#378: 2026 NBA Finals Preview, blowing up OKC
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What is the preview and context for the 2026 NBA Finals?
Thinking basketball podcast. My name is Ben. Welcome back to the 2026 NBA Finals. Cody, we made it all the way after a classic Western Conference playoff series. The Thunder, uh, fall to the Spurs in seven games, San Antonio, one of the youngest teams to ever make the NBA finals. Still not quite as young as our 1977 Portland Trailblazers, led by Bill Walton. and Maurice Lucas and Bob Gross. Can you make an argument that Bob Gross was the second best player on that team? Also Lionel Hollins and many others, but um Yes. Yes. You're gonna s you're gonna make the Bob Gross argument.
No, I think that's a good that's a really interesting call. That seems like a really nice little deep dive we could do in the off season, right? We could be like who is secretly the second best player on each of these championship teams? Except it's only the seventy seven Blazers that we talk about.
It's a good it's a good excuse to talk about the seventy seven Blazers. That was that was a great Western Conference Finals. One of the things we were chatting about that I have to pick your brain on as we start here is was where where does that rank amongst the Western Conference Finals of the twenty first century? You have the two thousand eighteen seven game classic between the Warriors and Chris Paul's hamstring and the Rockets twenty seven. And threes in a row. We have the 2016 Western Conference Finals, the Warriors down 3-1. And uh, I guess that might have been the birth of Game Six Clay Thompson, or certainly maybe the most famous Game 6 Clay Thompson game. Yeah. Uh, some other ones that came to mind, the 2000 Western Conference Finals with uh the Blazers and the Lakers.
I think the Lakers were up 3-1 in that series. The Blazers came back. And had a fifteen point lead in the fourth quarter before uh Kobe Bryant basically took over the entire fourth quarter. Two thousand two Western Conference Finals with the Kings and the Lakers, the aforementioned Lakers. That was a game seven, I think overtime. Game seven. that the Lakers squeaked out. So I don't know where it falls for you. If you have any other Western Conference series that you wanted to nominate in there, but uh certainly a classic.
It's really tough for me to sit here and just like rank how they are 'cause you can only feel what you feel in the moment. Uh that two thousand Western Conference Finals, that's the Kobe crossover lob to shack. He's running down the court pointing. Like that fifteen point comeback with that lob, that makes it really tough to you know, like that is the moment from that series. And I guess if we think back to this series that we just watched, is the moment like if you were to boil it down to one moment that's gonna be played every time. Is it the Wemby pull up three in overtime in game one? Is that the most indelible of the actual plays that happened throughout this entire series?
I think so. I mean there's a challenging thing with recency bias where you're you're fresher in your memory and you're thinking to yourself, like, well that that series had twenty five and del I mean Wemmy hit a half court shot and there were all kinds of crazy dunks and uh we had the three at the end of overtime. Alice Caruso making steals and throwing the ball off people and there were a lot of great plays and great moments throughout that series, but I imagine that That might be the one, uh I mean Luke Cornett's block. At the end is like probably the role player moment of the series, right? Something like that.
That oh my God. So that to me felt like the turning point of the game, right? Like they they it seemed like the Thunder were about to get on some kind of a run. Cornet hustles down, gets the incredible play. And I think there's a bunch of things that happen at that point in the fourth quarter, right? But to me, like they got the momentum off that chase down block from Cornette, and it just felt like like if you were a video game and you could see like everyone's energy level on one team rise up, like that's just What happened to the to the to the Spurs at that point.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the preview and context for the 2026 NBA Finals?
0:07–8:13
2
How do the hosts rank the 2021‑2026 Western Conference Finals?
8:13–17:09
3
What were the defining plays and turning points in the Thunder‑Spurs series?
17:09–24:40
4
Did Chet Holmgren have a solid defensive series despite expectations?
24:40–33:12
5
How will the Knicks match up against the Spurs in the Finals?
33:12–40:34
6
Who is the X‑Factor for each team and why does it matter?
40:34–49:59
7
How are NBA Finals MVP voters selected and what influences their vote?
49:59–59:08
8
Which team are the hosts leaning toward to win the 2026 NBA Finals?
59:08–1:06:43