Brian Windhorst sat down with Scott Van Pelt and Oklahoma City's Chet Holmgren on SC with SVP after the Thunder's 122-113 Game 2 win on Wednesday night and immediately framed the Western Conference Finals as something other than a basketball series. The veteran ESPN reporter said the two-game thriller had become a war of attrition - with the survivors of an injury list now likely to decide who advances to the NBA Finals.
Windhorst was admiring before he was alarmed. "I'm exhausted," he told Van Pelt. "The level of effort, the level of ingenuity, the level of creativity, the level of just sheer fight that is being displayed by these two teams. The Thunder have their entire hands full trying to deal with Victor Wembanyama. They are working so incredibly hard to battle him at both ends, to counter him, to figure out a way around him, over him, behind him. They're holding him, they're shoving him, they're pushing him. And then the Spurs are dealing with guys falling down with injury. This is really truly going to be the heavyweight aspect of who's going to be standing at the end. This feels like four games have been packed into two. I'm not sure who's going to be upright in two days."
The casualty list is already substantial. Thunder forward Jalen Williams left Game 2 in the second quarter with what Windhorst said was the fourth left-hamstring problem of the season, and was ruled out for the night. AJ Mitchell, Williams' de facto replacement, may have injured his quadriceps in the closing seconds of the game. On the San Antonio side, point guard De'Aaron Fox missed Game 2 entirely with a high ankle sprain. Rookie Dylan Harper, who had stepped up brilliantly in Game 1, was tied up with Chet Holmgren in the second quarter, tried to come back onto the floor, and was eventually shut down with what looked like a leg injury - possibly a hamstring.
Windhorst said the cascading absences could decide the series. "I think a potential loss of Dylan Harper is potentially gigantic, because we've got a high ankle sprain on De'Aaron Fox," he told Van Pelt. "That is an injury that is not going to probably get that much better. He may be able to gut it out, but you're looking at not having him right. So then Harper looked like a potential leg injury there, maybe a hamstring. If that's a situation that causes him to miss time, you're just playing too thin on the perimeter. Stephon Castle is playing tremendous basketball, but he's being asked to do so much. They're just running out of bodies on the perimeter. And then if Jaylen Williams's hamstring goes again, that's his fourth hamstring injury this year."
Holmgren, asked by Van Pelt what it takes to win even a single game in this series, did not push back on the reporter's framing. "The basketball doesn't get better than this," the Thunder centre said. "These two great teams right here, and we saw it the last two games. It's been a fistfight back and forth all the way down the stretch. We can't expect anything else for the rest of the series. We just got to keep punching."
Asked about the leadership example set by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander between Games 1 and 2, Holmgren credited his approach above his numbers. "The way that he carried himself, no matter what happens, he's going to continue to walk with confidence, come in, get his work in," he said. "And everybody follows suit. It's good that the head of the snake kind of sets that tone."
The series resumes at the AT&T Center in San Antonio on Friday night. The basketball, Windhorst suggested, is already historic. The question is who has bodies left to play it.
---
*Originally published on [NBA News Global](https://nbanews.global/article/brian-windhorst-injury-attrition-fox-harper-williams-spurs-thunder-game-2-may-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
