Yahoo Sports Staff Updated Wed, October 21, 2026 at 1:32 AM UTC About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In this story The Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs will close out the NBA's first day of regular-season action Tuesday night, with tipoff set for 9:30 p.m. ET at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio.
It's a rematch of last season's Western Conference finals, in which reigning Defensive Player of the Year Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs upset two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the then-defending champion Thunder in seven games.
The Spurs went on to fall to the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals, but the stunning postseason run marked the clear beginning of a new era in San Antonio. Wembanyama is still only 22, and teammate Stephon Castle has already dubbed him the "best player in the f***ing world" — for good reason.
Despite having won the NBA Finals just two seasons ago, the Thunder still have plenty to prove heading into the season after Gilgeous-Alexander's shooting dipped from 55.3% in the regular season to 46.3% in the playoffs, and Jalen Williams struggled to stay healthy. The team also traded starting 3-and-D specialist Luguentz Dort to the Atlanta Hawks this offseason, opening the door for another wing to step up.
Follow along with Yahoo Sports for live updates, highlights and more as the Thunder and Spurs face off to close out opening night, airing on NBC and Peacock.
The Knicks-76ers matchup is still going, and has about eight minutes left in the fourth up at Madison Square Garden.
It may be a bit before Spurs-Thunder is on NBC. It'll have to get started exclusively on Peacock.
While nothing is ironclad and the preseason is notorious for experimentation, the Spurs' willingness to move toward a three-guard lineup is palpable.
At some point, Fox, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper will all share the floor to start games. Head coach Mitch Johnson isn't one to divulge more information than he's required to in public settings, but there's only so much grandstanding one can do in early October.
It's a bold tweak from a team that finished third in offensive and defensive efficiency last season, made it all the way to the Finals and held sizable leads in each of their losses. You could argue that the Spurs, who essentially kept the same team and added Tobias Harris, are in a perfect spot and don't need to overreact to their Finals heartbreak. This is a young group with a young coach in place that has an incredibly bright future ahead of them, injuries and drastic changes notwithstanding.
NBA general managers answered 48 questions about the upcoming season, and the general consensus is: They love everything about what Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs have going on right now and are encouraged about the team's future.
The Spurs were the popular pick as 2026-27 NBA champion, garnering 50% of the responses, topping the Oklahoma City Thunder (43%) and the reigning champion New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers, who also received votes. They were also chosen as the team with the most promising young core (87%) and tied with the Minnesota Timberwolves as the most fun to watch (30%).
Wembanyama was the overwhelming choice as this season's MVP winner (77%) as well as the player (93%) the GMs would sign first if they were starting an NBA franchise. The Spurs big man also earned 47% of the vote as the player who forces opposing coaches to make the most adjustments and was voted best international player (54%), best defensive player (97%), best interior defender (97%), most versatile player (57%) and most versatile defender (30%).
Two categories where Wembanyama fell short were best power forward, which went to the Miami Heat's Giannis Antetokounmpo (70% to 23%), and best center, which was won by Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets (63% to 37%).
It wasn't all Wembanyama when it came to Spurs players receiving love. Dylan Harper, the No. 2 overall draft pick in 2025 and All-Rookie First Teamer last season, is the player most likely to have a breakout season (27%), beating out last season's Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg of the Dallas Mavericks, Collin Murray-Boyles of the Toronto Raptors, Amen Thompson of the Houston Rockets and Cason Wallace of the Thunder, who each received 7% of votes.
Prior to the NFL season, I published an article on the preseason NFL power ranking for all 32 teams on Yahoo Sports. In that article, I explained how to use a ratings system to help price spreads, how to use it to action bets and what potential pitfalls in the process exist. I highly recommend reading that article to also lay the foundation for my NBA power ratings below.
Instead of retooling the same concepts into NBA terms, I am going to provide my ratings and then note which teams I see as potential risers and fallers once the NBA regular season action begins. These are currently built off of using NBA regular season win totals, title odds to differentiate teams with the same win total number, current state of injury news, and the first few regular season games we have priced. I then add some manual adjustment. The only major difference to note in using these instead of NFL is the change in home-court rating from 1.5 to 3 points from a neutral site.
Hint: The Oklahoma City Thunder come in at No. 1 with a +8.1 rating … just ahead of tonight's opponent — the San Antonio Spurs at +7.4.
Check out my NBA preseason power rankings here.
Source: Sports
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