{"id":709942,"date":"2026-04-13T23:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T23:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709942\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T23:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T23:21:14","slug":"spurs-victor-wembanyama-declared-biggest-threat-to-thunder-by-nba-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709942\/","title":{"rendered":"Spurs, Victor Wembanyama declared biggest threat to Thunder by NBA players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spurs, Victor Wembanyama declared biggest threat to Thunder by NBA players<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No one expected the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> to be this big of a threat after just three years of having Victor Wembanyama. They have a perennial MVP candidate and will likely win multiple titles under his leadership. But, a large majority of their peers think that the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> will still win it all despite this. Although, the disparity in the anonymous NBA player votes are not as huge as most people would think.<\/p>\n

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Spurs, Wembanyama might be the NBA Playoffs bane of the Thunder<\/p>\n

Clearly, the Thunder are still heavily-favored to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy for a second time. The Athletic’s anonymous NBA player poll<\/a> asked 146 voters and 50% of them picked Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to lead the squad atop the league again. However, there were only two teams that got double-digit percentages in this survey. The other was Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs<\/a>. These upcoming titans of the West notched an eye-popping 25.3% of the votes.<\/p>\n

A voter explained why Wembanyama and the Spurs could win it all. Moreover, he emphasized what the Western Conference second seed lacks that the Thunder have.<\/p>\n

“They have a really good shot. I think the biggest problem they’ll run into is their lack of experience at that point of the year. But with just their size, length, athleticism and shooting, I think they’re a high-level team,” the anonymous NBA player declared.<\/p>\n

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All of these concerns hold true. There are only a handful of teams to have notched a superstar that have won the Larry O’Brien trophy after entirely missing the postseason. The field also narrows when considering that the star player had just gotten into the league within a four-year window of hoisting the championship. But, the players who have accomplished these are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks<\/a>, Bill Walton with the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers<\/a>, and Larry Bird with the 1981 Boston Celtics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the claims of Wembanyama being a generational talent are right, he should have no problem leading the Spurs to a title in just his third year. Will he prove those 25.3% of NBA players correct when summer comes around the corner?<\/p>\n

More Spurs News:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spurs, Victor Wembanyama declared biggest threat to Thunder by NBA players originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,75,83730,121,6,11,179,471,474,209,2594,693],"class_list":{"0":"post-709942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-larry-o39brien","11":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nba-playoffs","14":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","15":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","16":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","17":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","18":"tag-the-spurs","19":"tag-victor-wembanyama"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116399969663044318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}