Shaq siding with Spurs over Thunder: 'OKC has no answer for [Wembanyama]'

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Heading into the 2026-27 NBA season, the same two teams are at the top of most folks' contender leaderboards. The Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs remain everybody's favorite to win the NBA championship next year.

As chalk as that is, hard to blame folks. The Thunder and Spurs were in a tier of their own all last season. They were both 60-plus-win juggernauts that blew teams out left and right. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama dominated the MVP conversation for the latter half of the year.

After an epic seven-game series in the 2026 Western Conference Finals, both OKC and San Antonio will run it back with mostly the same respective squads. Despite that being the popular opinion, one NBA pundit believes the Spurs are the favorite alone.

Appearing on Stephen A. Smith's show, Shaquille O'Neal planted his flag for the Spurs once again. He's one-for-one so far, as he had San Antonio outlasting OKC in the Western Conference Finals last year in a Feb. 2026 prediction he made on television.

"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's a fair assessment. Wembanyama broke out last season as one of the NBA's top players. As expected, he's been a household name for years. He captured the Western Conference Finals MVP. Think we're finally in the NBA era where he'll be an NBA superstar for the foreseeable future. With his admitted bias towards centers, not surprising to see O'Neal think so fondly of him.

"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."

We'll see how things shake out in the upcoming NBA playoffs. Feels like we're due another rematch with the Thunder and Spurs. Hopefully, OKC gets better injury luck this time around. Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell were notable absences in the latter half of their seven-game series.

"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."

"OKC has no answer for him..."@SHAQ tells @stephenasmith that contrary to whatever he thinks about the Thunder, San Antonio is still the team to beat in the West. pic.twitter.com/mFRgm2QyHm

— SpursRΞPORTΞR (@SpursReporter) July 29, 2026

This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: Shaq siding with Spurs over Thunder: 'OKC has no answer for [Wembanyama]'

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