Young, up-and-coming ball clubs generally find themselves enduring a certain level of adversity during their early postseason excursions before finding ultimate success. The OKC Thunder, for instance, certainly went through their share of hardships, getting bounced in the 2024 semifinals by the Mavericks, only to come back with valuable experience and win it all in 2025.
The 2026 Spurs, however, currently find themselves right on the brink of avoiding this particular right of passage that Oklahoma City personally succumbed to during their own first playoff run as a core.
As if San Antonio wasn't already seen as the biggest threat to OKC's repeat aspirations, their win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday night should have made them all the more frightening.
Not only are they now one win away from securing a long-anticipated matchup against the Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, but also from going considerably deeper than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and company did in their first playoff run together.
Thunder didn't even get as close to conference finals in first playoff run
In fact, even before clinching their first postseason berth, the Thunder were forced to go through the misery of being eliminated in the league's Play-In Tournament during the 2022-23 campaign.
Victor Wembanyama, meanwhile, finds him and his Spurs rising from mere cellar dwellers a season ago (finished with the third-worst record in the West) to, now, one win shy of the club's first conference finals appearance since 2017.
This ongoing series is rapidly turning into a worst-case-scenario for Oklahoma City.
It wasn't all that long ago when the Timberwolves miraculously stole homecourt advantage, and the dream of the Thunder's top conference foe being extinguished was very much alive.
Now, not only are the Spurs up 3-2, but they could realistically find themselves heading into round three with momentum and, frankly, the track record of ample success against the defending champs on their side.
Let's not forget that San Antonio bested the Thunder in four of five regular-season games played against one another.
All in all, this surge in success currently being seen from Wemby and co. is far from normal in the league.
Even all-time clubs like the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls and Stephen Curry-led Golden State Warriors had to deal with early-round upsets and heartbreaks before getting to such a point.
Now, with the Thunder eyeing their own push to become the next great dynasty, San Antonio finds itself in an unprecedented position to fast-forward the natural order of operations and achieve a postseason debut feat that even OKC failed to accomplish.
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