Last season, with Victor Wembanyama shut down by mid-February with a blood clot, the San Antonio Spurs lurched to a 34-48 record.
Now, just four wins away from an NBA title, these young Spurs are on the cusp of recasting the balance of power in the league and announcing itself as a dynastic force.
Wembanyama is 22. Stephon Castle 21 and Dylan Harper 20.
The average age of the Spurs (25.06 years old) makes San Antonio the second-youngest team to reach an NBA Finals in the shot clock era.
Even their head coach, Mitch Johnson, is young; he’s 39 and in his first full season on the job. And if he can top the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals, which begin Wednesday, June 3, he would become the fifth-youngest head coach to win an NBA championship since 1970.
These Spurs, it would seem, are ahead of schedule.
That has been the predominating thought surrounding San Antonio’s ascension, but that framing is too simplistic. Yes, the Spurs are winning as a very young team, but that notion minimizes other qualities necessary in championship teams, qualities the Spurs have: commitment to an identity, maturity, a willingness to adapt, a willingness to sacrifice.
“People don’t talk as much about the habits, the character, the togetherness, the competitive response — the things we talk about in these media sessions every single day,” Johnson said May 30, after San Antonio dethroned the Thunder in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals. “And this team has now been pretty damn consistent for a long time, for over 100 games for the most part.
“When you look back at how we started the year, how we got to the (NBA) Cup on the road versus Denver and L.A., what we did in the Cup, playing (the Thunder) around Christmastime a few times, expectations. We’ve played in three playoff series, (at times) without Victor, without (De’Aaron) Fox multiple games — I don’t know who has as much experience as we do, this year, in terms of the 2025-2026 season.”
Whether you subscribe to the notion that this team is ahead of some nebulous schedule, the Spurs are nonetheless favored to win the Finals, primarily because of one thing: this team is much more than just Victor Wembanyama.
The Spurs showed that in Game 7, when they topped the Thunder, 111-103, on their home floor. Seven different players reached double-figures in scoring, and contributions from all over the rotation predominated.
Julian Champagnie, who finished with 20 points, dropped 11 in the third quarter. Backup center Luke Kornet, who played just six minutes, hustled back during a pivotal Thunder fastbreak to pin a momentum-changing block against the backboard in an eventual four-point swing. De’Aaron Fox was a menace on defense all night and collected three steals and later found his shooting stroke. Harper knocked down huge shots down the stretch and scored 12 points off the bench on 5-of-8 shooting. Backup Keldon Johnson, the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year, knocked down two massive 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, both of which came when the Thunder had trimmed the deficit to two points.
And then there’s Mitch Johnson, the coach who came up in the organization and who was hand-picked to be Gregg Popovich’s successor.
San Antonio has built a culture of hard work and discipline, of growth and learning, of consistency. Wembanyama and Johnson are merely the next stewards of that culture, but this front office recognizes that it’s about building a structure and empowering players to own their results.
The Thunder are still a force in the West. The Timberwolves, with Anthony Edwards, and the Nuggets (with three-time Most Valuable Player Nikola Jokić) are always lurking. But, first, it’s the Knicks who stand in the way of history.
And with NBA All-Defensive second-team selection OG Anunoby expected to be the primary defender on Wembanyama, and with Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns leading an offense that has posted the most dominant stretch in league history over any 11-game stretch, the challenge is daunting. Other Spurs will need to step up.
“Winning the Larry O’Brien, it’s a childhood dream,” Wembanyama said after Game 7. “Having a real shot at it. Having a chance — a tangible chance at winning it — at realizing a dream, it’s a lifetime chance. You never know when it’s going to happen again.
“The day we win it, speaking for myself, it’s going to be an amazing day of the realization of a dream. It’s hard to put into words. It’s almost like the meaning of my life.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Spurs reach NBA Finals with Victor Wembanyama, other young teammates