Carmelo Anthony and Tracy McGrady have seen most things on a basketball floor between them. Combined, the two ten-time All-Stars have played in 1,855 NBA games and watched countless more from broadcast positions. On Monday night at Paycom Center, they stood in the tunnel for Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder and refused to sit down.
Victor Wembanyama, in his first conference finals game in NBA history, dropped 41 points and 24 rebounds in 49 minutes as the Spurs stole the opener in double overtime, 122-115. The two legends were asked afterward what they had just watched. Their answer was unanimous and almost reverent.
"We were taken in right there in that tunnel over there," the broadcaster set up. "Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady, they didn't want to sit down. They wanted to make sure they saw everything. But every time Wemby made a great play, you guys just looked at each other and it's like at some point it's becoming unguardable. It feels unguardable."
McGrady was the first to speak, and he reached immediately for the boxing metaphor.
"Well, he kicked the game off with 10 and 10 in the first quarter," McGrady said. "So that told me that he was locked in, ready to go. And then just the boxing match, the heavyweight boxing match that was going back and forth — the jab, the jab, the jab, and Wemby answer, OKC answer, Wemby answer, Caruso answer, Wemby answer, JDub answer. It was just one of them great games. To me, it was an instant classic game that you go back and watch — this game on the Western Conference Finals."
The comparison that landed hardest came when McGrady, asked to put the night in a wider historical frame, paused and reached for a moment that lives in OKC's own broadcast lore.
"This took me back on this floor watching Steph Curry come across that half court and hitting that shot on OKC," McGrady said, referencing Curry's iconic February 2016 half-court winner at Oklahoma City. "Wow. He's doing this in the Western Conference Finals. I mean, during overtime — like that wasn't in the middle of the game. It was absolutely necessary to stay in and win the game. Push it to double overtime. They needed it."
The defining sequence the McGrady comment refers to is Wembanyama's 28-foot pull-up with 26 seconds left in the first overtime that forced double overtime. He followed it with two block-and-finishes in the final 60 seconds of the second overtime, including a chase-down rejection of Jalen Williams whose hamstring had only just healed.
McGrady was unwilling to let any qualifier survive on air.
"He pulled up a three. He got a block. He got a one-handed dunk. He was still on the ground. Anything you can do in a basketball game," he said. "So when you watch that and guys who've done this at the highest level, you got to marvel at that."
Anthony's contribution was shorter, but no less complimentary, and pivoted to the question lurking under the Spurs' Game 1 win: that the team around Wembanyama is much younger than the moment suggests.
"It's a very young team, but it's a bunch of guys that really truly believe in themselves and the ability to get this done this year," Anthony said. "I know we talk about the young and experienced. They're experienced."
Anthony then highlighted the under-noticed sub-plot that Spurs coach Mitch Johnson is leaning on a rookie point guard for a reason that was not in the pre-series scouting report.
"By the way, listen, Dylan Harper had to jump into the lineup because we found out De'Aaron Fox was not playing due to an ankle injury," Anthony said. "He entered the game questionable. So that meant their starting lineup, no one was over 25 years old. So this was a young team that had to come on the road and steal one in Oklahoma City."
It is rare for the McGrady–Anthony tunnel-stand to produce on-air superlatives this open. Wembanyama, in their words, has earned them. Game 2 in Oklahoma City on Thursday will tell whether the Steph Curry comparison ages as well as the moment that made it.
