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The gulf in quality between the current rosters of the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs may be huge, but games between the two sides continue to be competitive. On Sunday night, a Spurs team that was without Victor Wembanyama gave the Thunder everything it had — with things even becoming heated late in the third quarter of what ended up being an eventual 146-132 win for OKC.
With 3:02 left in the third quarter, the Spurs had Julian Champagnie handling the rock against Kenrich Williams on the left elbow. With Champagnie being hounded by the Thunder forward, he had no choice but to relinquish the ball to Stephon Castle, who promptly gave the ball to a cutting Jeremy Sochan for a monster jam along the baseline. But while the play was going on, Williams had already taken exception to the incidental blow he took from Champagnie.
The Thunder forward shoved Champagnie near center-court. And when the play had concluded with Sochan's dunk, all the players on the court converged to try and break up the scuffle between the two. But instead, the fracas nearly devolved into a full-blown skirmish, although thankfully, no punches were thrown and officials were eventually able to separate the two sides.
Things are getting HEATED during the Spurs-Thunder matchup 🍿👀
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) March 3, 2025
There's no existing history between Champagnie and Williams that would have suggested that things would be heated between them prior to tip-off between the Spurs and Thunder. The veteran OKC forward simply did not take too kindly to an elbow he took from the Spurs sniper while he was trying to find a way to pass the ball through the suffocating defense.
But all's well that ends well, and in the end, it was Williams that had the last laugh as OKC earned their 49th win of the season in 60 tries, sending the Spurs tumbling farther down the standings.
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Thunder and Spurs — a classic matchup that rarely gets heated
Back in the 2010s, it seemed like the Thunder and Spurs always found a way to bump into each other come playoff time. They matched up against each other in 2012, 2014, and 2016 — with OKC emerging as the victors two out of three times. But those matchups rarely brought with it some extracurriculars.
Perhaps with the Thunder and Spurs rosters looking completely different from back then, there would be more scuffles like the one they had on Sunday night. And as long as no one gets hurt, then having this sort of bad blood could be a source of more entertainment for fans.
