Narratives in the NBA can change at the snap of the finger. Just two weeks ago, the Oklahoma City Thunder were the clear-cut best team in the league. The whispers of a 73-plus win season grew louder. Questions arose whether teams should go all out now or wait for the reigning NBA champions to age out.
Now, OKC haters and skeptics were provided with the best Christmas gift ever — actual on-court results that show the Thunder are human. None of this hypothetical crap or make-believe talk. Actual game footage that found a weak spot in their indestructible armor, ala the Death Star.
The San Antonio Spurs have turned into OKC’s Kryptonite. For the first time since their ascension as a title contender, the Thunder have lost three times in a row to the same opponent. Each time, they looked worse against a squad with the same basketball model — albeit a shade younger, faster, more athletic and arguably hungrier.
Let’s recap the last two weeks.
The first matchup saw the Thunder be on the wrong side of a 111-109 loss to the Spurs in the NBA Cup semifinals. An upset for sure, but nothing to be too alarmed by. The Las Vegas neutral site conjured wacky circumstances that won’t happen the rest of the season.
The second matchup was a little bit more alarming. The Thunder were dominated in a 130-110 loss on Festivus. Sure, it was on the second night of a home-and-road back-to-back, but several OKC starters sat out Night 1 of that schedule jam to enter with fresh legs in San Antonio.
Didn’t matter. The Thunder had their worst loss of the season. For reference, their first three losses were by a combined nine points. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander did enough to secure the win, but Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren were outplayed by their counterparts and some other San Antonio role players — a disturbing theme in this matchup.
Christmas Day, the alarm bells sounded off. The Thunder were motivated and juiced. Besides it being this group’s first Christmas game, they wanted to get revenge on the squad that humiliated them less than 48 hours prior. Being at home provided a mental boost, too. OKC has been a win machine in its own home gym and hasn’t lost there since Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
Early on, the Thunder looked like the reigning NBA champion. Williams got to his mid-range spots. Holmgren was active as a scorer. But like Michael Myers, the Spurs kept pace in the background. Eventually, they once again sliced through OKC’s league-best defense like it was vintage Big 12 football.
The game turned uncompetitive in the second half. The Thunder crowd filed out as a Spurs assembly took over in the final seconds. A 117-102 loss has officially turned this from a couple of bad, excusable nights to a real problem. Williams and Holmgren once again had duds.
As the NBA world scrambles to catch up to how good the Spurs are, the Thunder will have to play the rest of the 2025-26 regular season with these three matchups in the back of their mind for the rest of the way. They can salvage the season series still with two more dates at OKC on Jan. 13 and at San Antonio on Feb. 4.
But even if the Thunder win those two games, the Spurs have already won the season series. And considering OKC will likely flirt with 65-plus wins, three of your losses coming from the hands of the same squad will stick with you for the rest of the year until proven otherwise.
The Thunder have zero interesting storylines for the rest of the regular season. Sure, they might get 65-plus wins and grab the first seed once again, but how they look in the playoffs is what will ultimately make or break their season.
You might sit there and argue — Duh. That’s the case for every team. But nobody else has the all-time pressure to win this season like the Thunder. They’ve been talked about for the last six months as the assumed repeat champions. Anytime you listened to a national podcast or read an ESPN piece, OKC was in its own tier.
That’s changed, now, though. And deservingly so. As Gilgeous-Alexander said, you don’t lose to the same team three times in a row without them being better than you. Of course, the playoffs are a different beast. The Spurs have yet to be tested there. We’ll see how they hold up in that environment — regardless of whether they play OKC in a playoff series.
But these last two weeks have shown it’s not a foregone conclusion that the Thunder will go back-to-back. That’s a massive win for the rest of the NBA. The Spurs look to be a nightmare matchup. That will hover over OKC for the rest of the 2025-26 regular season like a stormy cloud.