs is based on what he played against. He’s not wrong when he says that the Thunder don’t need to solve anything, given how close the margins in this series were.
In addition, the Thunder were without two key offensive weapons in Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell for most of this series. The Thunder will feel like they’re the better team who failed to get the job done, not as an underdog who pushed a titan to seven games and just fell short. The Thunder have the confidence of former champions already, while the Spurs still need to go on and secure their championship against the Knicks in the Finals.
Even with Caruso’s confidence and the close nature of this series, one has to be cognizant of the rapid development the Spurs’ core will likely face over the offseason. Most of their players are already young and early in their developmental cycle, and now they have the experience of a Finals run behind them as well. That experience might not count for much, given how OKC just lost, but it is a necessary step in the maturation of a core.
The Spurs will be better next season because their young players should improve. The Thunder are also young and will likely improve, but they also missed some core contributors in this series. If they were available, we might be having a different conversation altogether, which is what Caruso also implied.
