With the NBA Finals having a historic undertone, it was easy to forget that the Western Conference Finals were a thriller straight out of a movie. If that movie were a mob drama. The Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs didn’t just give us physicality and unpredictable back-and-forth. It also had some suspicious plays. The aftermath of that has spilled over into the offseason with a hilarious, viral revelation. Standing out as a key contributor to OKC’s deep postseason run, Jared McCain recently opened up about his newfound, unsolicited rivalry with Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama.

In a post-season vlog posted to his official YouTube channel, McCain revealed that a terrifying on-court moment completely ruined his plans to secure a historic souvenir from the 7’4″ Alien. The conversation sparked while he was unboxing a massive, heavy care package from the cosmetics brand Sally Hansen, the nail paint brand he’s collaborated with. After pulling out a large, framed picture celebrating the Thunder squad, McCain remembered the playoff battle it depicted.

“Dang. Like, it’s crazy. I was going to ask for Wemby’s jersey, but like, now he’s got a hit on me,” McCain joked with his friends in the room. “Like I can’t—like I don’t know if I get [the jersey].”

One of McCain’s friends joked, “Nah, that’s got to be the thumbnail for the video: ‘Wemby sent a hit on me,'” with that classic shocked expression we’ve seen on a hundred YouTube thumbnails. McCain liked the idea, toying with the vlog title, “Wemby tried to kill me gone wrong.’”

But this vlog was titled, ‘I Played Wemby in the NBA Playoffs…” The perfect amount of intrigue for a near assassination attempt that McCain can laugh about now.

The ‘hit’ backstory: How Victor Wembanyama targeted McCain

It’s no exaggeration that the word “hit” was thrown around. And McCain had reason to take the defensive scrutiny personally, well before Game 5.

He’d dropped 24 points off the bench in OKC’s Game 3 win, the kind of breakout that gets a guard circled on a scouting report. San Antonio’s response in Game 4 was immediate: McCain went 1-for-10 from the floor as the Spurs made him a featured defensive priority rather than an afterthought off the pine.

By the time Game 5 rolled around, McCain wasn’t just another bench piece, he was a problem San Antonio had already spent a game and a half trying to solve.

That context matters for what happened next. With the series tied 2-2 in Game 5, Victor Wembanyama appeared to orchestrate something during winding-down garbage time. OKC won 127-114 to take the series lead, but once the dust settled, clips of a “hit job” were already spreading online.

Cameras caught Wembanyama whispering separately to backup bigs Mason Plumlee and Bismack Biyombo at the scorer’s table in the closing minutes and on the very next two possessions, both delivered hard fouls on McCain, with Plumlee catching him in the back and Biyombo sending him to the floor on a drive.

McCain himself later said he was caught off guard enough to ask Plumlee about it directly at the free-throw line, and got a half-joking promise of more to come, which McCain shrugged off as just part of playoff basketball.

Spurs fans called it standard postseason toughness. Everyone else called it dirty, and in hyperbolic terms, a “hit.”

The league apparently saw something worth flagging, too.

This is where the joke stops being purely a joke. The NBA reviewed the Plumlee foul the next day and upgraded it from a common foul to a Flagrant 1, an admission that officials missed a call in real time.

The league also issued Wembanyama a separate warning after he skipped his postgame media obligations following the game, leaving him unable to address the whispered exchange directly.

No fine or suspension ever tied Wembanyama to ordering the fouls, and “did he actually tell them to do it” remains technically unconfirmed, but the league’s own paper trail is the reason “hit” became the word that stuck instead of just “hard foul.”

McCain, who, at this point, had become a key bench player filling in for injured players Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell.

Poor Jared was thinking this was a healthy rivalry he could mark with a souvenir from his opponent.

While the physical play was simply a testament to the intensity of playoff basketball, McCain’s vlog shows he took the aggressive defense entirely in stride.

Despite the bruising blocks from ‘Plumdog Millionaire’ and Wemby’s alleged directives, the guard showed throughout the entire vlog that reaching the Western Conference Finals was a personally memorable milestone in his career.