OKLAHOMA CITY — If you’re a fan of either of the two superpowers knocking each other silly with haymakers in the Western Conference finals this week, I have good news and bad news.
The good news: even in our current era of aprons and free agency and whatnot, your team is built to stay this good for a very, very long time.
The bad news: so is your rival just across the state border.
And if you’re a fan of any of the 13 West teams that aren’t the San Antonio Spurs or Oklahoma Thunder, well … I have bad news and bad news.
The bad news is that the Spurs and Thunder seem set to win 60-plus games a year well into the next decade. The other bad news is that only one of those 13 teams can move to the East when expansion hits.
I’m not sure what you do if you’re a middling-to-good, veteran West playoff team right now. If you’re, say, the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers or Minnesota Timberwolves, you can talk yourself into being a conference champion in the East. (Um, especially the Wolves, given their geography. Is it 2028 yet?)
But in the West, stacked up against these two teams? And having to beat both of them, consecutively, at literally any time in the next half-decade? Good luck with that.
Those West hopefuls look like nothing more than 13 basketball Andy Roddicks, needing not just the minor miracle of beating Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer, but also to beat both of them back-to-back to win a major. (Kids, from early 2005 to late 2009, there were 18 Grand Slam tennis tournaments; Fed and Nadal won 17 of them.)
Break it down, and it becomes clear the Thunder and Spurs are positioned to become this generation’s Lakers and Boston Celtics, two comets set on a late-May collision course year after year after year. Sure, the unholy trinity of injuries, infighting and incompetence could intervene somewhere along the way, but it’s hard to imagine two teams better-positioned for future dominance.
Already, this year’s matchup is this century’s first with two teams that lost 20 or fewer games (in an 82-game season). And aside from three straight Michael Jordan-Chicago Bulls NBA Finals in the mid-1990s, the last time we had two teams with records this good meet in the playoffs was … Lakers-Celtics in 1985.
Wait, we’re just getting started. How are the Thunder and Spurs built to dominate the next half-decade or more? Let us count the ways.
They’re good
Thank you, Captain Obvious. The issue with the Thunder and Spurs isn’t just that they won a lot, but also that all the underlying stats indicate they might be even better than their records. Oklahoma City’s plus-11.1 scoring margin was one of the best marks of all time. A team with that differential usually wins more than 64 games. San Antonio, meanwhile, had a robust plus-8.3 margin that ballooned to a staggering plus-20.6 when the minutes-restricted Victor Wembanyama was on the floor.
Both also overcame serious injuries to key players; Wembanyama missed 18 games for the Spurs, most notably, while MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missed 14 for the Thunder and All-Star forward Jalen Williams was limited to 33 games by recurring hamstring problems. (Williams, alas, left Game 2 with another hamstring issue.)
They’re getting better
Both of these teams came on like gangbusters late; the Spurs went 28-2 in the final 30 regular-season games that Wembanyama played and Oklahoma City roared to a 19-1 close to the season and then won its first eight playoff games. The Thunder have only lost five games since the All-Star break, and two of them were meaningless games they played to end the regular season.
They’re young
Being good is one thing, but usually the best teams are veteran-laden. Not these two. Not only are they awesome now, but they’re also young enough that their key players are likely to get better.
Of the Thunder’s top 10 players in minutes this season, the oldest is Isaiah Hartenstein (presuming he’s still alive after what Stephon Castle did to him in Game 2), who hit the ripe old age of 28 two weeks ago. Two-time MVP Gilgeous-Alexander is 27, All-Stars Chet Holmgren and Williams are 24 and 25, respectively, and Cason Wallace and Jared McCain are 22. Only two players on the entire team were alive when the final “Seinfeld” episode aired. (Side note: I will now crawl into a hole and die.)
As for San Antonio, obviously Wembanyama is a 22-year-old prodigy who is still coming into his own. But also, Castle is 21 and Dylan Harper and Carter Bryant are 20. Those four play complementary positions and are set to be this team’s core for roughly forever. Of the Spurs’ top nine players, 26-year-old Keldon Johnson, 28-year-old De’Aaron Fox and 30-year-old fossil Luke Kornet are the only ones who weren’t born this century.
Their books are clean
Yeah, I’m just starting to cook here. The issues aren’t just that these teams are young and already awesome. Their cap situations are set up phenomenally well, too.
That’s perhaps easier to see for the Spurs, since they’re not even at the point where they have to pay their best players yet. Wembanyama will obviously get a supermax extension this summer that would kick in for the 2027-28 season, but paydays for Castle, Harper and Bryant loom further in the future. Johnson, this season’s Sixth Man Award winner, is on the books for a manageable $17 million, Kornet and 3-and-D ace Devin Vassell are inked for three more years on solid terms, and starting forward Julian Champagnie has a team option for a mere pittance of $3 million next year.
Tally it up, and the Spurs have about $45 million in wiggle room below next year’s tax line and nearly double that amount a year later. That’s enough room to decline Champagnie’s option and re-up him on team-friendly terms for longer — a recent Thunder specialty — extend Johnson and Wembanyama and still have the wherewithal to address the rest of the roster. They’re so far below the tax line that they could engage in some cap shenanigans with the expiring money of Kelly Olynyk or Harrison Barnes by using their Bird rights in a sign-and-trade acquisition.
About that: The Spurs do need to address their depth, something highlighted by the absence of Harper and Fox in the second half of Game 2. San Antonio has five non-performing roster spots out of 15, three of which are soaked up by veteran backup centers who never play. (When you already have Olynyk and Bismack Biyombo, why not add Mason Plumlee, too?) Using their nontaxpayer midlevel exception, adding players in the draft and being shrewder about minimum-contract signings could leave the Spurs with better options than “Uhhhh, Jordan McLaughlin, I guess?” when injuries hit in a playoff series.
Oklahoma City is just reaching the point where it has to make some tough decisions. The Thunder will be $50 million into the tax if they keep the same 15 players next year, a likely untenable financial position, and also an unnecessary one for a team that has picks No. 12 and 17 in the upcoming draft. Declining a $7 million option on little-used Kenrich Williams and thinning the herd at shooting guard, where players like Lu Dort, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins all are on middle-class contracts but have replacements waiting in the wings, is likely the short-term answer.
Long-term, however, the team is still in great shape. Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren are signed through 2031, Alex Caruso is inked through 2029 and Ajay Mitchell is signed through 2028 on perhaps the best contract in the league (just $2.85 million each the next two seasons, including a team option for 2027-28). Extensions loom for Wallace and Hartenstein that would make the Thunder expensive in 2027-28. But that still gives them a two-year window before keeping everyone becomes unwieldy, and even after that point, they could maintain a jaw-dropping talent level in their top eight.
And they won’t need to overpay outside free agents because …
They have picks
And now we get to the really absurd part. If any of their contracts become cumbersome or if they want to “recycle” a more expensive roster spot into a rookie contract (which OKC sort of did in the McCain trade), both the Spurs and Thunder have enough picks lying around to make deals.
For teams this good, the key is to own first-round picks from other teams. Nobody wants to trade for a Spurs or Thunder pick given the likelihood it will end up 29th or 30th.
Oklahoma City, for instance, has top-five protected picks from Denver in 2027 and 2029, a Spurs pick in 2027, and swaps with the LA Clippers in 2027 and Dallas Mavericks in 2028, in addition to a surfeit of future seconds and all of their own future firsts. San Antonio, meanwhile, has an unprotected Atlanta Hawks pick in 2027, unprotected swaps with Dallas in 2030, the Sacramento Kings in 2031 and a top-one protected swap with Boston in 2028. As with the Thunder, they are all but debt-free on their own picks (just the ’27 one above is owed) and own several future seconds from other teams.
All that allows these teams to keep their dynasties going in two different ways — either by dealing the picks as part of trades that manage the cap and bring in talent, or by using the picks to add talent to otherwise aging and expensive rosters as we get later in the cycles of these two rosters. Either way, each is in a better position asset-wise than virtually any contender in recent memory, most of whom were deeply in hock on draft picks by the time they were ready to contend.
They have the superstars
It’s not just all the things mentioned above. It’s also that NBA championships skew heavily toward superstar-backed rosters, and the Spurs and Thunder have the two best players in the league at their disposal.
While I acknowledge that my statement is subject to some variance in both their play and that of their rivals — Nikola Jokić, in particular, may still have something to say here — right now it’s Gilgeous-Alexander and Wemby at the top of the food chain. If anything, they seem to be widening their lead on the field. Luka Dončić is the only other player who is both in their league as a performer and in their age cohort.
That last part may be the only real vulnerability that could keep the Spurs and Thunder from monopolizing Western Conference championships. An injury to Wembanyama or Gilgeous-Alexander would be an instant game-changer; a sustained decline in performance would arguably be even more impactful.
Aside from that? That takes us to our last issue.
They have very few vulnerabilities
Oddly, the Thunder and Spurs share one weakness — they don’t really have an “Anunoby”: a big, bruising forward in the 6-foot-8 range who can knock down shots and play defense. Bryant may eventually be that guy in San Antonio but isn’t there yet. The Thunder’s entire roster is just “centers” and “guys who are 6 foot 6 or shorter,” though the draft could give them two shots at finding such a player.
It’s possible that weakness isn’t a real issue outside of one or two very specific matchups, but a couple others come to mind if you want to be a real pessimist.
For the Spurs, De’Aaron Fox’s contract extension — which hasn’t even begun yet — looms as an issue. Fox made the All-Star team this year, but four years and $223 million is a lot if he’s only their third-best guard, which seems quite possible given that Harper and Castle appear hell-bent on taking over the universe.
Once we go two or three years out and Harper and Castle get extensions, the Fox contract also becomes a major impediment to the Spurs’ ability to add or keep talent at the forward spots. Harper also might not be content to come off the bench forever; parlaying Fox into a big wing before he gets into his 30s seems like a possible exit strategy.
As for Oklahoma City, it might be facing what you’d call the “James Harden problem” of not being able to keep every precocious talent drafted, particularly if it wants to keep Hartenstein. The Thunder’s surfeit of guards seems ripe for exploitation by a rival bidder, especially Mitchell. He would be an unrestricted free agent in 2027 if they decline the team option to try to ink a longer deal with Bird Rights; giving him a raise a year early would also take an already expensive 2027-28 roster into the Ballmer Zone.
Still, “we might lose Ajay Mitchell in two years” is a heck of a strong position for a roster with this many good players, especially one that stands to continue adding players in the draft. (Also, two recent Thunder first-round picks, Nikola Topić and Thomas Sorber, should join the mix in 2026-27 following medical issues this season.)
Again, stranger things have happened. We’ve thought other franchises were poised for world domination, only to have subsequent events prove us horribly wrong. For instance, this same Thunder franchise, with the same owner and GM, was in nearly the same position in 2012.
But if we ask ourselves what is likely … well, yes, actually, it does seem extremely likely that these two teams are going to dominate the West for years to come.
So if you watch this week and think you couldn’t possibly get enough of these battles between the Thunder and Spurs, just know that you’re about to get your wish.
