What a season!
The primary takeaway from this season for fans of the San Antonio Spurs is, or should be, a mix of gratitude, surprise, pleasure, and joy. What a season!
All the overreactions are just that: extra, and then some. We over-performed expectations beyond fans’ wildest dreams. We nearly doubled our regular season win total from the previous year. We beat the defending champs. We were a handful of fifty-fifty plays away from winning the Finals. We are here. We have arrived. That’s the lesson. That’s the takeaway.
If San Antonio did nothing except bring back the exact same players and coaching staff for next season, we would or should be the odds-on favorite to be the best team in the league. Doing nothing makes us better just by giving the young guys time to breathe, recover, rest, improve, and grow. Neither Wemby nor Castle nor Harper is a finished product. Nor Mitch Johnson! Be patient. This is the Spurs way (and the Thunder way). It works. Trust the process—this one, not The Process.
You know who is a finished product? Jalen Brunson. He saw the opening, he took it, he deserved to win. Good for him, and for the Knicks fans.
Who will be a finished product, in half a dozen years? Dylan Harper, who was a revelation. He’s likely to be an All-Star next season. Mitch should give him the car keys to the offense. Yes, he realized it too late in the series, but then, we were the second-youngest team in NBA history to make the Finals. Cut him a little slack.
This was not a catastrophe for Wemby. It wasn’t a failure or a flop. He had an amazing playoffs and a solid Finals but came up short in the end. So have countless stars before him. He’s twenty-two years old, he’s still learning, he’s still figuring out his body, he’s still developing the kind of conditioning that can handle playoff minutes. And—to repeat—we were up by double-figures in all five games and winning in the final few minutes of each game. We were that close. Any team would kill to get that close. And if everyone remains healthy, we have the best odds of getting that close again next season.
This is the worst this team (this particular collection of players) will ever be. Think about that.
De’Aaron Fox was a disappointment, it’s true. If, hypothetically, the Spurs could snap their fingers and get an equivalent player on a less punishing contract, I suppose they would and maybe should. But don’t forget: Fox was part of how we got here in the first place. He put up borderline All-Star numbers (he got in through a technicality), he developed a real rapport with Wemby, he handled the ball and attacked the rim, and until his ankle injury he was playing well. And even after his injury he had more than one big late-game moment against both OKC and NY. The man is fearless, even if he was compromised this Finals. It’s a thirty-team league with the equivalent of a hard cap. Having Fox alongside Harper, Castle, Vassell, Champagnie, and Bryant is a luxury. It’s a good problem to have. There is no reason to over-react. Players redeem ugly playoff performances all the time. Fox can too.
It’s probably true that this team was too young and inexperienced, but not because they wilted under the pressure. They stepped onto the court in MSG in Game 3 down two games to zero and not only won but won from tip-off on. They were not and are not scared. That’s another lesson to take into 2026-27.
What we need, given how impressive our defense was and remained, is a dynamic offense to match it, one that has plays and players who know their spots when the game slows down in the closing minutes. That’s what we were lacking: a go-to “old reliable” that would settle everything down. Occasionally Fox made it happen, but that was Mitch blindly reverting to regular season mode. We saw glimpses of Harper and Wemby in the two-man game, but that’s a minor preview of much greater things to come.
Wemby both does and does not have to go back to the drawing board. Expectations for him to be a paint-dominating Shaq are foolish. That’s not the kind of player he is. I doubt he ever will be. What he is, instead, is the anchor for the most suffocating D in the league, and a roaming all-purpose threat on O. Yes, he needs to bulk up a bit. Yes, he needs to avoid settling for three-pointers. Yes, he needs to figure out a sturdy mid-range game: less fancy dribbling, more rising up like KD over defenders. But the man is a one of one. He needs to develop into the best version of himself, not anyone else. That’ll get us back for a rematch against the Knicks, not listening to the naysayers and changing his game soup to nuts.
That said, there are no promises about return trips to the biggest stage. Marino didn’t go back, nor did the Durant-Westbrook Thunder. God willing, San Antonio will have many more chances at bat. Whether or not we do, this was a run for the ages, and with the exception of the closing seconds of Game 4, I loved every minute of it.
