Alex Caruso is not buying that the Spurs are a problem for the Thunder. Even after they ended his season.
Asked after Saturday’s Game 7 loss whether San Antonio represents some kind of matchup nightmare for Oklahoma City, Caruso dismissed the idea with a hint of attitude. “There’s nothing that needs to be solved,” he told reporters. “We could’ve won the game tonight. You would’ve been asking them the same thing. I don’t think there’s this narrative that this is a bugaboo. We should’ve played better and won the game and been in the NBA Finals.”
Cool story. The receipts say otherwise.
San Antonio beat Oklahoma City four out of five times during the regular season, including a meeting in the NBA Cup. Then they took the Western Conference Finals in seven games with the Thunder holding home-court advantage. That is five wins out of eight tries against the defending champs. At some point, the math becomes the story.
Caruso did acknowledge that the Spurs are good. “They’re a good team, they’re young,” he added. “We’ll both probably be around for a while. But we’ve gotta get better and try and win next time.”
The “next time” part is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Oklahoma City has every reason to believe they will be back. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is in his prime. Jalen Williams is one of the best two-way wings in the league. Chet Holmgren is 24. The young core is locked in for years. Thunder fans have plenty of reason to be patient.
But ignoring the obvious gets you nowhere. Victor Wembanyama is a problem for everyone, and he is an especially big problem for a Thunder team that does not really have a stretch big who can match his size and skill. Holmgren got benched during a crucial stretch of Game 7. Isaiah Hartenstein had moments but could not consistently slow down San Antonio. The Spurs found something against this group, and they are only going to get scarier.
Caruso playing the “we beat ourselves” card is the kind of veteran move you respect even when you do not buy it. He has been in too many big games to admit that another team has his number. That is not how a champion talks, and Caruso has been a champion before.
The reality is that Oklahoma City has to spend the entire offseason figuring out the Wemby problem. Whether that is a roster tweak, a coaching adjustment, or just hoping that one more year of experience for Holmgren tips things back, something needs to change. Saying out loud that nothing needs fixing does not make it true.
San Antonio is going to be in the West for the next decade. Oklahoma City is going to be there too. The Thunder might want to start treating this as a rivalry instead of an annoyance, because the Spurs sure are.
Caruso will be back on the floor next October. So will Wemby. The 2026-27 Western Conference race is going to run right through whatever Oklahoma City decides to do about San Antonio this summer.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
