“They Have Arrived!” - Rich on Victor Wembanyama & Spurs Ousting OKC to Reach the NBA Finals

Rich opened the show with a single word for the San Antonio Spurs: arrived. After Game 7 in Oklahoma City, it was hard to argue.

Start with Victor Wembanyama, who spent the spring as an MVP finalist who did not win, watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander accept the award instead. His response was to torch the place in Game 1 of a Western Conference Finals that had seven games written all over it. It went the distance, and on Saturday night the Spurs had to beat a 64-win Oklahoma City team an eighth time across the season and playoffs to punch their ticket.

They did it with first-quarter intensity that, in Rich's telling, the Thunder could not be expected to match. Oklahoma City did anyway, even grabbing its first lead late in the half. Then the Spurs' youth took over.

The moment Rich pointed to was a first-quarter dunk on Chet Holmgren. Holmgren essentially disappeared after it, finishing with two shots, a stat line Rich called unacceptable for a Game 7. The only proof he was out there, Rich joked, was the number seven on his jersey. Wembanyama had taken him off his game.

Oklahoma City somehow kept the third quarter even at 24 apiece despite being the lesser team, before San Antonio pulled away in the fourth. Julian Champagnie caught fire from deep, going six of ten on threes. Keldon Johnson drilled corner shots down the stretch. De'Aaron Fox gutted out 36 minutes on a high ankle sprain everyone knew he was fighting. Gilgeous-Alexander poured in 35, and it did not matter.

"The better team. The team on the rise," Rich said, marveling that there is now a team rising faster than the Thunder, who had been the league's avatar for an ascending roster for two or three years.

What makes it land is the youth. Dylan Harper is 20. Stephon Castle is 21. Wembanyama is 22. Champagnie is 24. Devin Vassell, at 25, is the graybeard of the group. They also have Harrison Barnes for ballast.

Wembanyama was overcome with emotion after the game, pouring it out like a man who had waited a lifetime for the mountaintop rather than 22 years. Asked what it would mean to win the Larry O'Brien Trophy, he could barely hold it together.

"Winning the Larry O'Brien, it's a childhood dream," Wembanyama said. A real, tangible chance at it, he added, is a lifetime opportunity you never know will come again. "It's going to be an amazing day of real realization of a dream. It's hard to put into words. It's almost like the meaning of my life."

That kind of talk normally becomes locker-room fuel, and the Knicks, whose fans were already chanting for a shot at the Spurs, could take a "when we win" as a player looking past them. Rich was not so sure it works that way here. When you are larger than the bulletin board, he said, good luck. He still thinks the Knicks match up well and can win the series, even as a colleague on set stayed firmly in New York's corner.

The other story is the bench. Mitch Johnson took over for Gregg Popovich after the legendary coach suffered a stroke, the very man who was supposed to shepherd Wembanyama himself. Asked about his team's inexperience, Johnson pushed back on the premise.

"Experience a lot of times is used in the form of the lack thereof when you need it the most," Johnson said. He would rather talk about habits, character, togetherness and competitive response. By his count, no team has lived through more this season than his, from the NBA Cup run to playoff series in which they were missing Wembanyama or Fox for stretches. The experience, he argued, is already there.