The headline number is that the San Antonio Spurs went 4-1 against the Oklahoma City Thunder this season, outscoring the defending champions by 114 points to 109 across their five regular-season meetings. The headline storyline, according to NBA on Prime, runs much further back than that.
NBA analyst Quentin Richardson and senior NBA writer Vince Goodwill joined the program to break down the Western Conference Finals, and Richardson opened with something he had clearly been waiting to say all year.
"I'm excited to see Wemby versus Chet," Richardson said. "This has been brewing since they played internationally with the USA versus France in the under, I want to say 16s or 17s — and Chet got the best of them. After seeing the videos and the compilation of them playing against each other, this is probably the first time I could say that Wemby doesn't really like Chet. And I can't say that about Wemby with, I don't think, anybody else."
That is a meaningful sentence about a player whose post-game demeanour, even after his Game 4 ejection against Minnesota, has been almost monkish. Richardson's read is that the Spurs star carries something different into this matchup — that the youth-team scar tissue with Holmgren has stayed with him in a way no other rivalry has.
"I want to see them in a series," he added. "I want to see the two tall guys go at it and get it on. I want to see this matchup."
Vince Goodwill, asked for the biggest question hovering over the series, pulled the lens immediately to Oklahoma City's injury room.
"Oklahoma City being without Jaylen Williams since early in the Phoenix series — we don't know what his health looks like with that hamstring that's been bothering him all season, all playoffs," Goodwill said. "They can't win if he's not all the way right."
The numbers back him up. Williams, an All-NBA candidate when healthy, played just two games in the Phoenix series before re-aggravating the issue. The Thunder have steamrolled to 8-0 in the playoffs without him at full tilt, but the Spurs are a different test.
Goodwill's other answer was directed at the player most likely to swing the series on the perimeter. Stephon Castle has been quietly turning into the second-best Spur on the floor, and Goodwill wanted to make sure casual viewers understood why.
"Stephon Castle has turned into their second-best player," Goodwill said. "He actually led them in scoring and assists in the series against the Minnesota Timberwolves. A highly efficient player. He's going to be one of the main defenders on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. During the season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander did not shoot as efficiently as he does during the regular season, and you got to attribute a lot of that to Stephon Castle and of course the Victor Wembanyama, their one-two game. I think it's going to be something that Oklahoma City is going to have a lot of trouble with."
Castle's tape against Gilgeous-Alexander is unusually clean. In primary coverage this year, the reigning MVP averaged 18.2 points per 75 possessions against Castle on 52.8% true shooting — significantly below his typical numbers — and the rookie has the size and patience to handle Gilgeous-Alexander without consistently fouling out. That is the variable that Goodwill, like Richardson, kept coming back to.
The other story, of course, is Wembanyama and Holmgren. Castle hit five threes and dropped 32 points in Game 6 against Minnesota. Holmgren is making his first All-NBA team. Gilgeous-Alexander is about to be awarded back-to-back MVPs. The series has been described on Prime as 'the start of a Thunder rivalry', with Richardson laughing that 'San Antonio-Oklahoma City is not going to be good — it's going to be great'. For Wembanyama, judging by the body of work Richardson has been studying, it is also personal.
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*Originally published on [NBA News Global](https://nbanews.global/article/wembanyama-chet-holmgren-rivalry-u17-spurs-thunder-wcf-richardson-may-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
