It’s strange how quickly expectations can change. There’s no better example of that than the Spurs, who entered 2025/26 with a projected win total of 44.5 and wound up blowing past that number with over a month left in the season. San Antonio ultimately posted a 62-20 record, the second-best mark in the NBA and in the Western Conference.
The Spurs’ ascent up the standings was sudden, given that they had posted six straight losing seasons, but the team was pretty consistently great throughout the 2025/26 campaign. San Antonio started out 5-0, was 32-16 by the end of January, and finished the final two-plus months of the regular season on a 30-4 tear.
The Spurs’ rapid rise was largely fueled by lottery luck. After winning the draft lottery in 2023 and selecting a truly generational talent in Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs nailed the fourth overall pick in 2024 by drafting Stephon Castle, then moved up six spots to No. 2 in the 2025 lottery, adding another dynamic young guard in Dylan Harper (they also controlled the 14th pick, which they used on Carter Bryant).
Wembanyma, who was limited to 46 appearances in 2024/25 due to a blood clot in his shoulder, was the foundation of the Spurs’ success, particularly on the defensive end. The towering French big man was the first unanimous choice for Defensive Player of the Year in NBA history after leading the league in blocks and forcing offenses to adjust to his presence in a way that has never been seen before.
It’s difficult to overstate how impactful Wembanyama was for the Spurs in ’25/26. When he was off the court, San Antonio had the equivalent of the 17th-best net rating (+0.6 points per 100 possessions) in the NBA and a defense that would have ranked 15th. When he was playing, the team had a +17.0 net rating (the Thunder had the best mark during the regular season at +11.1), with a defensive rating of 103.6 — nearly three full points better than the Thunder’s league-best defense (106.5).
It was hard to get a read on how the young Spurs might perform in their debut playoff run, but they were considered a viable contender despite their relative inexperience. In some ways, the team’s overwhelming talent obfuscated its weaknesses during the regular season, and that carried over to the postseason as well.
The Spurs defeated the Trail Blazers in a five-game first-round series, then took down the battle-tested but shorthanded Timberwolves in a six-game second-round matchup. They faced the top-seeded Thunder in the Western Conference finals and eliminated the defending champions after an epic and extremely well played seven games.
While there had long been a perception that the winner of that Spurs-Thunder series would be the heavy favorites to win the championship, the Knicks entered the NBA Finals on a historic hot streak and ended up taking the first two games on the road despite trailing early in both contests. Wembanyama had a critical turnover in the closing seconds of Game 2 when the score was tied and then compounded his mistake by fouling Jalen Brunson, who made one of two free throws to give New York the lead. Wembanyama missed a potential game-winning jump shot on the next possession.
After bouncing back with a Game 3 victory, the Spurs looked set to tie the series in Game 4, building a 29-point lead. But they completely unraveled in the second half and ended up setting a record for the largest blown lead in Finals history, losing by one point in regulation after a series of inexplicable miscues. Yet another early lead in Game 5 turned into another late-game collapse, with the Spurs losing the series 4-1 despite having led 72% of the time they were on the court.
The Spurs’ Offseason Plans
Although no one could have expected the Spurs to make the Finals before the season started, their inexperience and lack of composure late in games wound up being their undoing. It didn’t help that Wembanyama, whose minutes were carefully managed during the season, needed to play more than he was accustomed to in the playoffs and didn’t have the stamina to maintain his peak performance. Another factor was the play of De’Aaron Fox, who struggled mightily in the Finals as he battled through an ankle sprain that reportedly would have kept him out for multiple weeks under ordinary circumstances.
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