SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 26 points and 12 assists, and the Oklahoma City Thunder climbed out of a 15-point hole minutes into the game to beat the San Antonio Spurs 123-108 on Friday night and take a 2-1 lead in their series.<\/p>\n
Jared McCain had 24 points and Jaylin Williams added 18 for Oklahoma City. The Thunder were without Jalen Williams, who sat out with left hamstring soreness.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City\u2019s bench outscored San Antonio\u2019s 76-23, including 15 points by Alex Caruso.<\/p>\n
Victor Wembanyama had 24 points for San Antonio. Devin Vassell added 20 and De’Aaron Fox had 15 in his series debut.<\/p>\n
The Thunder have won two straight after the Spurs’ double-overtime victory in Game 1. Game 4 is Sunday.<\/p>\n
Fox (sprained right ankle) and Dylan Harper (right adductor soreness) were cleared to play 45 minutes prior to tipoff.<\/p>\n
Fox’s return sparked a historic start.<\/p>\n
The Spurs raced to a 15-0 lead, the longest run to open a game in the conference finals since the play-by-play era began in 1997.<\/p>\n
Fox opened the run by wrapping in a driving layup and Wembanyama followed by crossing over Isaiah Hartenstein to drill a 3-pointer. Vassell\u2019s 3-pointer put the Spurs up 10-0, leading to an early timeout by Thunder coach Mark Daigneault.<\/p>\n
Hartenstein broke the drought with a runner over Wembanyama, but the center was immediately greeted with thunderous boos after his physical play against the Spurs in Game 2.<\/p>\n
The Thunder went on a 13-2 run when Wembanyama went to the bench and closed the first quarter trailing 31-26.<\/p>\n
It was a pattern the Spurs could not overcome.<\/p>\n
The series continued to be chippy with emotions boiling over early in the second half. Stephon Castle hit the court on back-to-back dunk attempts. The second resulted in a flagrant 1 foul against Ajay Mitchell and technical fouls on Mitchell and Vassell after the two exchanged words following the foul.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back 3-pointers by Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams extended Oklahoma City’s first lead to 35-31.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 26 points and 12 assists, and the Oklahoma City Thunder climbed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[5577,328,7,1314,2725,226,292,194,4066,949,364,1255,6563,1622,6,475,29499,29496,29494,62644,29498,62646,62649,211,969,209,930,91546,693],"class_list":["post-741606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-rockets","tag-ajay-mitchell","tag-alex-caruso","tag-basketball","tag-deaaron-fox","tag-devin-vassell","tag-dylan-harper","tag-houston","tag-houston-rockets","tag-houstonrockets","tag-isaiah-hartenstein","tag-jalen-williams","tag-jared-mccain","tag-jaylin-williams","tag-mark-daigneault","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32547-ap-online-basketball-game-stories","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40807-ap-oklahoma-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-rockets","tag-san-antonio","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","tag-stephon-castle","tag-thunder-spurs-score-gilgeousalexander-wembanyama","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741606","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=741606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}