Series can be magic when no one expects it, and they can be brutal when the favourite rolls out the heavy artillery. Game 3 in San Antonio was the second. The Oklahoma City Thunder, on the road, beat the San Antonio Spurs 123-108, reclaiming home-court advantage and pulling ahead 2-1 in the Western Conference finals.

Game 1 had ended in a double-overtime loss for the Thunder - on their own floor. That stung, and they answered with a road trip to Texas that read like a strike. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the team line with 26 points and 12 assists, his standard evening. But the real story of this game was the OKC bench.

Jared McCain dropped 24 points off the bench, with help from Jaylin Williams (18), Alex Caruso (15) and Cason Wallace (11). That's 68 points from the bench alone - a number usually filed in the playoffs under „home-crowd excitement", but in this game it tied the fate of the series to it. The Thunder don't only depend on their MVP, and that's the thing other teams don't want to accept.

On the Spurs side, Victor Wembanyama put up 26 points, and it wasn't enough. De'Aaron Fox returned from an ankle injury and added 15 points after missing the first two games of the series. Stephon Castle had a brutal offensive night - 14 points on 1-of-8 shooting. When a team's second-best player shoots 12.5 percent, no stat sheet saves the week.

The whole game was a quiet free-throw explosion - both teams shot 33 free throws. That isn't the conference-finals style anyone wants to watch, but the numbers are the numbers. The series now shifts back to Oklahoma City for Game 4, and the Thunder look like the firm favourites driving decisively into the last round.