At some point, the San Antonio Spurs’ destiny would allow them to break through in the Western Conference and make the NBA Finals with Victor Wembanyama.
The only thing is, nobody expected it to be this early in the development of their young core, even after taking down the Oklahoma City Thunder in four of five regular-season meetings. Still, the potential was there, and the thought that this team could break through at any moment was surely in the back of everyone’s minds throughout the year.
That moment came in the playoffs when the Spurs beat the Thunder in seven games, winning the Western Conference and advancing to the 2026 NBA Finals. While things may not have gone as expected against the New York Knicks, especially considering that San Antonio held double-digit leads in all five games of the series, this was a successful year for the Spurs.
Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, and the rest of this youthful roster in Mitch Johnson’s first full season at the helm took a major step forward and put themselves in the upper echelon of the league. To make the NBA Finals was a major accomplishment for this team, one that even all of their mistakes and collapses against the Knicks can’t overshadow.
Winning a championship takes time.
No team in the history of the NBA has ever won it all without facing some sort of adversity or challenge. More importantly, no team has truly ever been the last standing without taking the proper steps to get to that point.
When you actually look at what the Spurs accomplished as one of the youngest teams in the league, it’s almost as if they are looking in the mirror and seeing the 2024-25 Knicks, a team that did not have much postseason experience with one another and were knocking on the door of the NBA Finals.
The Knicks may have defeated the Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals to put a bow on the 2025-26 NBA season and hoist the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy into the sky in San Antonio, but this is simply a learning lesson for San Antonio. Even so, it’s a harsh lesson, and it can’t be looked at as anything other than a missed opportunity for Wembanyama and the Spurs in the immediate aftermath,
“I think that compared to anything before, this is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment,” Wembanyama said with a look of disbelief on his face following a 19-point, 14-rebound night in the Game 5 loss. “I don’t think we could have learned more and gained more experience in one playoff run and in one season, and personally in 18 months. It’s been hard and full of lessons.”
The Spurs were by no means blown out in this series. Although a 4-1 score may point in the opposite direction, San Antonio had multiple chances to take control of this series against New York. No matter how you look at the 2026 NBA Finals, there will always be that question of what if that stands out.
From Wembanyama throwing the ball off Castle late in their Game 2 loss to the historic blown 29-point lead in Game 4 in Madison Square Garden to not being able to hold a 16-point lead in the do-or-die Game 5 on their home floor, so many opportunities came and went for the Spurs in this series.
But again, that’s what happens with young teams that aren’t battle-tested. It’s what the best like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Stephen Curry all had to learn along the way to become some of the greatest players in the history of this league.
Wembanyama has already made it clear early in his young career that he is ready to follow in the footsteps of the legends before him and that he is ready to take on the title of being the face of the NBA. If this Finals run means anything, it’s that Wemby has arrived, and he is here to stay for many years to come.
This NBA Finals run by the Spurs was improbable, surprising, and eye-opening for a lot of different reasons, yet it was fully believable.
And despite their lack of postseason experience with one another and this truly being the first full season of the Spurs’ rise to greatness in what will be an ultra-competitive Western Conference for years to come, this team fought tooth and nail with a team that had simply just reached their pinnacle.
The Knicks’ time was now, and the Spurs need to understand that.
Nothing happened overnight for New York, and they had been taking major steps over the last couple of seasons to get to this point. Everything culminated in a grand playoff showing for the Knicks, and that is why they ended up being the last team standing.
One day, that will be Wembanyama and San Antonio. There is no doubt about that.
Now the Spurs enter the offseason motivated more than ever to learn from their mistakes and follow in the Knicks’ footsteps, using the defeat from the previous year to fuel their championship dreams.
Nevertheless, Wembanyama and Co. will be stuck wondering what could’ve been over the next few days, weeks, and months, considering that they truly did have a strong grip on this series.
Spurs’ second-half woes too much to overcome
As soon as every game of the 2026 NBA Finals started, the Spurs came out hot as the aggressors.
In fact, the Spurs outscored the Knicks in all five of the first quarters in this series, scoring 158 total first-quarter points compared to New York’s 101 total points in the opening quarter. On Saturday night, the Spurs held the Knicks to just 13 first-quarter points.
Getting off to a fast start and putting the pressure on New York was essential for San Antonio in this series, and they could not have done a better job in doing so. But as we know, basketball is a four-quarter game, and the Knicks’ experience from being in these massive playoff moments showed for all 48 minutes, whereas the Spurs always looked like a completely different second-half team.
New York outscored San Antonio six times in either the third or fourth quarter, but outscored them 268 to 228 in total second-half points. Resilience and poise are the two words that stand out the most from this NBA Finals series for the Knicks, whereas sloppiness and panic are the two words that resemble the Spurs in these five games.
After shooting 45.9 percent from the floor and averaging 56.4 points per game in the first half of the 2026 NBA Finals, San Antonio shot just 37.4 percent from the floor and averaged 45.6 points per game in the second half against New York. Whether it was Wembanyama, Castle, De’Aaron Fox, or someone else, the Spurs simply looked lost and rattled throughout the second half of the NBA Finals, specifically the fourth quarter.
Over the final seven minutes of Game 1, which New York won 105-95, San Antonio scored just nine points, with Wembanyama accounting for eight of these points. In Game 2, which the Knicks won 105-104, Wembanyama and the Spurs had a chance to win the game with 10 seconds left and the clock running, but he threw the ball off Stephon Castle’s back off and subsequently fouled Jalen Brunson for being over-aggressive.
New York took a one-point lead after Brunson made one of two free throws, and then Wembanyama missed the potential game-winning shot with San Antonio only having eight seconds to operate with and in scramble mode after surrendering the lead.
Again, an inopportune mistake by a young player and a team that haven’t been in this situation before.
These same second-half woes continued into Game 3 and Game 4 on the road in Madison Square Garden. While the Spurs did pull off a 115-111 win in Game 3, that wasn’t before they let the Knicks hang around in the fourth quarter and almost take the lead.
Of course, we all know what happened in Game 4, as New York stormed all the way back from down 29 points to win. But even so, this was more of a San Antonio loss than anything else, as they scored just 30 points in the final 24 minutes of the game after leading 76-49 at halftime and knocking down 14 first-half 3-pointers.
This game was a tale of two teams, as the Spurs went from playing some of their best basketball of the season to forgetting how to move the ball on offense and get back to what was working. Once again, we saw a young team who was caught like a deer in headlights and unable to respond.
And on Saturday night, a similar tale played out, as the Knicks hung around, despite the Spurs extending their lead to 16 points. At the end of the day, New York was celebrating its first championship in 53 years at the final buzzer.
“I learned (that) the margin of error is very thin,” Wembanyama said in the immediate aftermath of Game 5. “Our dominant stints are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of the series. But our errors, our mistakes, were punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this.
“The ups are okay. The downs are the reason we lost.”
The downs were certainly costly in this series, none more so than those that occurred in the second half of all five games.
This was a year of emergence and opportunity for the Spurs, but the common theme throughout the NBA Finals was that they were young and inexperienced. That inexperience proved to be the ultimate deciding factor, and that extends all the way to Mitch Johnson as well.
Mitch Johnson was a rookie coach… and it showed
Johnson was a finalist for the 2025-26 NBA Coach of the Year award, and rightfully so.
Since they last made the playoffs in 2019, the Spurs had not put together a winning season or a year with more than 34 wins. Six straight years of missing the playoffs and being a lottery team was San Antonio’s largest postseason drought in franchise history.
With Gregg Popovich retiring due to health issues, the Spurs had no thoughts of turning to anyone other than Johnson for the job, especially since Popovich had been grooming him as his successor on the sidelines for years. He was the one who took over for Popovich when he suffered his stroke early in the 2024-25 season, and Johnson’s demeanor as a 39-year-old himself really allowed him to gel with his team in a way that is very similar to Mark Daigneault with the Thunder.
In his first season at the helm, Johnson led San Antonio to a 62-20 record, resulting in them becoming just the fourth team to ever go from lottery to 60-plus wins year-over-year in NBA history. Something about this Spurs team with Wembnayama at the helm of everything made everyone believe that entering the playoffs, they had a chance to be special.
Johnson and his staff did an excellent job of managing their team through injuries and putting them in the best spot possible to succeed. That is why the Spurs made their first Western Conference Finals appearance since 2017 and were able to then take down the defending champion Thunder in seven games, winning the final two games of the series after facing elimination twice.
But just like how the playoff immaturity and inexperience crept up on his players and led demise on the court, the same impacted Johnson in the NBA Finals.
From failing to utilize timeouts during the Knicks’ second-half runs throughout the series to Wembanyama’s minutes leading to clear fatigue to leaning on his analytics and predetermined rotations instead of using the eye test to simply make choices on what was working on a game-to-game basis, Johnson being a rookie coach showed against Mike Brown and the Knicks.
Whether it was leaning on Wembanyama too much in the second half of games or consistently turning to Fox on offense over Harper, who was killing it all series long coming off the bench, Johnson’s decisions backfired on him time and time again.
He was simply outcoached, and while it played a role in costing San Antonio a chance at a championship right now, there is really nothing wrong with all of this for this franchise when you look at things with a big-picture approach.
This Spurs team will be back in this position one day. When they get there, they will be able to look back on this series against the Knicks and use what they learned to finally become the team they thought they could be this year: the last ones standing.
Until then, all Johnson and his Spurs squad can focus on is that this simply wasn’t their time.
“The simple consistencies, we didn’t deserve to win the games,” Johnson told reporters on Saturday night. “There’s a lot of level of execution. There can be rebounding. There can be end-of-game details. There can be starting the game where you get the lead and then you don’t sustain that. NBA games are long, it happens during the regular season, too. Everything is much more on stage during the Finals when everybody’s watching.
“We weren’t ready to win an NBA championship. The better team won. We did a lot of good things, and we didn’t finish the job. That’s what it is.”
Nobody expected San Antonio to be in a position to win a championship this year. Simply reaching the NBA Finals proves that their moment is now and that they are well ahead of schedule.
If you had told the Spurs in September that they would be in the NBA Finals nine months later, they would’ve confidently told you that they believe this too, since that’s just how athletes operate, but in actuality, they probably would’ve thought you were crazy.
This NBA Finals journey and moment were real for San Antonio It cannot be taken away, and it will prove to be the ultimate learning lesson for them heading into the years ahead.
“We’ve been blood, sweat, and tears for nine months basically. It’s over. There will be plenty of time for reflection,” Johnson continued. “But yeah, on the surface level, I don’t think anybody other than the people in that room expected us to be here. There’s a lot of good in that. There’s a lot of pain in what just happened.
“Both things can be true.”
The championship window is now in San Antonio
Victor Wembanyama will now be a perennial MVP candidate every year for the remainder of his NBA career. Stephon Castle will be viewed as a rising two-way star in the Spurs’ backcourt, and Dylan Harper, after just one year in the league, has made it clear he is on superstar watch and a future All-NBA guard, especially after his NBA Finals dominance.
Throw in the fact that Devin Vassell, Keldon Johnson, Carter Bryant, and Julian Champagnie are all under contract still, plus the fact that this organization has access to first-round picks every year through 2033, and it’s easy to see why the Spurs will be right next to the Thunder at the top of the NBA for years to come.
However, a clear question has emerged for this young Spurs team after losing the NBA Finals in five games:
What is this team’s identity?
It is obvious that this team will go as far as Wembanyama can take them, and everything starts with him. Just like how Jordan was the catalyst for the Chicago Bulls’ six championship runs, Wemby will be the same for the Spurs and their eventual championship journeys.
Still, it’s a long road to get to the NBA Finals, and these chances do not come every year. Wembanyama knows this, and it’s the main reason why he’s already using this losing moment to the Knicks as fuel for the offseason before the 2026-27 season.
“What I’m pissed about is that there’s probably a hundred games before we can be back in Finals,” the Spurs star said before a long pause. “I don’t know how to say it in English, but I’m going to have to hold that inside of me and slow down and wait and execute for a hundred games.”
As much as San Antonio will answer the question of what its true identity is coming off this NBA Finals run, this franchise also needs to be asking about the future of this backcourt.
Castle and Harper are two young, emerging stars in San Antonio. So, where does that leave De’Aaron Fox in all of this?
Fox handpicked the Spurs as his preferred destination before he was traded there at the 2025 trade deadline. Looking ahead, his dynamic scoring and athleticism at the point guard position alongside Wembanyama set the Spurs up for long-term success.
But this was before Harper was drafted. It was before Harper’s All-Rookie season. It was before Harper’s breakout playoff performances. It was before Fox’s costly mistakes in the NBA Finals that made him a complete liability for his team to the point where the Knicks were comfortable with him having the ball in his hands.
Balancing their backcourt depth will be the biggest challenge for the Spurs’ front office and Johnson entering the summer, especially since Castle, Harper, and Fox are all starting-quality lead guards in this league. As much as Harper embraced his role coming off the bench this season, he clearly won’t be content doing so entering his second season and coming off his masterful NBA Finals performances.
Castle and Harper are the future in San Antonio alongside Wembanyama. What Harper is becoming was supposed to be Fox’s role, which is why the team gave him a four-year, $220 million contract extension in August before the 2025-26 season. Looking back on this deal, the Spurs have to be wondering if their decision to commit to Fox was a mistake.
In today’s NBA, with the way cap aprons are structured, teams truly only have a four-to-five-year championship window when their clock officially begins. After making the NBA Finals this year, the Spurs’ clock has started, especially when you look at things from a financial perspective.
Wembanyama, Champagnie, and Johnson are all entering the final years of their contracts when the 2026-27 season begins. On July 6, Wemby will be eligible for a five-year, $251 million rookie maximum extension that will likely exceed $301 million with him being in the running for All-NBA, MVP, and Defensive Player of the Year every single season.
As soon as Wemby becomes eligible to sign this deal, the Spurs will be giving it to him, which ties up a significant portion of their cap with Fox on the books through the 2029-30 season with an annual average salary of over $55 million.
After the 2026-27 season, Castle will then be extension-eligible and seeking a long-term commitment from the Spurs. Much like how the Thunder gave max extensions to their core of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren, the Spurs will be forced to make similar decisions, which puts the long-term futures of Vassell, Johnson, Bryant, and others in question since Fox’s deal is already locked in.
If anything has become clear after the NBA Finals, it’s that San Antonio’s time to capitalize on Wembanyama’s ascendence is now. The Spurs’ championship window is wide open, and as a result, this organization needs to be willing to do anything necessary to maximize their chances of winning titles over the next three years.
Does that mean it’s time to try and move off Fox, leveraging future draft capital in the process to land other impactful secondary players who would even the Spurs’ cap sheets? A player like Trey Murphy III in New Orleans could certainly do this for the Spurs, as could a veteran like Julius Randle in Minnesota.
It would be a long shot, but LeBron is at the end of his career and wants to win right now. Could there be a sign-and-trade on the table for him to try and win a championship right now on a young, dynamic team like the Spurs at the cost of Fox?
These are all hypothetical scenarios out there when it comes to San Antonio possibly looking to trade Fox this offseason, but that’s not how this organization typically operates. Patience has always led the Spurs to their championship dreams, yet both Brian Wright and R.C. Buford in the front office surely understand the urgency to make improvements.
Wembanyama has hit the international levels Jordan and LeBron did early in their respective careers. He is now the long-term face of the league, and reaching the 2026 NBA Finals has put the Spurs near the top of the league’s food chain.
Rivals will be making their own moves to combat Wemby and this young nucleus for years to come, which is why, coming off their Finals loss, San Antonio must be motivated to make winning changes.
How the Spurs plan to improve from their NBA Finals journey is a mystery entering the summer, but Wembanyama and this team’s motivation is not. Wemby and Co. will be back sooner than later, and when they do make it back to the NBA Finals, they will look back on this journey and loss to the Knicks as the moment their legacy began.
“It’s painful. But I’m not running away from that. I’m using it to fuel me,” said Wembanyma while thinking about all the legends before him facing the same postseason adversity before finally winning a championship. “I’m not satisfied with not winning. But as I said, this is the biggest lesson of my life.
“As a team, there’s no better experience than what we just lived.”
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