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Tim MacMahon
LAS VEGAS — Minutes after the Oklahoma City Thunder’s second loss of the season, some of the defending champions’ veterans loudly and playfully chided injured rookie Thomas Sorber for failing to have towels in their lockers on time.
They laughed while declaring that this failure to properly execute a rookie duty would result in Sorber having to “spin” when the team returned home, referring to a “Wheel of Fortune”-style device at the team’s practice facility that is used to assign an additional chore.
The Thunder were disappointed by their 111-109 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in Saturday’s NBA Cup semifinal — which snapped Oklahoma City’s franchise-record 16-game winning streak — but far from despondent.
“Personally, I think it’s exciting,” Oklahoma City superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It’s easier to learn when you don’t feel the way you want to feel. It stings a little bit more.
“We’ll also see these guys [twice in the next five] games. So, it will be a good challenge. Kind of like an automatic test, almost like in school. You fail the test, you get to retest a couple days later. That’s what it will probably feel like. Losing is where you find growth and where you really get better.”
The Thunder, who had their preferred starting lineup available for the first time since their Game 7 win in June’s NBA Finals, had matched the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors‘ record for the best 25-game start in NBA history by going 24-1 with a plus-17.4 average point differential.
“What are we, 24-2?” Thunder forward Jalen Williams said. “I mean, we can go home and just hang our hat on that or we can look at it as a way to get better and understand that we played against a playoff team that beat us and gave us a 2 on our [record]. So, that’s how we’ll look at it from a competitive standpoint.”
Oklahoma City opened Saturday’s game by performing up to its standard, building a 16-point lead with a few minutes left in the second quarter. But the Spurs rallied to within three points by halftime and took the lead with a 10-0 run in the third quarter.
“We got off to a decent start, but they won the last three quarters,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “They outplayed us tonight. This was a close game, but they outplayed us and deserved to win.
“I’m not sure exactly what happened in terms of what flipped it. But out of the 48 minutes, I thought they outplayed us for the majority of that. It’s hard to win a game, or at least control a game, when that’s the case.”
The return of Spurs big man Victor Wembanyama, who sat out the first quarter due to his minutes restriction after missing the previous 12 games with a left calf strain, was the primary factor in San Antonio turning this one around.
Wembanyama was a dominant force on both ends of the floor in his 21 minutes, finishing with 22 points, 9 rebounds and 2 blocks. The Spurs outscored the Thunder by 21 points with Wembanyama in the game.
“He’s just a mismatch for everybody. He’s 7-whatever he is, got good skill. That one possession, I knocked the ball away once and then hit it when on the way up, and he still found a way to make the shot,” Thunder guard Alex Caruso said, referring to the bucket that gave the Spurs the lead for good with 2:32 remaining in the contest. “Just a great player, and he’s going to keep getting better too.”
The Thunder had a chance to send the game into overtime in the final second, but Caruso wasn’t able to make what would have been a miraculous tip-in of Williams’ intentionally missed free throw. Caruso and others in an Oklahoma City uniform thought there was contact on the play that could have merited a foul call, but Caruso said he didn’t expect to get that kind of whistle with the game on the line.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Daigneault said when asked if there should have been a foul called on the play. “But when we play like that, I just am not going to come up in here and rail about the officiating. No one wants to hear that, to be honest with you.”
Oklahoma City power forward/center Chet Holmgren described the team as “eager and excited” to watch the film from the loss and figure out how to address flaws that were exposed by the Spurs.
The Thunder felt their offense became too stagnant, especially against an elite rim protector in Wembanyama. Gilgeous-Alexander, who scored a game-high 29 points but committed a season-high five turnovers, accepted much of the fault for that.
“We can’t be spoiled,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We can’t think we’re above anything. Us, along with every team in the league, if you show up on a night and don’t do the necessary thing to win, you probably won’t win, no matter how talented or no matter what your record looks like. That was the case for us tonight.”
