Shaquille O’Neal is sticking with the San Antonio Spurs in the West, and he’s not backing off that stance even with the Oklahoma City Thunder still sitting near the top of the contender conversation.
On Stephen A. Smith’s show, O’Neal made it clear he sees one player as the separator between the two teams. He also pointed out that he already called the Spurs to beat OKC in the Western Conference Finals in a Feb. 2026 prediction on television, and that forecast turned out to be right.
"It depends on one guy in the West. The guy that beat them," O'Neal said. "Every time they go up against that guy, if he can have two or three dominating performances, OKC has no answer for him"
That guy is Victor Wembanyama, who took another leap last season and finished as the Western Conference Finals MVP. The source material frames him as one of the league’s top players now, and O’Neal’s support tracks with his long-running preference for centers.
"If he can go inside and outside and everybody else around him plays," O'Neal said. "They're still gonna have those three guards for a long period of time and those guys are hungry. They play very well."
The Thunder and Spurs are expected to be right back in the mix next season after both spent last year as 60-plus-win teams that regularly blew opponents out. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Wembanyama also spent the latter part of the year in the MVP spotlight, and after their seven-game Western Conference Finals battle, the two teams are set to run it back with mostly the same rosters.
O’Neal still sees San Antonio as the side with the edge.
"The way they play and the way Victor plays, I'm always going San Antonio being the favorites," O'Neal said. "For OKC, it gives them a matchup problem. It really does."
The article also notes that a rematch would not be a surprise, and that Oklahoma City would be hoping for better injury luck after Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell were notable absences in the latter half of the series.
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