OKC Thunder Set to Gain Familiarity With San Antonio Spurs

Life comes at you fast and so does the NBA Cup. With everyone anticipating the Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers meeting up in Saturday's Semi-Final for a must-see TV contest and a packed house full of Purple and Gold in Vegas as these two foes faced the Suns sans Devin Booker and the Spurs without Victor Wembanyama, only the Thunder held up their end of the bargin.

This leads to a Saturday, Dec. 13 tilt between the Thunder and Spurs tipping off at 8:00 PM CT on Amazon Prime with the right to advance to the NBA Cup Championship Game and continue their pursuit of a title and the cash prize on the line.

The most interesting part? This sets up one of the most rare scheduling quirks the NBA has ever seen.

After not playing each other to date yet this season, these Western Conference foes will now face off three times in a matter of 13 days with each game at unique locations. After this Dec. 13 showdown in Vegas, the two teams meet again on Dec. 23 in San Antonio to set the stage for their Christmas Day matchup on Dec. 25 inside the Paycom Center as part of the tent pole day on the NBA calendar.

These two teams will quickly gain familiarity with each other while still having two more contests to go against each other meeting again on Jan. 13 in Bricktown then wrapping up on Feb. 4 in San Antonio.

With five meetings on the regular season slate and three in short order, this will give these two foes familiarity with one another and a compact opportunity to scout and adjust to one another.

While every game has its own challenges one of the difficulties of this set up is not just the predictability once you get to Christmas Day, but the added wrinkle of two teams that are in a constant state of adding and losing players from its rotation.

On Wednesday night, Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson detailed that star big man Victor Wembanyama could return on Saturday after dealing with a calf strain that has sidelined him for multiple weeks. Currently, the Thunder sit within their 10-to-14 day re-evaluation window of their own starting center, Isaiah Hartenstein, who is nursing a right soleus strain. The Bricktown Ballers are also missing Isaiah Joe presently as he is tabbed with a knee contusion.

Then in the Thunder's dismantling against the Suns, Oklahoma City saw Cason Wallace leave the contest early with an injury. That makes four key rotational pieces between each side have enter Saturday with an uncertain status. There is a real chance all three games over the next two weeks feature unique rotations for both clubs.