May 30, 2026; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA; San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) celebrates with the MVP trophy after defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder in game seven of the western conference finals for the 2026 NBA playoffs at Paycom Center. Mandatory Credit: Alonzo Adams-Imagn I mages | Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images What an incredible and unexpected way to end this roller coaster of a series. After a stunning Game 1, this battle between San Antonio and OKC was mostly a series of alternating lopsided wins that left me feeling fantastic (Games 4 and 6) or terrible (Games 2, 3, and 5). Of course, I wouldn’t have minded if the Spurs won in a blowout last night; however, I actually think that the team-oriented, gritty win they put together is emblematic of their character as a group, so in that sense it was the most fitting victory possible. In any case, let’s review some box score stats: Note: Now that we’ve moved into the postseason, the reference period used for grading changes from the set of regular season games since 2012-2013 to the set of postseason games since 2012-2013. Unless otherwise noted below, this set DOES include play-in games. As of the end of May 28, 2026, this group include 1,200 games. Factors that decided the game Much of this game was quite balanced on the surface; for example, the overall rebounding battle was close, and OKC only had two more turnovers. However, the narrow margins in these particular cases obscure some critical advantages for San Antonio. In particular, while the Spurs only had two more total rebounds, their edge on the offensive glass (+5) was much more substantial. Furthermore, although it doesn’t show up in the basic box score stats, OKC conceded 10 more points off of their turnovers (19 vs. 9). By fouling less and at better times, the Thunder did retain a minor edge at the foul line (+3 FTA, + 3 FTM); however, relative to the rest of this series free throws generated a surprisingly small amount of all points scored. OKC and San Antonio also had nearly identical FG% (the Spurs were better by 0.88 percentage points); however, the Spurs did have the edge in FGA (+5), so they did make three more shots in total. Even more importantly, San Antonio leaned heavier into shooting from distance (+5 3PM) and logged a notably better 3P% (+8.21 percentage points). As a result, the Spurs made five more threes, bring their total margin from the field to +11 points. Rare Box Score Stats This particular box score produced remarkably little in terms of truly rare events, especially at the team level (hence the mediocre grades). However, a few things about individual players stood out: SGA’s performance marked just the 17th time since the 1996-1997 postseason that a player had 35+ points and 9+ assists in a playoff game while registering a plus/minus no better than – 7. Cason Wallace was just about the only other member of OKC who played well, and his stat line was similarly rare. In fact, over the same 30-season playoff period, there have been just 20 other performances in which a player logged 17+ points, 5+ threes, and no more than 10 shots while still having a plus/minus no better than – 3. Julian Champagnie notched the 100th player playoff performance since 1996-1997 that included 20+ points on fewer than 11 shots and three free throws. Luke Kornet played just over six minutes, but they were CRITICAL. They were also interesting from a box score perspective, as he became just the sixth player since 1996-1997 to have a playoff performance including 4+ rebounds and 1+ blocks in no more than 6.1 minutes of play. When I first saw this box score, it struck me that San Antonio’s balanced scoring might be something rare enough to warrant talking about. There are a lot of different ways that one might quantify this concept, but one useful approach is something called a diversity index, which is a single-value measure designed to capture how diverse a set of things is. In this case, the set in question is San Antonio’s points scored, and those points are diverse in the sense that they were scored by different players (e.g., 19.82% of the points were “Wemby points,” 14.41% were “Castle points,” and so on). If we calculate the Gini-Simpson Index (GSI) for this set we get a value of 0.8572, which means that – if we were to draw two points at random from the Spurs’ set of points – there is an 85.72% chance that those two points would be from different players. That is pretty high; in fact, since 1996-1997, only 672 of 4,858 other team playoff performances (13.83%, or slightly more than 1-in-7) have produced a GSI value at least as high. However, it falls far short of being truly exceptional. If you want to know what a really rare GSI value looks like in this context, consider the two extreme ends of the distribution during this period: On the low end, the Orlando Magic recorded a GSI of just 0.617 in a first round matchup against Detroit on April 23, 2003, largely because Tracy McGrady scored 46 of the team’s 77 total points (no one else on the team scored more than nine). At the high end, Milwaukee achieved a GSI of 0.914 in a 2015 first round game against Chicago on April 30, 2015. I recommend that you look at this latter box score in particular, because it is truly shocking. 13 players logged minutes for Milwaukee, and their individual point totals ranged from two to eight. They lost by 54, so I guess a balanced attack isn’t always the answer. Quick side note: San Antonio does own several of the highest GSI values recorded in the playoffs since 1996-1997, including the 11th ranked value (0.9), which they recorded in their Game 2 blowout victory over Minnesota a few weeks ago. What are Team Graded Box Scores? Very briefly, these box scores grade winner-loser differentials for basic box score statistics, with the grade being based on the winning team’s differential relative to other NBA winners during a defined reference period. Think of it like a report card for understanding how a given winner performed relative to other winners. The reference period used runs from the start of the 2012-2013 season to the latest date of play, including only games in the same season category (i.e., regular season and playoff games are not compared to each other). Data Source: The underlying data used to create these box scores was collected from Basketball Reference. In all cases, the data are collected the morning after the game is played. Although rare, postgame statistical revisions after data collection do occur and may affect the results after the fact. ...read more read less