It’s an inescapable reality that it takes a bit of luck to win an NBA championship. Look at the winners from any era, and you’ll see how attrition and misfortune affected the road. The defending champions in Oklahoma City have been unlucky lately as players have gotten banged up, and it could open the door for other teams.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s injury update on Wednesday, an abb strain that will sideline him at least until after the All-Star break, took the steam out of the matchup — and that was before they announced five other main rotation players who had played the night before were out with new “injuries”. Yet an understaffed crew can do damage when taken lightly, and that happened in the second half of the San Antonio Spurs’ win over the skeleton crew Thunder in their fifth matchup of the year.
Still, the Spurs did what they had to do to put the Thunder away down the stretch, and now both teams are only separated by five games, four in the loss column. With both SGA and Jalen Williams out for the foreseeable future, there may be a window for the Spurs to push for the first seed to secure home court advantage in the playoffs. Notably, since 1984, the first seed has won the title 26 times, the second seed has won eight, the third has won six and the sixth seed has won once.