SAN ANTONIO — This backbreaker wasn’t as audacious as the last.Unlike Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, when Victor Wembanyama’s 32-footer to force a double overtime was the product of flow state and downright arrogance, his half-court 3-pointer at the end of the first half of Game 4 was born out of desperation and evolution. His San Antonio Spurs had seen how the Oklahoma City Thunder don’t wobble when you hit hard first, with that 15-0 lead in Friday’s Game 3 vanishing like Thunder big man Chet Holmgren in this series. Now here they were again on Sunday night, with a lead that was as large as 15 in the first quarter having shrunk to single digits.So Wembanyama dribbled around the back-to-back MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, pulled up on the far side of the Spurs’ logo on the Frost Bank Center floor and let it fly. Jared McCain was close by, but only mustered a half-hearted contest because he clearly had no fear of the shot actually falling. Cason Wallace had a front-row seat, too. But when the ball found its way to the fabric, pushing the Spurs’ lead to 12 at the break en route to the 103-82 blowout to come, it was as if Wembanyama had broken the glass on the nearest defibrillator and shocked life back into his team, which would have been unofficially done if the Thunder had taken the 3-1 series lead. Instead, Oklahoma City blew this chance to put Wembanyama and his Spurs back in their (second) place, and the balance of power in the NBA is up for grabs again.Time will tell if the Thunder look back on this night with the deepest of regret.As we saw around this time a year ago, OKC tends to let dangerous opponents stick around longer than most objective observers might have predicted. The fact that the Thunder allowed the Denver Nuggets to take them to seven games in the second round last year was stunning at the time, considering the Nuggets finished the regular season with 18 fewer wins than the Thunder while enduring all sorts of organizational turmoil. Ditto for the finals against the Indiana Pacers, who also finished 18 games behind the Thunder but looked poised to pull off the upset in Game 7, only to see Tyrese Haliburton go down with his right Achilles tendon tear in the first quarter.The respective ownership groups and top decision-makers of both teams took those performances as signs of hope that their teams were within striking distance of the top dog and made key offseason moves with the belief that Oklahoma City was, believe it or not, gettable. And while that premise was proved false in relation to those matchups, it still serves as a cautionary tale of sorts when it comes to this latest development. These Spurs, and Wembanyama more than all the rest, are not to be trifled with.Lest anyone forgets, San Antonio pushed OKC for the NBA’s best record all the way until the end of the regular season and landed just two games shy of the defending champs. What’s more, they have now beaten the Thunder six times in nine tries this season (including the NBA Cup semifinal in December). That sort of sample size is more than enough to infuse the young upstarts with extreme confidence, perhaps countering the massive gap in playoff experience that was supposed to be the Spurs’ undoing.Yet just two days after Wembanyama looked and sounded like a rising star on the ropes, questioning himself in his news conference after the Game 3 loss while explaining why he needed to be a better teammate, he turned in another one of those performances that should shake the rest of the league to its core. Starting with the Thunder.He had 33 points (11-of-22 shooting overall; 3 of 7 from 3), eight rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals. But it wasn’t the stat line that spoke loudest. It was the way in which he went at the Thunder’s frontcourt — mostly Isaiah Hartenstein, with a smattering of ill-fated Holmgren assignments mixed in — that made you wonder if these Spurs might pull this upset off after all.“The truth is that we had never been in this kind of situation before,” Wembanyama said. “It was our first deficit in a playoff series, and we just responded. But it was nothing amazing. It wasn’t magic. We just did what we needed to do. The series is far from over. We got six more wins before we can rest.”Here’s the funny part: Wembanyama clearly forgot that the Spurs dropped the series opener to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the second round, which is clearly a sign that he was never truly worried about that particular foe. And if you’re the Thunder — from general manager Sam Presti to coach Mark Daigneault on down — it’s that last part of his messaging that should inspire some sense of concern.For Wembanyama to casually state that San Antonio plans to win six more times is to be reminded that he has one goal in mind. This isn’t about the Thunder, per se, as much as it is the obstacle they represent. And now, with four games in the books and Oklahoma City’s most pivotal players putting up unimpressive performances for so much of this series, it sets the stage for a fantastic finish.To wit…• Gilgeous-Alexander hasn’t been his elite-level self in this series (regular-season averages in parentheses): 24.8 points (31.1) on 39.2 percent shooting overall (55.3 percent), 26.7 percent from 3 (38.6 percent), to go with 10 assists (6.6), 3.3 rebounds (4.3), two steals (1.4), one block (0.8), 2.8 turnovers (2.2) and a minus-4.3 individual net rating (plus-16.3).• Holmgren, whose main goal should be to convince Presti not to call the Milwaukee Bucks about a Giannis Antetokounmpo trade when this season ends, has been even worse (regular-season averages in parentheses): 11.3 points (17.1), six rebounds (8.9), 0.8 blocks (1.9) and an individual net rating of 0.1 (16.1).The Thunder have also only had All-Star swingman Jalen Williams for a total of 45 minutes in this series (Games 1 and 2) because of his lingering hamstring injury. Ajay Mitchell, the second-year guard who showed out in Williams’ absence during the first two rounds, was a no-show against San Antonio before missing Game 4 with a right soleus (calf) injury. There’s this, too: The Spurs defense that trailed only the Thunder and Detroit Pistons in the regular season, and which has been the best among the 16 playoff teams this postseason, held OKC to its lowest point total and field-goal percentage (33) of the season.All of which feeds the Wembanyama fire.The 22-year-old clearly wants to be the best player on the planet right now, to unseat Gilgeous-Alexander and his Thunder while staking his claim to global hoops supremacy before he can even rent a car. It won’t be easy to pull off, what with two of the final three games of the series coming in the Paycom Center, where the Thunder are 39-8 in the regular season and playoffs.But as Game 4 reminded us, it’s not wise for any Wembanyama foe to play with this French fire. He’s coming for the throne, whether that coronation comes now or down the line, and now finds himself with a chance to do this deed far earlier than anyone expected.