Victor Wembanyama continues to do the unthinkable. He led the Spurs to the Finals in his third season in the league and first postseason.
On Saturday, the Spurs defeated the Thunder 111–103 in Game 7 on the road to clinch the franchise’s first Western Conference title in 12 years. Wembanyama scored a team-high 22 points in the win and was named MVP of the conference finals.
The victory guarantees the NBA’s recent run of parity will continue, with its eighth different champion in eight seasons.
The Spurs will face the Knicks in the NBA Finals with Game 1 set for Wednesday at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio. Tipoff is slated for 8:30 pm ET on ABC.
It’s a rematch of the 1999 NBA Finals in which the eighth-seeded Knicks fell to the top-seeded Spurs in five games. The victory marked the beginning of the Spurs dynasty, the first of five titles the organization would win behind coach Gregg Popovich and star forward Tim Duncan.
This Spurs roster has a trio of players younger than 23 in Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and rookie Dylan Harper, plus 28-year-old De’Aaron Fox; Fox is the only Spurs starter who had previously played in the postseason (with the Kings). It is extremely rare for a team with no playoff experience to win the conference.
The matchup pits the NBA’s biggest market against one of its smallest. But with Wembanyama’s potential as the future face of the league, it should put ABC in position for a major viewership spike compared to the 2025 Finals, which averaged 10.27 million viewers for the seven-game Thunder-Pacers series, down 9.3% compared to the 2024 Celtics-Mavericks series, and the least-watched NBA Finals since 2021 when the Bucks defeated the Suns.
The Knicks will attempt to win the franchise’s first NBA title since 1973, and third overall. A Knicks win would also mark New York City’s first championship in the four major men’s sports since the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2012.
New York won the Eastern Conference with the second-highest payroll in the NBA, behind only the Cavaliers. New York’s active salary cap allocations for this season are $207.4 million, according to Spotrac.
The Spurs had a team salary of roughly $174 million, which ranked 19th in the league. Julian Champagnie, the team’s unlikely Game 7 hero, had 20 points in the win and is making just $3 million this season.
Wembanyama is still on his rookie contract, though he is expected to sign a five-year, $252 million extension this summer, as are his young co-stars Castle and Harper.
The Knicks are looking to snap a half-century long championship drought. Just like they did in 1999, the Spurs are looking to start another dynasty.
