I put Spurs +6.5 at dinner as a joke. An emotional support bet. The kind you make when you have zero money on the actual series but need something to care about in the second half of a Sunday.

They won by 7.

I am now a San Antonio Spurs fan. I have always been a San Antonio Spurs fan. My grandfather watched Tim Duncan. We don’t talk about the in-between years.

Victor Wembanyama: 41 points. 24 rebounds. 14-of-25 from the field, 12-of-13 from the line, 3 blocks, 49 minutes, two overtime periods. And one logo-range 28-footer at the end of regulation that should not be physically possible for a human body. Per ESPN’s box score. I’m confirming it again because reading it once wasn’t enough.

Wemby’s 41-24 in the WCF is the first 40-20 at a conference finals debut since Wilt Chamberlain in 1960. Wilt. In 1960. He is 22 years old.

He is the youngest player in NBA history to drop a 40-20 in any playoff game.

“Walking Cheat Code” was trending on X by the time the second OT ended, which is correct and also undersells it.

https://twitter.com/MagicJohnson/status/2056591340457324875

Magic Johnson tweeted “I hate to break the news to the rest of the Western Conference…” and honestly Magic’s been known to oversell guys but this one’s different. This one’s real.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — two-time reigning MVP, the guy OKC went 64-18 behind this season — went 7-of-23. Thirty percent from the field. Four turnovers. Fifty-one minutes. He played the whole damn game and it still wasn’t enough. I’m not saying SGA choked. I’m saying SGA’s playoff track record under pressure is going to get a lot of new entries after this one.

OKC was 8-0 in these playoffs before Sunday night. Best record in the league. Presumably the best team in the league. The Spurs won 122-115 and it wasn’t particularly close in the feeling-of-the-game sense — Wembanyama hit the 28-footer to tie it, hit the and-1 to seal it, and spent the fourth quarter looking like a man playing against teenagers.

Dylan Harper — who is himself a rookie, which is insane — went 24-11-6 with 7 steals. Seven steals. The Spurs had two rookies combining for whatever that stat line is and they still needed double overtime. Alex Caruso shot 8-of-14 from three off the bench and put up 31. That’s 31 points from your reserve guard in a conference finals game on the road. Caruso is good, but not “I’m carrying you through the fourth quarter of double-OT” good. He just had no choice.

DraftKings moved the Spurs from +310 to +155 to win the Finals overnight. The Thunder went from -165 to +125. The line has flipped. After one game.

I’m not saying I’m a genius for hitting the cover on a joke bet. I’m saying this is one of the games I will describe to people who weren’t watching. In detail. Unprompted. At bars.

The number should be lower. That’s my take. Forty-one and twenty-four from a 22-year-old, and the number should be lower.

My dad’s going to text me something about the Jets tomorrow and I am going to ignore it because I’m a Spurs fan now and we have a series to watch.