Seven trends that could decide historic Thunder-Spurs series - ESPN

The Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs have been on a collision course ever since a fateful meeting in the NBA Cup semifinals.

At the time, the defending champion Thunder were 24-1, seemingly poised not only to repeat but to set the single-season wins record, too. Then they ran into Victor Wembanyama and the upstart Spurs in Las Vegas last December.

San Antonio sneaked out a two-point win, then steamrolled the Thunder twice more by a combined 35 points later that month. The Spurs were 4-1 against the Thunder this season.

Now, five months later, the two young juggernauts have reached their most important battlefield to date: the Western Conference finals. It's the most exciting playoff matchup in years and the greatest stakes yet in a budding rivalry that could define the rest of this decade in the NBA.

The Western Conference finals will pit the unanimous Defensive Player of the Year, Wembanyama, against the back-to-back MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. This series features arguably the two best players in the world, the two most promising young supporting casts and the two deepest, most balanced two-way rosters.

Both teams enter the conference finals on lengthy hot streaks. The Thunder have a superb plus-16.6 point differential in the playoffs, while the Spurs are plus-15.9.

Not counting end-of-season games in which star players rested, the Thunder finished the regular season on a 19-1 run, and they've continued with an 8-0 march through the playoffs. The Spurs, meanwhile, went on a 30-3 run down the stretch, and they're 8-3 in the playoffs. (Two of their losses came in games when Wembanyama left early, and the third came by two points.)

To prepare for a blockbuster series, let's dive deep into the most important