OKLAHOMA CITY — The longest night of Victor Wembanyama's NBA career was over.

His postgame media responsibilities were done, and he had just seen his father and a few other people in a quiet hallway near the San Antonio Spurs locker room.

He didn't walk back to the room. He got a ride — in a wheeled office chair, pushed by a Spurs staffer.

"Save some steps," Wembanyama said.

To be fair, after the night he had, energy was probably in short supply anyway.

A 41-point, 24-rebound playoff game. Only a few people in the history of basketball have done that — Wilt Chamberlain eight times, Hakeem Olajuwon twice, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar once, Charles Barkley once.

Add Wembanyama to that list now, after his latest masterpiece — in a career-high 49 minutes — carried the Spurs to a 122-115 double-overtime win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals on Monday night.

"The best player in the (expletive) world," Spurs guard Stephon Castle announced for all the world to hear in a postgame interview on NBC.

Officially, no, that's not the case. The best player in the NBA world right now is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the player who got his second consecutive Most Valuable Player award in a pregame ceremony with Wembanyama looking on.

It was an award Wembanyama wanted — and still wants. Seeing Gilgeous-Alexander raise that trophy, though, had an effect on the 7-foot-4 French star.

"He's competitive. If you're a competitor and you see another competitor get rewarded with what you want. If that's motivation, we all get motivated by different things,"Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. "As a competitive person, that would be my approach and perspective."

Did it matter?

"I've still got a lot to learn," Wembanyama said. "And I want to get that trophy many times in my career."

Are you the best player?

"The world is eight billion people," Wembanyama said. "That's eight billion opinions."

Wembanyama's final line: 14 for 25 from the field, 12 for 13 from the foul line, and his lone 3-pointer came late in the first overtime, tying the game from well beyond the arc. Without that shot, there's probably no second overtime. There's probably a 1-0 series lead for Oklahoma City going into Game 2 on Wednesday night.

He blocked three shots and changed countless others. He dunked on the Thunder and flexed, more than once.

The Spurs outrebounded the Thunder 61-40. Wembanyama even smiled and posed for the cameras at times. This was his first conference finals game, on the road no less, and he was as comfortable as could be.

"I think he's a great player with high impact, obviously, and when you play against those players it's kind of an acquired thing," Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. "You're learning as you go. We've gone through that with other great players."

This was a game that the Spurs were supposed to lose: underdogs, on the road, without injured point guard De'Aaron Fox, against the defending champion, a team unbeaten in the first two rounds of the playoffs. A 10-point lead in the fourth quarter was given away, and the Thunder isn't in the habit of losing leads in the final moments.

And none of that mattered, largely because of Wembanyama. The road to the NBA title now goes through San Antonio; if the Spurs win all their home games the rest of the way, they'll be NBA champions.

That's a long way off. But the Spurs aren't a rising team anymore, they're already here.

"The message would be that we, as a team, are ready to go into any environment, in any place, against anybody," Wembanyama said. "And even though we've still got a lot to learn, our effort should be over anybody else's. And tonight, we were relentless."

With the triumph at Oklahoma City's Paycom Center, the Spurs stole home-court advantage in the best-of-seven series that will send the winner to the NBA Finals.

Wembanyama admitted the sight of Thunder star Gilgeous-Alexander receiving his second straight MVP trophy before the game "for sure" made the clash more personal.

He was named Defensive Player of the Year, but finished third in the MVP voting announced on Sunday.

Rookie Dylan Harper, starting in place of the injured Fox, scored 24 points and snagged seven steals for San Antonio. Castle added 17 points and 11 assists as the Spurs extended their season dominance over the Thunder.

Oklahoma City, trying to become the first team to repeat as champion since Golden State in 2017 and 2018, piled up a league-best 64 regular-season wins, but dropped four of five contests against the Spurs — who won 62 regular-season games to return to the playoffs for the first time since 2019.

Gilgeous-Alexander was limited to 24 points after shaking off a sluggish start to spark the Thunder's rally from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit.

Alex Caruso scored 31 points to lead the Thunder and Jalen Williams returned from a six-game injury absence to score 26.

Oklahoma City trailed by 10 in the fourth quarter, but the Thunder clawed back and it was knotted at 99-99 with 33.2 seconds left when Wembanyama spun in for a basket that put San Antonio up 101-99.

Gilgeous-Alexander then tied it up with a layup and Chet Holmgren blocked Wembanyama's potential game-winner at the buzzer.