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NBA 2025 NBA Cup LIVE 46m ago A minutes restriction wasn't enough to help the Thunder keep Victor Wembanyama in check. Ethan Miller / Getty Images By Joe Vardon, James Edwards III, Darnell Mayberry and Josh Robbins In just 21 minutes on the court, a returning Victor Wembanyama pushed the San Antonio Spurs into the NBA Cup final with a 111-109 victory Saturday over the Oklahoma City Thunder. The overwhelmingly pro-Spurs crowd at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas regailed Wembanyama with “MVP” chants as the Thunder struggled to keep him under control. Despite their efforts, the 7-foot-4 star managed to score 15 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter. Advertisement San Antonio will now face the New York Knicks in Tuesday night’s championship game. Twenty-one points better than the other team when he was on the court; 19 points worse when he wasn’t. Think Wembanyama makes a difference? Wemby’s return to the court after a month away due to a calf strain certainly didn’t disappoint. Coming off the bench for the first time in his career (130 games), Wembanyama’s 22 points, nine rebounds and two blocks in 21 minutes only begin to tell the tale of his impact. He sat out the entire first quarter so coach Mitch Johnson could manage Wemby’s minutes restriction and keep him available for the end of a tight game without playing him in irregular patterns. Once he hit the court, not only did the Thunder have to avoid him in the paint and try to shoot 3s over him, but the rest of the Spurs cranked up their defensive pressure on the perimeter and really bothered the defending champs. The Spurs had four 20-point scorers in the game, led by Devin Vassell’s 23 points. Stephon Castle and De’Aaron Fox joined Wembanyama with 22 points. If the Spurs need to continue to manage Wembanyama’s minutes and have him ready for the end of a potentially close championship game on Tuesday, they would do well to bring him off the bench again. Overall, the size and speed the Spurs have with Wemby in the fold bothered the Thunder more so than at any point this season. — Joe Vardon Well, that was unexpected. Oklahoma City, for one night and with perhaps the freakiest, alien, unicorn, superhero on the other side in Wembanyama, looked normal. The Thunder led by as many as 16 points but shot just 41 percent for the game and 24 percent from 3-point range … and lost … snapping the franchise’s all-time-best 16-game winning streak. Advertisement The Thunder entered play with a 24-1 record and a 17. 2 net rating, without its starting lineup from last season’s NBA Finals having played a single minute together. Now Mark Daigneault is going to have to think about lineup changes (that’s a joke). But yeah, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luguentz Dort, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein hadn’t played at all together this season until Saturday. Hartenstein returned from a strained calf to score 10 points with nine boards in 20 minutes. Gilgeous-Alexander was 1 of 7 from 3-point range and had numerous shots changed by Wemby’s presence (Castle also had a nasty block on him, too). Dort has struggled to shoot in an injury-plagued season for him and was 1 of 7 from the field Saturday. The Thunder are now a game off the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors’ pace to win 73 games. Both teams — the Warriors and this season’s Thunder — started 24-1, but Golden State didn’t lose its second game until game 31. — Vardon Jalen Brunson continued his torrid run, topping 30 points for the fourth straight game as the New York Knicks pulled away late to beat the Orlando Magic 132-120 on Saturday night in the NBA Cup semifinals. Brunson scored a season-high 40 points, making 16 of 27 shots. He made just two 3-pointers against the Magic’s notoriously physical defense. Karl-Anthony Towns had 29 points, and OG Anunoby scored 24 for the Knicks, who shot a season-high 61 percent. New York put up more than 130 points against a stingy Orlando defense on the back of a 40-ball from Brunson. Potentially bigger than advancing in the NBA Cup, New York has evened the series record against Orlando at 2-2. If the teams were to finish the regular season with the same record, the Magic would no longer have the head-to-head tiebreaker. Advertisement The victory gives New York a chance to show the world that it’s not only a real contender in the East but also can contend for an NBA title, assuming its opponent ends up being the NBA-leading Thunder. The Knicks haven’t played a top-five team in the West yet this season and will do so when they take on either the Thunder or the Spurs. The matchup, while not anywhere close to the intensity and importance of the NBA Finals, will give Knicks fans an idea if one of the best two teams in the lesser-regarded East can, in fact, be competitive with any of the top five teams in the West on a somewhat meaningful stage. — James Edwards III, Knicks beat writer This semifinal performance wasn’t what the Magic regard as their brand of basketball. Many of the items on their to-do list that coach Jamahl Mosley cited as priorities before tipoff went unfulfilled. Orlando did not contain Brunson, who scored 40 points, as Jalen Suggs, Orlando’s best on-ball defender, hobbled for almost three quarters because of a sore left hip. Orlando did not protect its defensive glass during the first half, allowing 12 second-chance points through two quarters. And Orlando did not defend well without fouling, with New York going 23 of 31 from the free-throw line. And where was the Magic’s trademark physicality? Absent for much of the game. Mosley’s club was effective in transition — that is, on the rare occasions when it was able to rush forward in transition. Of course, there are two keys to getting shots up before an opponent sets its defense: getting stops on defense and forcing turnovers on defense. Orlando didn’t do much of either. New York made 61 percent of its shots and committed only 12 turnovers. No wonder, then, that the Magic struggled to generate many scoring attempts at the rim. They missed one of their best drivers, Franz Wagner, who is sidelined by the high-ankle sprain he suffered last weekend, coincidentally against the Knicks. But the larger issue was that the Magic couldn’t generate stops — and then run. The Magic missed Wagner on defense, too. The Magic’s best moments occurred during an 18-4 run in the third quarter. That was the first time their defense looked like its usual self. That was short-lived, however. That stretch typified the spirit and execution of Magic basketball over the last three seasons under Mosley, but it didn’t last long enough. — Josh Robbins, NBA writer