OKLAHOMA CITY — The MVP looked like the MVP again, and the Western Conference finals are knotted up.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bounced back from a subpar series opener to score 30 points, Alex Caruso added 17 off the bench and the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs 122-113 on Wednesday night in Game 2.
Chet Holmgren scored 13 points and reserves Jared McCain and Cason Wallace each had 12 for Oklahoma City. The Thunder finished with a 57-25 edge in bench scoring, plus a 27-10 advantage in points off turnovers.
“I thought we all played better,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “I had a quiet confidence about that. I didn’t know if we’d win or lose the game, but I was pretty sure after watching Game 1 and knowing our team that we were going to come out and play better tonight.”
Stephon Castle scored 25 points for the Spurs, who got 22 points from Devin Vassell and a 21-point, 17-rebound, six-assist, four-block night from Victor Wembanyama.
Game 3 is Friday in San Antonio.
“The guys brought it tonight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Knowing what it would have meant if we lost this one, we brought the energy from the jump.”
Isaiah Hartenstein — who barely played in Game 1 — had 10 points and 13 rebounds for the Thunder, who improved to 14-5 after a loss this season — and beat the Spurs for just the second time in seven meetings.
The win was not without cost for the Thunder, who lost guard Jalen Williams — who had already missed six games in these playoffs with a left hamstring strain — in the first half with a recurrence of the hamstring issue. The Thunder said it was tightness, but even that would figure to put his availability for Friday into doubt.
And the Spurs got banged up as well. Already without All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox because of ankle soreness, San Antonio lost his replacement in the starting lineup — Dylan Harper — to a right leg injury after he took a couple of awkward falls in the third quarter.
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson had no update on Harper after the game, though he noted that it puts “a ton” of pressure on others when his team is down two guards.
“Obviously this team is as good as anybody at turning you over, so when you’re down some of your primary creators and initiators it causes a little bit of an extra strain, whether that’s who to play, what to play, what to run, etc., etc.,” Johnson said. “We’ll just have to be sharper in that area because it’s tough fully loaded against these guys.”
San Antonio was down by 11 at the half and trailed by eight going into the fourth quarter, then got within 99-97 off a corner 3-pointer by Harrison Barnes with 9:06 left.
The next 2 1/2 minutes saved the Thunder. An 11-0 run by the defending champions — including a banked-in 3-pointer by McCain midway through the burst — pushed OKC’s lead to 13.
But the Spurs — on another night when turnovers plagued them and the stretch run was played without Fox and Harper — were far from done. Wembanyama scored down low to make it 118-113 with 1:25 remaining, but Gilgeous-Alexander got one last basket to settle things down and send the series to San Antonio tied.
“We’ve got to help our ballhandlers more and take care of the ball,” Wembanyama said.
