Douze de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference Finals, Game 7
Kick In the Door - Wavin’ the .44. All you heard was, “Wemby, don’t hit me no more.” Ladies, gentlemen, sisters, brothers, and siblings, it is now official. Like a chestburster shedding it’s skin and replacing it’s cells with polarized silicon in order to become a fully grown xenomorph, Victor Wembanyama has shed the “ascending” and is now simply the greatest basketball player in the world full stop. League MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t relinquish his perch at the top of the NBA pecking order without a fight. Let the historians record and the bards cantillate the sensational spectacle that was the breathtakingly epic clash between the San Antonio Spurs and the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2026 NBA Western Conference Finals. It was a war of attrition fought over seven grueling battles and it was closely contested all the way until the bitter end. Even though SGA fought admirably to extend his reign as greatest player in the world in Game 7, scoring 35 points and dishing out nine assists, ultimately after Caron Wallace missed a three down six with 12 seconds left in the seventh and decisive battle and Julian Champagnie soared to snag the rebound before quickly hitting De’Aaron Fox with the outlet who then kicked it ahead to Devin Vassell for the break away dunk and eight point lead with four seconds left that sealed the series victory for the Spurs, there was no question that the changing of the guard of the greatest player in the world was earned by Wemby and it was earned through mutual respect and through trial by fire. The Alien wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
When the dust settled and the Spurs were the last team standing having just closed out the champs, defeating them 111-103 in Game 7 of the WCF on their home court at Paycom Center in downtown Oklahoma City on Saturday, May 30th in the year of our basketball gods 2026 to extend our season into June, a series that started on the very same court 13 days earlier with the star player of one team winning a most valuable player trophy ended with the star player of the other team winning a different most valuable player trophy that puts an eternal asterisk on the first award that was given before the war was fought. To be fair, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was a deserving recipient of his MVP award based on regular season performance but when the NBA MVP loses in the playoffs to another MVP finalist, that fact will always be remembered and legitimate questions on whether the voters got it right that year will come attached to that part of that MVP winner’s legacy forever. I suspect, though, while those questions are indeed now permanent for SGA, assuming Wemby keeps on his current trajectory, they will become more muted over time for the same reason those questions have become more muted for Charles Barkley (1993) and Karl Malone (1997). People hold it against you less when you suffer that type of embarrassment in your MVP season at the hands of the greatest player of all time. That was the case for Barkley and Malone losing to Michael Jordan (who still remains the goat to this day—the only acceptable name you could put forward to have a reasonable debate on the matter is Bill Russell—you can miss me with that LeBron is the goat nonsense—LeBron has had the best NBA career of any player in any era based on production and longevity but greatness is measured in winning at the highest level and LeBron is 4-6 lifetime in the NBA Finals). If Victor Wembanyama continues on his current trajectory, in 15 years (or so) the asterisk on Shai’s 2025-26 NBA MVP award will have been reduced to a tiny one as it will have born out by then that the embarrassment was suffered at the hands of what will be at that point in the future the new undisputed greatest basketball player of all time 🐐
Back to the here and now for a sec, the debate is officially over on who is the current greatest player in the world. Victor took that title away from SGA because the Spurs defeated the Thunder to win the West and Wembanyama (not the two-time defending regular season MVP) was named MVP of the 2026 Western Conference Finals. He has arrived, indeed. If Vic continues on his current trajectory, the debate over the current greatest basketball player in the world is going to be shut down for the next decade or more. Instead (to the point I was making above about how SGA’s humiliation will age gracefully), we will have a new debate to fixate on if Victor continues on his current trajectory. The new debate will be over how long before Victor Wembanyama earns his place on the NBA pantheon for greatest players of all time with Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabber, San Antonio’s very own Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Stephen Curry + how long will it take him to surpass Michael Jordan as the greatest basketball player to ever walk on this planet? This paradigm shift has also arrived and the first notch in Wemby’s “goat belt” can be punched within the next two and a half weeks. If you want start walking down Michael Jordan (and Bill Russell) in the goat conversation, it not only means you need to make it to the NBA Finals a bunch of times but it also means (as Tim Duncan came so painfully close to being the third player to post this type of resume) you need to win it every single time you make it. Based on his Game 7 postgame comments, Victor already gets this and he will be ready to seize the opportunity now in front of him in the 2026 NBA Finals. Case in point, speaking to the press after winning the Oscar Robertson Trophy with his team and the Magic Johnson Trophy individually, Vic observed., “This is the best basketball on the planet that’s being played right now. And the crazy thing is, maybe I’m crazy for that but I want to do that fifteen or twenty more times. Let’s hope it doesn’t become an addiction. Maybe it is already.”
With those preliminaries out of the way, let’s party like it’s 1999 because the San Antonio Spurs are going to our seventh NBA Finals!! And awaiting us is the New York Knicks, the team we beat to win our first NBA Finals in the last year of the last millennium. With this next generation of dynastic talent on the Spurs roster, playing the Knicks and getting to play NBA Finals games in Madison Square Garden (basketball’s Mecca) again is such a full circle moment. It’s also so wild to me to be feeling this aberrantly euphoric sense of anticipation (which is unique to a Spurs’ finals run) for the first time in twelve years. I’m not surprised that we’re here (more just awestruck in appreciation to be once again experiencing such a fleeting revelry in the afterglow of arriving), I am an eternal optimist in my Spurs fandom, after all. Writing Un de fait after being on hiatus from this project for seven years felt like embarking into the unknown much like it felt when I wrote One Down in 2013 but on both occasions I envisioned the blog series taking us on a journey that would stretch into June because in both cases, I had an instinctive supposition this was a year the Spurs could make a run to The Finals. I won’t lie, though, unlike 2013 (when I had the confidence of rooting for a core group of players who done it many times before), considering our youth, it feels surreal that we actually pulled it off on Wemby & company’s first attempt. The 2025-26 San Antonio Spurs are the youngest team to make it to the NBA Finals since the 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers. In other words, this is a once every 50 year outlier and since I’m forty-seven that also means that the 25-26 Spurs are the youngest team to make it to the NBA Finals in my lifetime and in all probability will remain the youngest team to make the NBA Finals for the rest of my lifetime which is mind-blowing. Perhaps a more apt comparison than 2013 (when I first started writing about every Spurs playoff run) to how surreal this moment feels is in fact the aforementioned 1999 run to the NBA Finals. (Also, before we continue (just to name it out loud), another reason to limit the comparison between now and 2013 strictly to the similarity of embarking into the unknown with writing the Black & Silver blog series for the first time—or first time in a long time—is 2013 proved to be the necessary exposition in a two-part story with the 2014 redemption title being the resolution. This journey we are on 2026 is undoubtedly a standalone origin story.)
Now back to the year where I pulled an all-nighter the night before seeing a first run screening of The Matrix in a movie theatre and as consequence, fell asleep 45 minutes in and missed everything else the first time I ever watched the dopest movie made during my formative years (no joke). In other words, back to 1999. It’s so poetic that it’s once again the New York Knicks. It’s so poetic that it’s once again a new crop of Spurs playing their first NBA Finals in the Garden. It feel so incredibly fresh. And it’s that newness of it being the first time we are experiencing it (or in this case the first time with this new generation of players) that creates its own “pinch me, this can’t be real” temporary plain of existence that is simply phantasmagoric. Perhaps the hint of imposter syndrome that comes with doing something for the first time adds an extra ingredient to elevate the provocation of the moment. As similar as this euphoric dream state I’m momentarily floating through feels to ‘99, the imposter syndrome ingredient is even more pronounced this time around because this team is way younger and way newer than the first squad that ever put Larry O’Brien in a boat parade on the San Antonio River. Tim Duncan, our 22-year old superstar and best player was young and new at the same time that Bill Clinton was establishing Pride Month by presidential proclamation, but the rest of the 1999 title team was a veteran ball club. (Happy Pride, San Antonio 🌈) Did I mention that the ‘26 Spurs are the youngest team in 49 years to make the NBA Finals? Yeah. I think it’s safe to say I’m floating on cloud nine in an incomparable way. I can’ t wait to get this thing started. But before we can, we still have some more house keeping to do on that immortal team performance in Game 7 of the 2026 WCF.
Seven players scored in double figure for San Antonio in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals and all seven of them scored in the fourth quarter (we call that the seven and seven) as OKC was tightening the screws hoping to make us crack. This was a complete team effort to hold the champs at bay. As predicted in Onze de faits, Wemby played with determination and force setting the tone from the jump. His first bucket of his first-career NBA playoff Game 7 was an homage to his pantheon mentor Tim Duncan—an 11-foot bank shot to settle down the thunderous crowd. The Alien went on to hit step back threes, volleyball spike a layup attempt by the MVP into the first row, cram right on Chet Holmgren’s lifeless face (to name a few highlights), and played a steady, effective up-for-the-moment game finishing with a team-high 22 points, seven rebounds, two assists, and one endearingly emotional response to winning his first conference title and MVP trophy. The second leading scorer was Julian Chanpagnie with 20. Jules stayed in rhythm dropping the Thunder off for a back-breaking six triples on 6-10 from deep. Hitting six threes to help end a title defense in a Game 7 in the title holder’s own building takes such a NY street ball mentality. Now, the kid from Brooklyn gets to take that cutthroat fearlessness and give his hometown ball club a little something with it in the Garden. Also predicted in the last post, all three of our star guards stepped into the moment of opportunity provided by a Game 7 and seized it with contributions that totaled 43 points, 14 assists and 13 rebounds. I think it’s safe to say Wemby got the help he needed from his buffet menu of sidekick mega-talented all-world guards. The iconoclast Stephon Castle had 16 points, six rebounds and six assists while once again making SGA have to work hard for everything on the other end. De’Aaron Fox (our Iceman 2.0) had been struggling with his shooting after returning to the series in Game 3 from the high ankle sprain he suffered in the second round against the Minnesota Timberwolves but thankfully his cold-blooded sniping returned just in time for Game 7. He hit timely buckets to thwart OKC’s momentum in multiple key stretches in the decisive contest on Saturday night. De’Aaron’s calming veteran presence was absolutely critical to our Game 7 success. Overall, the two-time all-star scored 15 points (on 6-12 from the field and 3-7 from deep) and five assists. Last but not least among our three-headed guard trio, the prodigy Dylan Harper also made some of the clutch-est plays a 20-year-old rookie has ever made this deep into the playoffs in NBA history. Dylan had 12 points (on 5-8 shooting including two massive three pointers), three assists, and seven huge rebounds including two of the most important offensive rebounds of the second half where we went on to score critical points off those rebounds. I said we needed big performances from all three of our star guards in Game 7 to have any shot at knocking out the champs and predicted we would get them so it was really satisfying to see it come to fruition. The Slash Brothers and “Unc” were spectacular on Saturday night.
The last two remaining Spurs players of the seven who scored in double figures in Game 7 were our two longest-tenured players, Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell who both put up eleven points. KJ was able to shake off his up and down postseason so far to come up with a sixth-man-of-the-year-level performance in the fourth quarter with the game in the balance scoring eight of his 11 points on two massive fourth quarter threes in a row (to bookend a Cason Wallace three on the other end) and then scoring a transition bucket later in the frame. Deven played a steady all-around game with stingy defense to help Steph with the MVP (creating two steals) and his series-ending emphatic dunk to seal our seventh trip to the NBA Finals is a play I will never forget. Ironically, the player of the game was not any of the “seven and seven” Spurs. The player of the game was Luke Kornet. Congratulations, Luke. I don’t even have to go back and do the research to know that you have set the record for the least amount of minutes played in earning a Black & Silver player of the game honor. The most underrated free agent signing of the 2025 NBA offseason logged a whopping six minutes of game action in his award-snatching performance and put up the jaw-dropping stat line of two points on 0-3 shooting and four rebounds. Unless you just came out of a coma, you already know why Luke earned player of the game honors. (And if you did just come out of a coma, thanks for immediately turning to theLeftAhead as your trusted news source for catching up on what’s been happening in the world.) Luke may have very well saved our season with his divine intervention of a Isaiah Hartenstein fast break dunk attempt. I can’t emphasize enough how massive that play was in swinging what could have been a four or three point OKC deficit to an eight point Spurs advantage with six minutes to play (after Steph his a midrange jumper on the other end after the block). Luke’s block was the highlight of our entire season so far and it may prove to be the biggest NBA playoff block since LeBron James’ chase down block of Andre Iguodala in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals. One thing is for sure, it will be forever memorialized in Spurs playoff lore. Watching it never gets old so I’m just going to leave this right here below for you to enjoy on repeat as many times as your heart desires.
We wouldn’t be providing a comprehensive retrospective on the best playoff series of the decade so far without saying goodbye to some of the OKC villains who (because every chapter in the blog series is organic and each post is written under varying degrees of “time crunch” pressure depending on length of time between games and other outside demands on my attention) didn’t get the Black & Silver coverage over these past seven posts that they deserved. Let’s start by saying goodbye, Alex Caruso. You will not be missed. Your performance was at times chaotic at times brilliant and at times borderline dirty but it was also almost outcome-altering. So good riddance, Caruso. I’m glad we don’t have to see your pale face again until next season (lol). When the Thunder were up 3-2 in the series through five games, one could make a reasonable argument to have Caruso as the front runner for MVP of the 2026 Western Conference Finals. Many pundits were also prematurely trying to give the two-time champion a place amongst the greatest role players of all-time. (Settle down, NBA punditry. Alex Caruso has a long way to go to get in the same conversation as Robert Horry.) Thankfully, Caruso’s out-of-nowhere 31 point (including eight three pointer) off the bench Game 1 performance came in a loss and when the lights got brightest, The Bald Mamba couldn’t rise to the occasion going only 1-6 from deep (and 3-14 overall) in Game 7. We also need to say goodbye to you, Isaiah Hartenstein. Peace out, you ogre. Watching you play football by committing 55 fouls a game on Wemby (knowing the refs will only call four or five of them) because you can’t stop him playing actual basketball was a camp performance in a flop of a movie series that I’m thankful we don’t have to view again. Last but not least, goodbye, Jared McCain. It would have been extremely frustrating if the reason the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder advanced back to the 2026 NBA Finals because of Daryl Morey’s idiocracy. Your inclusion in this good natured ribbing is purely circumstantial, by the way. I think you’re a great shooter and I love watching you play. It just would have been extremely frustrating if you had swung this series simply because the Philadelphia 76ers were too cheap to keep you around and too dumb to realize your value. Thankfully, you didn’t. Well folks, that’s all the goodbyes we need to make to OKC villains from this epic series. Not to pile on but we don’t need to say goodbye to you, Chet Holmgren. Thanks to the Vulcan death grip that Victory Wembanyama has on your soul, you never bothered to show up for the 2026 Western Conference Finals in the first place. And on that note, it’s onward to getting ready to watch the San Antonio Spurs play Game 1 of our seventh NBA Finals tonight back home in the comfy confines of the Frost Bank Center. I am overcome with joy and excitement and can’t wait to get this thing rolling. The #BlackAndSilver have the opportunity to crush a lot of dreams and guarantee it becomes at least 54 seasons that New York Knickerbocker fans have been waiting to celebrate a title. The 1999 nostalgia is going to be fierce with this match up. Just like 1999, we are still the better team and we are still the team with a 22-year old superstar who is the best player in the series. In the intervening 27 years since this Finals match up last occurred, we have won five world championships and established ourselves as one of the greatest franchises in all of pro sports while the Knicks have mostly been in the wilderness. I’m happy the Knicks are finally back to relevance but the more things change, the more they stay the same. We are still the franchise that has been hanging banners in the rafters ever since 1999. We are still D.R.E.
P.S. Congratulations to our old friend Jeremy Sohan for winning his 2025-26 NBA Championship ring.
Featured Image Source: Medium
Headline Image Source: Sole Retriever on Threads
Onze de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference Finals, Game 6
Two Six - For every move there’s a counter move. Playing out of check in Game 6 of the 2026 Western Conference Finals, Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs have cross-checked reigning two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous Alexander and the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder with one cunning move. The home team shoved away the pressure of our first playoff elimination game (as a group) and won going away 128-91 on Thursday night. In doing so, we have now forced the Thunder (the very same team that went undefeated through the first two rounds of the playoffs) to face the first elimination game of their title defense. After blowing out OKC for the second time this series (and extending our season series lead over them to 7-4 in the process), we once again proved that (even though it requires suspending disbelief thinking in these terms about a team whose three franchise cornerstone pieces have an average age of the greatest player in franchise history’s jersey number) we’re already, at worst, on equal footing with the defending champs. When you have played an opponent eleven times in a season and have outscored them by a cumulative total of 1303 to 1201, it’s hard to continue to argue for what should be the conventional thinking: a team this young and inexperienced should not be a significant threat to dethrone the most recent team to raise a banner. Even with a Game 7 still ahead of us and despite the outcome of the series still being in the balance, the upstart Spurs have already made a forceful statement in this conference finals. Knotting this epic clash back up at 3-3 on Thursday night was the exclamation point. It can no longer be argued that it will require more seasoning for a Wemby-led San Antonio squad to compete at the highest level. The world now knows we are here for all of the smoke right in this very moment and ready to crash an NBA Finals party that we weren’t supposed to be getting invited to for at least another couple of seasons. The world now knows you can’t use conventional thinking to predict what something as unconventional as an extraterrestrial life form (that walks among us) can or cannot do. The world now knows that The Alien and those pesky whippersnappers from San Antonio are more than capable of marching straight into our first Game 7 on the road in insolently hostile Oklahoma City and knocking off the defending champs. Not only does the world know this but, to the delight of Adam Silver for getting to keep swimming in the reverie of his ratings bonanza, it will be on the edge of its seat holding its breath tonight to see if we pull it off.
Game 6 marks the seventh time the Spurs have held an opponent under 100 points this postseason and the second time against OKC. The type of suffocating defense we played on Thursday is virtually unbeatable. If we can repeat bringing such a ruthless onslaught of physicality and pressure again tonight (and the refs allow the players to decide the game), we will win the series. The problem is that it’s hit or miss whether or not our defensive A game is going to show up on any given night. Luckily, it’s not a home versus road question; we have proven our ability to play at our defensive best on the road during these playoffs. To me, there are two things we need to do in order to ensure that the top-secret otherworldly weapons possessed in Area 51 are unleashed on downtown Oklahoma City tonight. First, we need to come to play with the proper focus and urgency that a Game 7 requires. Every mistake is magnified. Every lapse of concentration could prove to be the thing that ends your season. The Spurs have proven throughout this inaugural playoff run that we always bring the proper focus and urgency on the defensive side of the court when our backs are against the wall and I expect nothing different tonight in our second elimination game. I’m supremely confident that we will bring the necessary focus and urgency to our first Game 7 in order to play defense with the respect and desperation it will require in order to come out on top. The second thing we need to do in order to ensure we paint a defensive masterpiece tonight is we have to protect the basketball. Let’s be honest, the Thunder’s half court office is kinda mid. The reason this team has been elite the past three seasons and won last year’s title is because of their exceptional ability create turnovers and then punish the opponent with the transition buckets those turnovers generate. When they are unable to dominate the turnover and transition battle, the Thunder are not an elite team. With Stephon Castle at the point of attack and Victor Wembanyama lurking in the shadows, the MVP had no answers to the test if the game is played in the half court. If we limit our turnovers tonight, it will allow us to guard in the half court where we will be able to clamp down and slowly turn the screws to suffocate OKC’s offense. The raucous Frost Bank Center crowd shouted “Spurs in Seven” with about 5 minutes left in the fourth quarter of Game 6 on Thursday night and with San Antonio maintaining a comfortable 20+ point lead. If we want to make that chant prophetic, we need to limit our turnovers throughout this Game 7 on the road in as hostile an environment as this group has experienced together so that our singular collection of defensive talent can suffocate the champs in the half court and destroy a city’s hopes of being the first to repeat in eight years.
It was obvious OKC was in trouble for Game 6 the minute Victor entered the Frost Bank Center wearing a thobe in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha on Thursday at 5:00 pm CT. Two and a half hours later when he came out with the conviction and determination of Prophet Musa by draining his first two threes in the opening minutes and then racking up another five points (11 total), five rebounds, one assist, one steal, and one block in the first quarter, I was like, okay, Vic. Assalamu Alaikum, brother, Inshallah. The biggest barometer for which team wins any given game in this series has been who had the best player on the court that night. When Wemby has been the best player on the court, the Spurs have won. When two-time reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been the best player on the court, the Thunder have won. After storming out the iron gate like the Battle of Khaybar in the first, Wemby played aggressively but with intention the entire night and slotted Game 6 in his “best player on the court that night” column with ease. The ascending greatest player in the world finished the game with 28 points, 10 rebounds, three blocks, two assists and two steals, By contrast, the MVP had his worst game of the series posting 15 points on 6-18 shooting with only three free throws. You heard me right, only three. The contrast between the two stars has never been starker than it was on Thursday. Wemby simply outclassed the MVP on this particular occasion. Given the series trend, Victor’s performance tonight needs to be a tikrar of Game 6. If Wemby is the best player on the floor tonight, the San Antonio Spurs will almost certainly advance to our seventh NBA Finals. The thing that can remove “almost certainly” from the equation and make it a sure thing is if one of our other three all-world talents is also at their dynamic best. In the Game 6 blowout victory, we got that type of performance from the player of the game (and only draft pick in the 25-26 class to make the all-rookie first team and also play in the conference finals) Dylan Harper. Having had a limited impact on the series since injuring his right abductor in Game 2, the straight outta Rutgers electric prodigy exploded in Game 6 for 18 points, six rebounds, four assists and most-importantly only one turnover in 22 exhilarating minutes. Dylan got his groove back just in time to help us save our season at home and set up this winner take all scenario back in OKC. I’ll be elated if he can duplicate that performance again tonight and be the Spurs guard who provides the punch that’s going to be necessary to pair with a dominant Wemby performance in order for us to put ourselves in position to win this game but we know it can be any of the weapons in our three-headed “all-world guard” monster backcourt. Keep in mind, we’ve been saying this entire postseason run Stephon Castle is built for this for a reason. Like Derrick Henry on a Power-O, Steph has plowed straight through every obstacle that has gotten in his way this postseason. There is no question Stephon Castle is built for Game 7. And while it seems the least likely because he has been severely limited in this series with the high ankle sprain suffered during the back nine of the Minnesota series, I have a sneaking suspicion that the former clutch player of the year is going to be able to dig deep enough to find something tonight that he can provide to further cement his reputation as one of the coldest-blooded players in the league. Once again, we are going to have more dynamic talent all over the court tonight than our opponent. It requires one of our three “all-world” guards to have a night alongside Victor for us to beat the champs but as I’m mentally preparing this afternoon for this evening’s proceedings, I’m exuding nothing but calm because I’m filled with the resolve that we’re going to get memorable performances from all three to help ensure this a legendary Game 7.
For my money, there is nothing better than the memories created by a legendary Game 7 in the NBA playoffs. I have fuzzy memories of watching Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics defeat Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals with my family when I was five but the first one I truly remember is the epic 1988 NBA Finals Game 7 clash between Magic’s Lakers and Isaiah Thomas and the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons when I was nine. My dad was born in Detroit and was a lifelong fan of all of the city’s major sports teams so our family had a strong rooting interest in that game. Isaiah Thomas was a super hero to nine-year-old me. After spraining his ankle in Game 6 only to score 25 points in the third quarter (the NBA Finals record for most points in a quarter still to this day) but coming up one point short of sealing the title in six, I was convinced he could repeat the feat and finish the job in Game 7 but it wasn’t meant to be as Thomas was less effective performing through the injury two days after having suffered it and the Lakers closed out the series by the skin of their teeth winning Game 7 at home by only three points. Nine-year-old me was very sad but Zeke and the Bad Boys got sweet revenge the next year sweeping the Lakers in the 1989 NBA Finals to the delight of ten-year-old me. More recently, two of the most memorable Game 7s that come to mind for me are Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals when LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers (after climbing out a 3-1 hole) took down the defending champion Golden State Warriors in the Bay in stunning fashion and Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals when the late Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers outlasted the Boston Celtics in a war of attrition for Kobe’s fifth and final title. Of course most of my most vivid Game 7 memories in my four decades + of watching the NBA playoffs involve the San Antonio Spurs. Some painful, some euphoric. The most painful, given the stakes, was obviously Game 7 of the 2013 NBA Finals. After somehow putting the Ray Allen shot and the most heartbreaking defeat in franchise history behind us in 48 hours in order to get ourselves to what we now refer to as a “clutch time” situation on the road in Miami in Game 7 only to come up just short to the Heatles after Tim Duncan missed a six-foot jump hook he makes 98 times out of a hundred was devastatingly painful. The only other one that even comes close to that level of disappointment was the 2006 second-round Game 7 at home against Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks where after playing from behind the entire game, Manu Ginobili hit a three to give us a three point lead in the final seconds only to commit a boneheaded foul while Nowitzki was driving to the basket on the very next possession which allowed the German hall-of-famer to convert a three-point play to send the game to an overtime where the visitors eventually prevailed. On the positive side, you can’t get more euphoric than the Game 7 we played the year prior to the Dirk debacle, a Game 7 that took surviving a rock fight against the three-time (and defending) champion Detroit Pistons to earn the third title of our own. Watching the Spurs win Game 7 of the 2005 Finals on June 23, 2005 was the most emotional sports-viewing experience of my entire life because the euphoria from watching my team grind out one of the hardest fought titles in league history was soon engulfed with conflicting emotions when I called my dad (who had recently been diagnosed with dementia) after the game and told him that my Spurs had beaten his Pistons. While he was happy for me that my team won but he also asked me, “Who scored the most touchdowns?” That was the moment that I knew the opportunity to make new Game 7 memories with my dad (like the ones we made watching his Pistons take on the Lakers in 1988) was gone forever which was hard at first but over time allowed me the cherish those Game 7 memories I had made watching with my dad even more deeply. The San Antonio Spurs euphoria-inducing Game 7 victory which is most applicable to the task at hand tonight is the Game 7 from the 2008 Western Conference Semifinals against early-prime Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets. Even though it was a Game 7 victory against a less experienced opponent that only secured a conference finals birth (a regular occurrence during the Duncan-era), there are two reasons it is the most applicable Game 7 victory for facing the champs in OKC later this evening. First, it’s the only time in franchise history that we have won a Game 7 on the road. It really was the epitome of the Spurs’ pound the rock mentality. We just kept plugging away and plugging away throughout the series until eventually the damn broke in Game 7. This brings me to the second reason this Game 7 memory is most applicable. In that second-round series against the Hornets in 2008, there was no doubt in my mind that we were the better team. We just couldn’t figure out a way to maintain the upper hand long enough to knock them out in five or six but ultimately talent won out and our superiority as a team proved to be a more decisive variable than the opponent having the precious advantage of hosting the win-or-go-home contest in their building. The way I felt about our matchup with the New Orleans Hornets in 2008 is exactly how I feel about our matchup with the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in 2026. I believe we are the better team and I am confident that our superiority as a team will be a more decisive variable than the champs having the precious advantage of hosting this contest that will decide the Western Conference in their building in a few short hours. I believe the #BlackAndSilver are going to make us (their fans) a euphoric new memory tonight by winning only the second road Game 7 in franchise history and in so doing, slaying the championship dragon that is currently still standing in the way of us getting where we believe we deserve to be. Not where we deserve to be in a couple of years. Not where we deserve to be after taking our playoff lumps. We believe we are the best team in the Western Conference and therefore, we deserve to be in the NBA Finals right now. Tonight, I believe we are going to kick in the door.
Featured Image Source: 24Hip-Hop
Headline Image Source : The Athletic
Huit de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference Semifinals, Game 6
Make Them Cry - At least once a day, I find my thoughts wander into thinking about everything that has happened in the past three years. And when I do, I pinch myself and muse, “it doesn’t make any sense for us to be this lucky.” Everything that has happened since May 16th, 2023 has been a glitch in the matrix where it feels like my hunger for the San Antonio Spurs to win a sixth NBA Championship is channeling a 2K roster construction through a lucid dream and then spitting it out into reality. As discussed in Un de fait, what happened on the middle day of May in the year of our basketball gods 2023 was in and of itself more than enough to have me feeling that life is but a dream. When you win the most consequential NBA draft lottery in 20 years and possibly of all-time, that alone is the type of luck that diehard fans of any team would strongly consider committing armed bank robbery in order to obtain it if they knew it was locked away in the vault. Winning the right to draft Victor Wembanyama alone should have been enough luck for a team-fandom lifetime (especially when you take into account that this fan has already had the incredible fortune to experience the hyper-unique euphoric feeling it produces once before on May 18th, 1997 when the San Antonio Spurs won the right to draft Tim Duncan). Little did I know (nor would I have even dared imagine at the time) that winning the right to draft Wemby wasn’t an isolated stroke of incalculable good luck but rather it was the starting blocks for the most spectacular streak of good luck in NBA history.
That said, after suffering through an 18-game losing streak en route to a second consecutive 22-60 season (fifth-worst record in the league) during Wemby’s rookie season and collecting a 42.1% chance at a top-four pick for our continued struggles, there was a little bit of luck involved with winning the 2024 overall number four pick but not really that much given the odds. The real stroke of luck for us in 2024 was the way the draft board played out ahead of our selection. Before ever sitting down to watch that year’s draft lottery on May 12th, 2024, there was one player and one player alone that I wanted the Spurs to draft. I had known who I wanted since April 8th after watching the UConn Huskies defeat the Purdue Boilermakers 75-60 in the NCAA Division One men’s basketball championship game. While watching that game, I became enthralled with a freshman guard from Covington, GA named Stephon Castle. Knowing he was going to be entering the draft and was projected to be a top lottery pick, I watched the way he performed on the biggest stage and for the highest stakes at the collegiate-level and I thought to myself, “he’s the one for me.” While Steph had a solid but not spectacular stat line of 15 points, five rebounds, three assists, and a steal, it was his elite combination of toughness and composure (along with the fact that he just seemed to have a knack for making key plays throughout the game whenever his team needed it) that led me to believe he was going to be one of those players who is built ready to play for the highest stakes in the NBA. So when on June 26th, first the Atlanta Hawks (selecting Zaccharie Risacher) and then the Washington Wizards (selecting Alex Starr) overvalued the French basketball renaissance by betting it could produce a consolation prize to having been a year late for Wembanyama and then the Houston Rockets (selecting Reed Sheppard) miscalculated which American collegiate guard prospect had the higher upside, we were suddenly in the astronomically lucky position to draft the player who, two seasons in, has established himself as the best player in the draft class by a significant margin. With the fourth pick in the 2024 NBA draft, the San Antonio Spurs selected Stephon Castle (the player I wanted all along) and Area 51 was born.
Castle went on to win the 2024-25 Rookie of the Year award. Vic, of course, had just won it the season before so that trophy was becoming as locked down for the Spurs as intelligence into the activities inside of Area 51 is from the American public. While the Spurs showed promise last season of making the leap to contend for a play-in position behind the development of Wemby from his first to his second year along with adding the steal of the draft and oh, by the way. having Stephon Castle play alongside and be mentored in his rookie season by future Hall-of-Fame veteran point guard Chris Paul, at the halfway point of the campaign, the idea that our streak of incredible luck was going to continue in ways that would supercharge the rebuild to a warp speed which has no precedent in NBA history was not even an idea I was entertaining at the time. I assumed a minimum decades-worth of luck had to have been used up in acquiring those two players in back-to-back drafts. After all, Vic and Steph were our first two top-five draft picks since selecting Duncan number one overall in 1997. It would have been preposterous to expect the streak to continue when it had already yielded such a massive return. I was content that with Area 51, we had a title-contending foundation to build methodically upon while the already lethal duo (neither of which had even been born when the Spurs won the 2003 title) develops the ability to consistently dominate in this league. One thing that was becoming increasingly clear at the time was that the opportunity to play with an alien was going to have a gravitational pull luring other established stars to want to sign with SA in free agency or force their way to us via trade. Early in 2025, rumors started swirling that the latter might happen prior to the trade deadline. News started breaking that an all-star point guard smack dab in the middle of his prime with the earned reputation for having “ice water in his veins” in the clutch (I know you’ve noticed the theme and graphics for this post so yes, there will be more on this later), who is widely-considered the fastest player in the league with the ball in his hands and who just so happened to have the most powerful agent in the league representing him was fed up with his situation as a King and as a consequence, was attempting to force his way out of Sacramento with only one trade destination on his mind. De’Aaron Fox wanted to be traded to San Antonio to play next to Victor Wembanyama and be a part of the franchise with the brightest future in the league (it certainly didn’t hurt that his wife was from the Alamo City and he was also a native Texan from nearby Katy only 168 miles away). On February 2nd of last year, the rumors became a reality. De’Aaron Fox was traded from the Sacramento Kings to the San Antonio Spurs in a three-team deal that also involved the Chicago Bulls. After the trade was completed, Fox said publicly that the opportunity to play in a backcourt with Stephon Castle was also a major factor in him only having eyes for the Spurs.
While it certainly happened quicker than expected, the inevitability that an already-established star was going to land in San Antonio wasn’t on it’s own an extension of our good luck (it was the byproduct of having already lucked into the opportunity to draft Wemby), the price we ultimately had to pay for his services was the result of another stroke of good luck because Spurs general manager Brian Wright was negotiating the framework for the deal with the two most inept front offices in the league. Thankfully for us, Sacramento’s general manager Monte McNair and Chicago’s general manager Marc Eversley didn’t read the first chapter of NBA General Management for Dummies before executing this trade because if they had, they would have known that the first guideline in the book says if Sam Presti, Danny Ainge, Brad Stevens, or Brian Wright is on the other end of the phone call, hang up. Our luck was “going streaking” and remembered to bring its green hat because McNair was grossly incompetent enough to allow Wright to fleece him in obtaining De’Aaron’s services for 50 cents on the dollar and when you need to rope in the GM of another team to assist in your fleece, you can always count on the Bull’s Eversley. At the time the “Fox to SA” rumors started swirling, most prognosticators assumed the price would be one of Keldon Johnson, Devin Vassell or even Castle himself along with at least three of the most-prized future first round picks from our stockpile of draft assets. We gave up none of that. Because of the “dumb” luck that the first already-established star to call his “I wanna team up with Wemby” shot happened to play for Sacramento, the most-mismanaged franchise in the league and one that had this weird proclivity for conducting trades with Chicago, the second-most mismanaged franchise in the league, all we had to give up for De’Aaron freaking Fox (along with steady reserve point guard Jordan McLaughlin, by the way) was Tre Jones, Zach Collins, Sidy Cissoko, three of our least-valued first round picks and three second round picks. You know it’s a fleece when a three-way trade is completely one-sided. Brian Wright sucked all of the value out of that transaction like a cryptid-rights activist vampire on the first nightfall after a 10-year hunger strike. To the surprise of exactly no one, both Monte McNair and Marc Eversley have both since been fired from their GM positions with the Kings and the Bulls respectively.
Our pursuit of securing a play-in position in the 2024-25 season was derailed only five games and 18 days after acquiring De’Aaron. On February 20th of last year, the San Antonio Spurs announced Victor Wembanyama was out for the season with deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Wemby’s blood clot diagnosis, of course, was an incredibly unlucky turn of events that meant our pursuit of making the playoffs via the play-in tournament was effectively over. Little did we know at the time that this would be an example but there’s a funny little thing about streaks of luck: they’re called “streaks” for a reason. Sometimes during a streak of good luck, even an unlucky incident ends up being a blessing in disguise opening you up to new opportunities to be lucky in ways that wouldn’t have been possible had the unlucky incident not occurred. (I only call Vic’s blood clot a blessing in disguise with the hindsight that he has since made a full recovery and because it was diagnosed and treated early, it was assessed to not have posed any risk to his long-term health.) We predictably ended the season outside of the play-in seeding finishing 13th in the West with a 34-48 record which was also the eighth-worst record in the league. In other words, because of our backslide down the stretch of the season without Victor, we were guaranteed to get no worse than the 12th pick in the 2025 NBA draft. We were also going to get another bite at the apple of adding a top-four pick to our young core through the lottery. By falling down the standings into the eighth-worst record with Wemby out for the last two months of the season, the unlucky season-ending injury to our star player put us in position to get lucky again to the tune of a 6% chance at winning the No. 1 pick, a 6.5% chance at the No. 2 pick, a 7.1% chance at the No. 3 pick, a 7.8% chance at the No. 4 pick and a 26.3% overall chance at a top-four pick. And as luck would have it, on May 12th of last year, the San Antonio Spurs won the No. 2 overall pick through the lottery.
I’m not going to lie, when NBA Deputy Commissioner Marc Tatum was standing at that podium with only two picks left to reveal, I really hoped we were about to capture the Flagg. That said, the stakes for winning the right to draft Cooper Flagg (the consensus top player entering the 2025 NBA draft) and the stakes for winning the right to draft Victor Wembanyama when we were in the exact same position two years earlier were night and day because 1) Flagg was the type of prospect that comes along every couple years whereas Victor was the type of prospect that comes along every couple of decades at best and 2) there was an astronomical drop in the level of talent available at No. 2 to whatever team missed out on drafting an alien in 2023 but the consensus second-best prospect in the 2025 draft was no consolation prize at all. By all accounts, there was an ultra-talented guard prodigy coming out of Rutgers University by way of Franklin Lakes, NJ who was considered a greater prospect than anyone in the draft class before him. In other words, there was a No. 1 pick-level talent available to whichever team had to settle for the No.2 pick in the 2025 NBA draft and that talent’s name was and still is Dylan Harper. When Marc Tatum made the reveal that we were going to be selecting second and as a result, the Dallas Mavericks would be drafting first (the team that had just recklessly traded away top-five player in the league Luka Dončić and were because of that completely undeserving of the luck it took to cash in on 1.8% odds but I guess the basketball gods were, strictly on behalf of the Mavs enraged fan base, simply looking to make up for one of the worst decisions in basketball history), I was overcome with simultaneously feeling a strange combination of disappointment and excitement. Would it have been amazing to add Cooper Flagg next to Wemby, Castle, & Fox? Of course, he would have been an amazing fit on our team both in style of play and in that his natural position, power forward, is the position that was and still is the thinnest on our roster. At the same time, we actually just got luckier statistically jumping from 8 to 2 this year than either of the last two years and holy shit…Dylan Harper is going to be a San Antonio Spur!!! Eventually, the disappointment on coming so close but missing out on Flagg subsided and was replaced by a ridiculous abundance of even more excitement about Harper. Luck, you are once. twice, three times a lady ❤️❤️❤️
The combined probability of the Spurs winning the overall first pick (2023), fourth pick (2024), and second pick (2025) in three consecutive drafts is about one in 1400. That, however, doesn’t even factor in the additional incalculable luck of having the three teams in front of us in 2024 misevaluate the available pool of players and therefore put us back in the position for the second year in a row to be able to draft the prospect who is proving to be far and away the best in the class. And because when our luck “goes streaking” it brings it’s green hat, the cherry on top of the hot fudge sundae our roster upgrade had become was the luck that the GMs who Brian Wright negotiated with to land us an already-established star were fleece-able. In 734 days, we went from having zero top-five overall draft picks and zero already-established stars on our roster to having Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, and De’Aaron Fox. To put it another way, we went from going nowhere soon to having the brightest future in the league in two short years. So let me say it for today, “it doesn’t make any sense for us to be this lucky.” Or then again, maybe it does. Maybe this was ordained to happen. Maybe luck doesn’t exist and is merely a human construct created to allow those who are out of favor with the gods (basketball or otherwise) to have something to blame other than themselves. Maybe it is because of our righteousness that the basketball gods created a future so bright for the San Antonio Spurs that we have the potential to grow our current roster into the greatest team ever assembled in the history of the planet. Either way, luck or predestination, one thing is for certain: our future is so bright it is also our present. Less than three years after drafting Wembanyama, less than two years after drafting Castle, less than one and a half years after acquiring Fox, and less than one year after drafting Harper, we are back where we belong. We are back contending for the title. We are back in the Western Conference Finals. 👽🏰🦊
* * *
On Friday night, the San Antonio Spurs eliminated the Minnesota Timberwolves from the 2026 NBA playoffs by winning Game 6 of our second round series on the road at the Target Center 139-109 and stamping our first ticket to the Western Conference Finals since 2017. The contest was a wire-to-wire shellacking that’s result was so never in question, Anthony Edwards decided to go ahead and get giving the Spurs coaches and players their post-game congratulatory handshakes over with when there was still eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. (As bizarre of a spectacle as it was, it also showed what a class act Ant is to tip his cap to the “better team” like that. I really admire the toughness he displayed on playing this entire series through injury, and as awful as it was for me, as a Spurs fan, to have to sit through every dagger three, every spectacular paint finish, and every clutch midrange jumper he made in this series, man is it a privilege to get to watch that dude play basketball. His game is ridiculous.) After annihilating the Wolves in his Game 5 redemption game, Victor Wembanyama had a solid but quiet (by his standards) performance in the Game 6 elimination route. While his stat line during his 27 minutes on the floor of 19 points (on efficient shooting splits), six rebounds, three blocks, and two assists would be considered an exceptional night’s work for any earthling, it was nothing to transmit home about for an alien who is on a quest to make sure the 2023 number one pick is not just considered the greatest lottery prize in 20 years (LeBron James in 2003) but becomes universally agreed upon as the greatest lottery prize of all-time. Probably the most impressive thing about Wemby’s night was witnessing the cumulative effect his defense had on Minnesota’s starting front court over the course of six games. By the end of the series, Victor had broken the basketball brains of both the Wolves starting power forward Julius Randle and Wemby’s French national teammate, friend and mentor, Wolves starting center Rudy Gobert. In Game 6, the two combined for three points (you read that correctly) on 1-12 shooting in 46 minutes. Poor, poor Rudy posted a goose egg in the game that prevented his team from making a third-straight trip to the Western Conference Finals.
The player of the game was once again, for the second consecutive contest, the iconoclast Stephon Castle. There’s no other way to describe it. Steph was simply breathtaking in his first-ever career road close out game. When Chris Finch and the Wolves made the fatal mistake to start the game by having Rudy Golbert switch on Castle but space off of him to protect against his drive (an adjustment that was designed to clog the paint in order to prevent Wemby from getting off to another fast start), Steph LIT THEM UP to the tune of three triples and 14 points in the first quarter overall. He went on to drain a career-high five three-pointers in Game 6 of the second round of the playoffs in his second season in the league. That is just silly. For the game, this NCAA Final Four champion and budding superstar whose home state Atlanta Hawks as well as the Washington Wizards and Houston Rockets miraculously (or moronically depending on your prospective) passed on drafting in 2024 had 32 points, 11 rebounds, and six assists in leading San Antonio to our first trip to the NBA final four in nine years. Steph oozed with confidence every second of his 30 minutes on the court shooting super efficiently across the board: 11/16 from the field, 5-7 from distance, and 5-6 from the line. He was also what Mitch Johnson characterized as an “attack dog” on defense the entire night and only committed two turnovers for good measure. It’s pretty clear that the kid from Covington, GA was built ready to play for the highest stakes in the NBA. Don’t forget to lock your doors and set your alarms tonight, America. There’s a stone cold killer coming to a Western Conference Finals stage near you.
On the same day that hip-hop icon Drake finally released his much-anticipated 9th studio album Iceman, the franchise who claims George Gervin (the NBA legend with the greatest nickname of all-time and the one Drake’s album title is paying homage to) also had a current player give his best impression of the original Iceman with his silky-smooth ability to maneuver his way to the rim along with his penchant for coming up with cold-blooded, “ice water in his veins” shooting in closing out the Timberwolves on Friday. De’Aaron Fox, the already-established star who shrewdly was the first to call his “I wanna play with Wemby” shot last year in forcing his way out of Sacramento and to San Antonio was spectacular in the Game 6 route. The near-consensus fastest player in the league with the ball in his hands ran circles around Minnesota’s elite permitted defenders scoring 21 points (on cold-blooded 8-10 shooting from the field, 3-3 from deep, and 2-2 from the line) and dishing out a team-high nine assists. The Iceman 2.0 cometh and he cometh to help the San Antonio Spurs young superstars compete to raise more banners in the rafters for a franchise that would have in all likelihood been shuttered during the NBA-ABA merger had the original Iceman not cometh. Speaking of young superstars doing their best impression of a Spurs legend, a 20-year-old leftie continues to look an awful lot like Manu Ginobili with the footwork he utilizes to carve his way through the paint and to the cup. Dylan Harper, the ultra-talented guard prodigy from Franklin Hills, NJ, had another stellar performance in Friday’s close out victory scoring 15 points (on 6-8 from the field), five rebounds, and two assists. The No. 2 overall pick of the 2025 NBA draft looking like the hall-of-famer from Bahía Blanca, Argentina is no coincidence because Manu, in his special advisor role with the Spurs, has made a concerted effort to mentor our soon to be first-team all-rookie phenom with No.1 pick level talent. Dylan Harper benefiting from the tutelage of Manu (one of the greatest 6th men of all-time) while playing “a” 6th-man role as a rookie (he will humbly remind you he’s not “the” 6th man, that’s Keldon Johnson) is going to pay off in spades. It’s scary how good Dylan is going to be tonight never mind in two weeks, one month, one year, five years, etc. etc. I think it’s safe to say we got ourselves a keeper with this one. All told, San Antonio’s “core four” (none of whom was even on our roster 1,061 days ago) demonstrated exactly how incomparably bright our future is by combining for 87 points on a preposterous 69% shooting (31 for 45) as well as 26 rebounds and 19 assists during our Game 6 closeout of Minnesota one Friday. When those four supernovas play like that, there isn’t a team now (or at any time in the past) that is likely to beat us.
I am so ridiculously excited for tonight’s Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals. Waiting for us on the other side of the bracket is the defending champs. I wouldn’t want it any other way. The Oklahoma City Thunder cruised through the first two rounds of the playoffs sweeping both the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers on the way to their second-consecutive trip to this particular stage. Touting the now back-to-back NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (the results were announced yesterday) and that undefeated 2026 playoff record, there is no question that our young group is stepping up in weight class from Round 2 to Round 3. While Vic was also a finalist for the MVP and I obviously wanted him to win, it’s not the worst thing in the world for SGA to get the award on the eve of this series because he was deserving but more importantly because, knowing how insanely competitive Wemby is, wanting to prove that the voters got this one wrong is going to add extra fuel to Victor’s desire to want to dominate this series. Because the Thunder edged us out for the best record in the league by two games during the regular season, tonight’s Game 1 will be played at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. We all witnessed the unexpected 4-1 season series domination our young upstarts displayed over the defending champions during the regular season and while I think that will be helpful in giving us confidence for game-planning this matchup, I’m not delusional enough to think that our regular season success against this team will have any bearing on what will happen against them in the playoffs. Getting the upper hand on last year’s champs during the regular season is one thing. Ending their season in the Western Conference Finals is going to take something else all together. Perhaps something otherworldly but having just such a player at least gives us a puncher’s chance 😉👽 There will be plenty of time over the next four to seven posts to dissect this series and our opponent but for now, I’ll just say we have a real opportunity to steal Game 1 tonight. Just like Minnesota came into the last series and capitalized on the fact that we had been resting for five days to help them steal one from us on our home court in Game 1, we have the same opportunity to do it to the champs tonight. Oklahoma City has been resting for a full seven days since eliminating LA last Monday. We will becoming in sharp from finishing off our series on Friday night. We have a real opportunity tonight to punch first against the champs and put them on the back foot. When the ball is tipped tonight, OKC might very well still have the best player in the series on their team in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (by a tiny margin) but, whether you want to call it luck or predestination, in acquiring our four franchise cornerstones over the past three year, there is no question we have surpassed them in high-end talent overall at the top of the roster and because of that, I like our chances to go directly into the Paycom Center aka the blue and orange belly of the beast home of the defending champs and paint it black.
Featured Image Source: TIDAL
Headline Image Source: San Antonio Express-News
Cinq de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference Semifinals, Game 2
Talk That Talk - There were one hundred different ways we could have won Game 1 by simply doing one thing better. Number One could have pumped-faked one time on one of his eight three point attempts and instead drove for one dunk and the and one and we would have won. Number Two could have applied one more ounce of English to his one-of-a-kind finishing ability on the one layup he missed and the wunderkind puts our opponent one bucket closer to 0-1. Number Three could have demonstrated he wanted one rebound one tiny bit more than his defender one time and one pump fake before one finish coupled with making the one free throw he missed and we wouldn’t have finished the evening left wanting. Number Four could have foregone one ill-advised careless pass one time forestalling one unforced turnover and the one extra formulated shot it would’ve produced for sure would have been a game-flipping one. Number Five could have been whistled for one fewer ticky-tack foul by what proved to be one one-sided performance by the officiating crew and one loss later the opposing coach would have had one legitimate reason to be complaining that one (not four or five) of Number One’s twelve blocks was legitimately an illegal one. No wonder the next day’s film session included one special guest whose position on the list of all-time winningest coaches is not five, not four, not three, not two but one.
* * *
I sat down on my couch to watch the Spurs sixth game of the 2024-25 regular season on the evening of November 2nd, 2024 just like I would have on any other night for any other regular season game. We were playing at home in the Frost Bank Center against the Minnesota Timberwolves, a tough opponent coming off of a Western Conference Finals appearance. Even though the season had started out a little bit up and down (we were 2-3 heading into that game), I was looking forward to a good early test for Victor Wembanyama (coming off his 2023-24 Rookie of the Year season), Stephon Castle (this year’s exciting blue chip lottery pick rookie combo guard), Chris Paul (newly acquired legendary future hall-of-fame point guard) and company against Anthony Edwards, Julius Randall and the entire Wolf Pack.
The first thing I noticed was the announcers reporting that Gregg Popovich aka Coach Pop or simply Pop would not be coaching that evening; he was out with an undisclosed ailment. They went on to say assistant coach Mitch Johnson would be the one roaming the sidelines for this contest. At first, I didn’t think much of anything about it (other than I was surprised Mitch Johnson got the call to fill in for Pop over Brett Brown, the vastly more experienced assistant with former head coaching experience in the NBA). After all, Pop had missed a game or two here or there over the past five seasons due to minor medical absences which seemed pretty understandable for a coach in his 70s and now at 75 in his record-breaking 29th consecutive season as the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs. I brushed it off as another one of those and thought, it will be cool to watch and see how this young assistant handles the responsibility for one game. (He won the game 113-103 over the currently relevant perennial Western Conference contenders from the Twin Cities.)
Little did I know this at the time but on Halloween, two nights early, I had witnessed the winningest coach in NBA regular season history (1390), winningest coach in NBA regular season + playoffs history combined (1582), three-time NBA Coach of the Year (2003, 2012, 2014), 10-time Western Conference Finalist (1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017), sixth-time NBA Finalist (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2013, 2014), five-time NBA Champion (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2014) and Hall of Fame (2023) greatest coach in basketball history Gregg Popovich coach his 2,547th and final game as head coach of the San Antonio Spurs in Salt Lake City against the Utah Jazz. (He also won the game 106-88 because, knowing Pop, he would probably say that, while unexpected, bowing out inconspicuously after a road win in Utah is a fitting way to sign off.)
* * *
On Tuesday, May 5th, the San Antonio Spurs President of Basketball Operations walked into a film room at Victory Capital Performance Center on the campus of The Rock at La Cantera and rolled up his sleeves. One year and three days after officially retiring from the role of head coach of the San Antonio Spurs and 55ish years after allegedly turning down a covert role with the CIA, Gregg Popovich aka Popo aka The Notorious G.C.P. aka El Jefe, never one to miss an opportunity to immerse himself in celebrating the culture of the beloved city he has made his home for the past 32 years, stood in that film room in front of the 2025-2026 San Antonio Spurs players and coaches and, in honor of Cinco de Mayo, held up a piñata. He proceed to run the tape of Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Western Conference semifinals and went play by play, point by point on every improvement the team needed to make in Game 2 in order to pummel the Minnesota Timberwolves into utter submission.
The next night, the #BlackAndSilver did exactly that eviscerating our visitors from the Twin Cities by 38 points, 133-95. This was the third-biggest margin of victory in a playoff game in San Antonio Spurs franchise history as well as Minnesota’s worst playoff defeat in franchise history. I think it’s safe to say that even though Coach Pop’s November 2nd, 2024 stroke left him with limitations that prevented him from returning to the physical demands of coaching NBA basketball, he still has the sharpest basketball tactician mind currently being deployed in the league. What a (not so) secret weapon and valuable resource Mitch Johnson and his players have at their disposal to tap when necessary. And, man, was it ever so necessary this week after fumbling away home court advantage and falling into a 0-1 hole in this Western Conference Semifinals series after a not-quite-ready-for-the-intensity-of-playing-a-more-experienced-playoff-opponent lackadaisical performance on Monday. When it became official on May 2nd, 2025 that the dream of Coach Pop coming full circle to coach the next-generation Wemby-Fox-Castle Spurs to the franchise’s sixth championship was dead due to his medically-necessary retirement from the bench, it was hard and it was sad even though we, as Spurs fans, all knew that he wasn’t going anywhere and was still going to be actively involved in the program through his role in the front office. As amazing of a job as 2025-26 Coach of the Year finalist Mitch Johnson has done in his stead, a subtle melancholy persisted beneath the surface all season knowing Pop had been robbed of the opportunity to lead this young, talented, special group while they are making their leap back into contention. That melancholy was lifted with Wednesday’s dominant, world-class response to adversity in the form of the 38-point drubbing we laid down on Minnesota and knowing how intimately involved El Jefe was in making it happen.
While Wemby had a strong, balanced performance in Game 2 with 19 points, 15 rebounds, two assists, two blocks, and a steal and De’Aaron Fox bounced back from his abhorrent Game 1 performance with a solid and steady 16 points, two assists and two steals, the player of the game was 2nd year phenom Stephon Castle. Steph imposed his will with his physicality on both sides of the ball. On defense, he held the T-Wolves franchise player Anthony Edwards in check as the primary defender, holding Ant to 12 points (5-13 shooting), zero assists, and four turnovers. Castle was once again in foul trouble (and once again called for a couple of soft ones) but he felt much more in control and intentional about what he was trying to do on that end of the floor in Game 2. On offense, he led the team in scoring with 21 points on an efficient 6-10 from the field and a stellar 9-9 from the line. He added four rebounds, four assists, and two steals for good measure. One of the questions posed by the talking heads in the national media heading into the postseason was asking if the lack of playoff experience would prove costly for the Spurs’ young, talented core in our pursuit of an “ahead of schedule” title run. I think it’s safe to say that the 2024 NCAA Champion UConn Husky was built for this.
While it is quite plausible that wire-to-wire 38-point historic beat down that we laid on the wounded Timberwolves on Wednesday night at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio might have broken them, we would be beyond foolish to count on it. This team has been here before, knows what it takes to respond and even though we are now +36 in total points for the series, the fact remains the series is tied 1-1 and Minnesota is currently still in control of home court advantage. They have an opportunity to reset and regroup tonight at home in the comfortable confines of the Target Center in Minneapolis and protect the home court they earned by snatching the toss up on Monday that was Game 1. A wounded animal is a dangerous one and if you underestimate the battle-tested Minnesota Timberwolves, you do so at your own peril. In order to regain home court advantage tonight, we need to come out sharp, focused and ready to control the tempo and the physicality of tonight’s proceedings. Game 3 is not going to be a cakewalk. It is going to be a war. Luckily for us, our (not so) secret weapon is likely holed up in a bunker somewhere deep in the bowels of Victory Capital Performance Center on the campus of The Rock at La Cantera back home in San Antonio confident that the message has been delivered about the preparedness that is necessary to play with the appropriate fear tonight and get this wounded animal back in its cage. With Gregg Charles Popovich back doing what he does best (preparing his team for playoff success), I like our chances to do exactly that tonight. We are beyond lucky for the last 30 years and everything that’s still to come. Thank you for choosin’ Texas, Coach Pop. Can’t wait to see what your incomparable basketball tactician mind has in store for us next. In Pop we trust.
Featured Image Source : The Honey POP
Headline Image Source: TODAY
Quatre de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference First Round, Game 5
LET ‘EM KNOW - Back then, it was relief and relief alone. There was no excitement. There was no fulfillment. It simply came with the territory. You don’t get to experience the joy of your favorite NBA team being a perennial title contender for two decades straight without also suffering some undesired consequences. One example of which is that when you’re a perennial title contender for two decades straight, you never get to enjoy the first round of the NBA playoffs. It’s either win as you are required to do or endure pure unadulterated agony. While first round playoff exits didn’t happen often during the San Antonio Spurs 1998-2017 vicennial run as championship contenders, when they did, it was dreadful.
All told, it happened in four of the 20 seasons. While two of the four were slightly more palatable when factoring in that they involved absences of star players due to injury (2000: Tim Duncan & 2009: Manu Ginobili), it was certainly a huge bummer to be denied an opportunity to properly defend our first-ever title in 2000 (losing to the Phoenix Suns 3-1 as the West’s fourth seed) and similarly disappointing getting bounced 4-1 by an instate rival in 2009 (losing to the Dallas Mavericks as the West’s third seed).
The two most excruciating by far, however, were losing in the first round in 2011 and 2015. As the top seed in the West in 2011, we once again were forced to open the playoffs without Manu Ginobili. While his injury was less severe in 2011 than it was in 2009 (only forcing him to sit out of Game 1 against the 8th-seeded Memphis Grizzlies), it was enough to put us in an 0-1 hole (losing a nail-biter 101-98). This foreshadowed what would prove to be a snake-bitten false start of a title pursuit for a 61-win juggernaut that looked like world-beaters heading into the postseason. We ultimately succumbed to Memphis’ Grit and Grind physicality in six games in such humiliating fashion that it’s hard to imagine it will ever be replaced as the most embarrassing playoff exit of my lifetime as a Spurs’ fan.
We covered the 2015 seven game first round war with the Los Angeles Clippers here at theLeftAhead. The conclusion of the decisive battle in that war rendered the third edition of the Black & Silver blog series shockingly brief given the first edition (2013) was 21 chapters long and the second edition (2014) was 23 chapters long. If you recall, the seventh chapter in 2015 was a tragedy ending in heartbreaking fashion when Tim Duncan missed blocking Chris Paul’s game winning floater by the width of a piece of paper. As brutal as it was to experience, CP3’s greatest playoff moment wasn’t even the most agonizing aspect of the 2015 debacle of a title defense because that matchup with the Clips should have never even happened in the first place.
On the last day of the regular season, San Antonio was in position to clinch the West’s second seed but dropped all the way down to the sixth seed after losing a close road game to the New Orleans Pelicans 108-103. Had we just taken care of business that night, we would have avoided a match up with Chris Paul and Los Angeles until later in the playoffs and also potentially given ourselves a shot to face the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals before they were the juggernaut Golden State Warriors. Forcing Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and company to actually get tested with facing the defending champions might have delayed their ascent to the top of the mountain for another year or even forestalled it completely. (Do the Warriors get past the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2016 Western Conference Finals without their 2015 championship experience to draw from? Does Kevin Durant sign there in the summer of 2016 had the Warriors never demonstrated the Bay area as being a viable landing spot for him to choose in order to chase rings?) Instead the Golden State Warriors reached the summit through one of the easiest paths to a championship in NBA history in 2015. What might have been.
I opened with this unpleasant trip down memory lane in order to demonstrate how much fun it has been getting to enjoy a San Antonio Spurs first round series again. Sure, as a 62-win team and the second seed this season, a first round playoff exit would have been a bummer but it would have also been chalked up as a learning experience and part of the process for a young core going through the playoffs for the first time. While the adversity we faced losing Victor Wembanyama to a Game 2 concussion en route to dropping that game at home followed by digging ourselves into double-digit holes during both road games was certainly stressful, the adversity didn’t carry with it the same enormity of the weight of expectation that I (as a Spurs fan) was used to experiencing annually for two decades of my life. Had we lost to Portland in this first round, I would have been devastated to have blown this fairly unprecedented opportunity to show the world how far ahead of schedule we are but ultimately, I would have been content that this first playoff experience was a solid foundational brick upon which to take the first step on our inevitable path to another golden trophy. So, yeah, it was fun to get to sit back and enjoy watching the first without being required to win. That being said, of course won.
Last Tuesday, the San Antonio Spurs eliminated the Portland Trail Blazers from the 2025-26 playoffs by winning Game 5 at the Frost Bank Center 114-95 in a nearly wire to wire dominant performance. We jumped on them early and, in the words of Stephon Castle, “punched them in the chest” by sprinting out to a 17-4 lead in the first four minutes of the game. By the end of the first quarter, we were still cruising right along finishing the period with a 12 point advantage up 36-24 and by halftime, we had extended that lead to a cool 20 up 65-45 at the break. We continued building our lead up to 26 with 8:27 to play in the third before the Blazers inevitably started playing like a team that wasn’t ready to die and began chipping away. While San Antonio had still increased our halftime lead by another point after the end of third quarter (winning the period overall 21-20), Portland shaved five points off of the game-high 26 point deficit in the last eight and a half minutes giving them so momentum heading into the fourth.
If you stepped away to prepare a snack or go to the bathroom during the first four minutes of the fourth quarter, you would have returned to a very different contest considering it was now once again a contested one. Four minutes and four Trail Blazer threes into the fourth quarter and all of a sudden, the Spurs’ lead had shrunk to single digits at 91-82. After a timely Mitch Johnson timeout, the Spurs steadied the ship a bit stretching the lead back out to 13 but once again, the desperation of a team not wanting their season to end proved consequential as Portland once again got within single digit striking distance at 97-88 with 5:46 minutes left to save it. Luckily, for the Moda Center visitors, that was as close as the Blazers would ultimately get as the Spurs were able to figure out a way to get the dam to break by outfoxing the home team down the stretch to win by a comfortable 19-point margin and closeout our first playoff series in nine years.
Wemby had another MVP-caliber two-way performance. While he only put up a pedestrian 17 points, he did it on an uber-efficient 5-7 from the field (1-2 from deep) and 6-6 from the foul line, plus he added three assists for good measure. Volume scoring wasn’t required from our best player on this particular night considering that all of the other four starters plus Dylan Harper off the bench each also had a double-digit scoring night. What was required from Vic (especially when the Blazers went on the inevitable “fighting for our playoff lives” second half run) was otherworldly defense. The Alien had 14 defensive rebounds and six soul-crushing blocks. Victor’s stifling defense was obviously a key factor in San Antonio closing out Portland but as dominant as Victor was on that side of the court, the player of the game was just as dominant down the stretch on the other side of the court. For the second time running, player of the game honors go to 2023 Clutch Player of the Year De’Aaron Fox. Swipa had 21 points, nine assists, three rebounds, and a steal overall but came up huge in the clutch for the second consecutive game scoring 13 points in the fourth quarter, nine of which came in the last 5:46 of the game after the Blazers had cut the lead to single digits for the second time in the quarter. After an up and down start to his second-ever career playoff series, Fox delivered down the stretch in closing out Portland both in terms of his reputation as a clutch player and in earning the contract extension we signed him to this summer. In the fourth quarters of Games 4 & 5, he was exactly the player we are paying him to be and that is one of the biggest reasons we are headed to our first Western Conference Semifinals since 2017.
Last Thursday, we found out who are opponent will be in the second round. Shockingly, a wounded and undermanned sixth-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves squad eliminated Nikola Jokic and the former champion Denver Nuggets in six games, winning Game 6 at the Target Center in Minneapolis 110-98. Unfortunately, the epic rubber match second playoff victory over Denver in three series over the past four years came at a brutal cost with the season of Wolves starting guard Donte DiVencenzo ending in Game 4 of the first round when he tore his Achilles. (I was beyond sad to see DiVencenzo suffer a catastrophic injury. He’s a tough-as-nails competitor, a player I always enjoy watching compete.) Anthony Edwards, Minnesota’s star player, was also injured in the same game. He went down with a hyperextended left knee. Despite losing two starters in Game 4 as well as key bench players who picked up varying degrees of ailments in Game 5, the 6th-seeded but battle-tested Timberwolves have survived their first round match up with the 3rd-seeded Denver Nuggets and are ready for tonight’s second round opener at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio.
Late breaking reports suggest that Anthony Edwards is expected to play tonight. I’m personally glad to hear that because I always want to face an opponent as close to full strength as possible. Even though Minnesota has lost DiVencenzo for the season, bring on the best possible version of the squad that has made back to back Western Conference Finals appearances because I think the #BlackAndSilver are up for the challenge of not allowing it to become three in a row. That being said, given the pedigree, we know we cannot allow ourselves to let our guard down for one second just because Minnesota is undermanned. This wounded team just sent Denver packing and if you underestimate the Minnesota Timberwolves, you do so out your own peril. I know we’ll be focused and ready for the challenge. Anthony Edwards or no Anthony Edwards tonight, if we keep playing the stellar brand of basketball that we played throughout the regular season and maintained during the opening round, I’m confident we will inch one victory closer to confirming that the dog days are over an a new era of perennial championship contention has indeed begun. If, indeed, the 2026 NBA playoffs proves to confirm this, along with it will return those pesky undesired consequences…but not until next year. For now, there’s still no pressure. Tonight, I’m excited sit back and continue enjoying where this ride takes us. And on that note, may the fourth be with us.
#GoSpursGo
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Headline Image Source: San Antonio Express-News
Trois de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference First Round, Game 4
Aperture - We didn’t know what the future would hold when De’Aaron Fox, through his agent, Rich Paul, requested a trade from the Sacramento Kings to the San Antonio Spurs midway through the 2024-25 season. At the time, we were starting a 39-year-old point guard (albeit a legendary one) and evaluating how capable our rookie combo guard had the potential to be on the ball initiating offense (turned out…extremely capable). I mean, let’s face it. Just a season and a half before Fox’s trade request, the-man-the-myth-the-legend himself, Coach Pop, had an extremely rare tactical miscue when he attempted to start Jeremy Sohan at point guard at the beginning of Victor Wembanyama’s rookie season (2023-24). The experiment proved to be a failure that stunted both Jeremy and Wemby’s development (just a tiny bit on the latter). So yeah, when you are only that far removed from being the laughing stock of the league at the point guard position and the opportunity presents itself to trade for an all-star and clutch player of the year caliber point guard right smack dab in the middle of his prime without giving up any of your most-prized assets, it’s a no-brainer. You do it 100 times out of 100. The Spurs didn’t become the second-winningest NBA franchise of all-time (to date) and win the fifth-most championships (to date) by whiffing on the easy decisions. On February 3rd, 2025, the San Antonio Spurs traded Zach Collins, Tre Jones, Sidy Cissoko, three of the least valuable in our stockpile of first round picks and three second round picks for De’Aaron Fox and Jordan McLaughlin in a three-way trade with the Sacramento Kings and Chicago Bulls.
If San Antonio Spurs general manager Brian Wright had had the magical power to see into the future and know that a mere four months later, the franchise would have the basketball gods smile down fondly upon us yet again to bless us with a third-straight year of lottery luck and the number two overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft (with a point guard as the consensus number two prospect in the draft class), of course he might have paused to consider if we might be better served to keep our powder dry and hold on to the assets we were going to need to give up to secure Fox’s services in case they might be better allocated later to pursue needs at other positions. If Wright had known then that in a mere five months he was about to draft Dillon Harper, he might have paused to consider Swipa-ing left on Fox, but I think he has proven he’s a savvy enough team builder to have known 100 times out of 100 includes the one in a hundred time where you can have your cake and eat it too. In the sorcerous world where the Spurs’ general manager had the magical power to see our Dylan Harper future during the moment he had the De’Aaron Fox trade deal sitting on the table, he pulls the trigger regardless.
On Sunday afternoon at the Moda Center in Portland, De’Aaron “Swipa” Martez Fox officially silenced all of the critics, doubters, naysayers, and unapologetic haters who view him as an expendable overpaid underwhelming pseudo star whose acquisition is now serving as a roadblock for Dylan Harper getting the keys to the car. The player of the game dropped a cool, calm, and collected 28 points (a lion’s share of them during a furious second half comeback) along with seven assists, six rebounds, one steal and two incredible blocks to lead the Spurs to the largest halftime-to-final turnaround in NBA playoff history. Fox was at the controls for roughly 20 of the 24 second half minutes on Sunday orchestrating the high-octane explosion of dominant offensive execution that propelled us back from a 17 point halftime deficit to a 73-35 (+38) second half and a 21 point victory that puts us up 3-1 in the series heading back home for Game 5. Head Coach Mitch Johnson said in his postgame press conference that Game 4 against the Blazers “might have been his (DeAaron’s) best game as a Spur.” Do I wish our 2025-26 roster construction allowed for Dylan Harper to have a bigger role playing more minutes? Of course, I think every Spurs fan does. Nonetheless, it’s performances like the one De’Aaron had on Sunday that remind all fans across the “Fox is Great/Fox is Trash” spectrum (full transparency, I find myself pulled to both extremes from time to time but mostly hovering firmly left of middle) how integral he was to the team’s 28 game regular season improvement this season over last and how unquestionably vital he is to San Antonio having realistic postseason title ambitions way ahead of schedule. Part of what we brought him into our program for was to be a veteran leader who we could rely on to have ice in his veins during clutch playoff situations. It took him a little bit longer to get revved up than expected but as of our 114-93 Game 4 come-from-way-behind second consecutive first round road playoff victory over the Portland Trail Blazers, Swipa the Fox has arrived.
As dominant as De’Aaron and the offense were in the second half on Sunday, it takes more than one side of the ball to have a half where you outscore a playoff opponent by 38 points in 24 minutes. As mentioned above, Fox had two seemingly out of nowhere impressive blocks and a steal to add a little two-way spice to his epic performance. Of course, we can always rely on Stephon Castle to bring the pit bull point of attack perimeter defense. He did that effectively once again in Game 4 and while it didn’t necessarily translate to the box score (only one rebound and one steal), he played a role in limiting Scoot Henderson to an eye-popping ZERO points on 0-7 shooting in 27 minutes but more critically, his harassment of Deni Avdija got under the Blazer all-star’s skin culminating in a late sequence where Avdija was checking Steph on the perimeter (with obnoxious aggression haphazardly slapping his arms repeatedly trying to force a steal with Portland down 112 points and a little over two minutes left to make them up) and Steph drove right through him and got all the way to the basket for an “and one” layup. Being the good sportsman that he is, Castle politely handed the ball back to Deni so the Blazers could inbound under their own basket but or some reason, the Israeli small forward they call “Turbo” took exception to Steph’s kind gesture and shoved the 2024-25 Rookie of the Year for his troubles. Not being know as someone who is ever going to back down (and someone the likes of Avdija probably doesn’t want to mess with), Steph shoved him back resulting in double technicals. This about the point in a seven game series where we can expect the “who can get under the opponent’s skin enough to get them rattled” mind games to begin. Advantage Castle.
It goes without saying but, as well as the Spurs played defensively as a group in the second half of Game 4, there was one singular reason why the Blazers squandered their entire 17-point halftime lead within a matter of minutes and could only muster 35 second half points altogether. Welcome back, Victor Wembanyama. We didn’t get an alien sighting in the PNW on Friday night but we surely did on Sunday afternoon. Finally cleared on Sunday from concussion protocols, the greatest defensive force on the planet (perhaps the greatest defensive force in the history of the planet) was utterly breathtaking on that end of the court in the second half of Game 4. Wemby had 11 defensive rebounds, seven soul-crushing blocks and four back-breaking steals but that doesn’t tell the whole story because he completely discombobulated everything Portland wanted to do on offense. It was a masterclass by the 22-year-old. As if that weren’t enough insult to injury for the Moda Center crowd who (up 17) had just spent halftime making their Game 6 plans, Vic hit them on the other end with 27 points (9-17 from the field, 8-8 from the line), three assists, and one offensive rebound in the first 34 road playoff minutes of his career. It’s often said that, with a few rare exceptions, it’s proven to be a requirement for a team to have a first-team all-NBA super duper mega star to realistically have a shot at winning a championship. Well loyal readers, I’m happy to report…the #BlackAndSilver have one and then some.
With a commanding 3-1 lead in the series, the Spurs are back in San Antonio tonight to attempt to end the Portland Trail Blazers season at the Frost Bank Center. For a young group on their first playoff journey together, this will be another first. We have not yet experienced the desperation of a playoff team with their backs against the wall facing elimination as a group. I fully expect Deni Avjida, Scoot Henderson, and company to come out swinging and fight like their lives depend on it. I fully expect them to do everything in the power to get this series back to Oregon by stealing one tonight. Even though we’ve already had to play 1.75 games without our MVP candidate in this series, this will be the hardest game in the series thus far for us to win. Closeout games are always harder. That being said, if we come out focused and draw energy from another raucous crowd letting off more “seven years since we last made the playoffs” steam, we have an excellent opportunity to end the series and should have full confidence that this special group will get the job done and get some rest before the next round. The Denver Nuggets kept their season alive last night winning at home to cut Minnesota’s series lead to 3-2 and forcing at least a Game 6 for either of our potential second round opponents. That’s all I’ll say on the matter for now because you never want to look ahead when there’s still work to be done in the here and now. Tonight, we have an opportunity to punch our ticket to the Western Conference Semifinals for the first time since 2017. Tonight, we have the opportunity to show the world that our title contention window has arrived. Tonight, we have the opportunity to let ‘em know.
Featured Image Source: Pitchfork
Headline Image Source: Yahoo Sports
Un de moins
2026 NBA Western Conference First Round, Game 2
APT. - Fortuna aka Lady Luck is a mischievous sage with a twisted sense of humor. Literally less than two hours after I finished writing and posting Un de fait (the opening episode in this reboot season of the Black & Silver blog series), a post in which I wrote about the epochal luck we as Spurs fans had on May 16th, 2023 in winning the NBA Draft Lottery and the rights to draft Victor Wembanyama, and less time than that after receiving his first career Hakeem Olajuwon Trophy, The Alien was injured and knocked out of Game 2 of our Western Conference First Round series against the Portland Trail Blazers Tuesday night at the Frost Bank Center on a freak play with 8:57 left in the second quarter. Drew Holiday was guarding Vic by getting up underneath him (a common tactic by smaller players when checking the 7’4” third-year superstar) and when Wemby changed direction by spinning to separate from the two-time NBA Champion, Holiday “pulled the chair” on him causing our MVP candidate to spill dangerously to the ground unprotected and slam his face violently against the hardwood. Wemby seemed to be knocked out cold for a couple of seconds and then woozy as he attempted to sit up. With every heart in every throat of every Spurs fan everywhere, Wemby eventually jumped up and started jogging directly to the locker room but it was pretty clear that our best player had just suffered a concussion and would not be returning to this game. It was a dumbest of luck freak occurrence. Later in the game, it was confirmed that the injury had in fact ended the Defensive Player of the Year’s second career playoff outing after 12 minutes of action and five points, four rebounds, one assist, and one block. It probably goes without saying but this untoward anomaly completely shifted the trajectory of the game, possibly the series. The irony of this stroke of terrible, calamitous misfortune happening shortly after I published a post reliving the singular luckiest moment Spurs fans have experienced in the past 29 years is not lost on me. Atrox Fortuna, you wicked devil you.
The rest of the team did their best to shake the natural reaction of feeling shell-shocked by losing our leader in such a freakish manner. We played hard and gave tremendous effort for the game’s remaining 33 minutes and with 8:33 left in the fourth quarter (having come out like gangbusters to start the final period), we looked poised to put the game to bed and take a commanding 2-0 lead in the series. For whatever reason, though, from that point on we seemed to forget that (even without Vic), we’re the better team and started playing like we were a “one, two, three…Cancún” 39 win play in team. We gave nine points back over the course of the next 1:28 and once the Blazers had pulled within five, we were in a dogfight the rest of the night. Overall in Game 2, we were sloppy, careless in possession of the basketball, out of position for defensive rebounds, unfocused at the free throw line (going 20-28 from the charity stripe) and ultimately, we gave away a game we easily could have and should have won, falling to Portland 106-103. Series tied 1-1.
Our other 2025-26 NBA All-Star, De’Aaron Fox (a player who we just gave a max extension to this summer and consequently are paying to be our leader and take over games when Wemby is unavailable) was (save for a brief stretch early in the third quarter when he went on a personal 6-0 run) particularly ineffective, getting swallowed up by Tumauni Kamara on one end of the court and outplayed by Scoot Henderson on the other. With a golden opportunity to still get a W and put a stranglehold on the series down the stretch of the fourth quarter, to be frank, Swipa seemed annoyingly nonchalant about the whole ordeal. While this isn’t the first time this season that I have noticed a frustrating lack of intensity and focus in the former Clutch Player of the Year’s “clutch time” performance, he did play a strong game on Sunday in Game 1 so I will withhold further judgement for now (given the circumstances) and give him the benefit of the doubt with the expectation that he will bounce back in a major way for Game 3 and show up as the player we are paying him and critically need him to be. If Wemby is unable to clear concussion protocols and play in Game 3 in Portland, we need 30 and 10 (assists) tonight from De’Aaron on high efficiency and with low turnovers and I have confidence that he’s going to deliver.
The player of the game on Tuesday was Luke Kornet. The “vanilla” half of French Vanilla aka the “white” half of White Castle had 10 points (4-5 from the floor, 2-3 from the stripe), nine rebounds, and two assists and was a +11 in 28 minutes in Game 2. (De’Aaron was a -14 in 34 minutes, by the way.) As he has done all season long, Luke held it down in the middle on Tuesday evening in Wemby’s absence at a level one would expect from a quality starting big man. With his clever finishing around the rim and his gritty rim protection this season, Kornet was easily one of the best free agent signings in the entire NBA last summer. A proven winner and a 2023-24 NBA Champion with the Boston Celtics, Luke is one of the biggest reasons that we won 28 games more this year than we did last year when we did not have a quality back up center and our opponents regularly had a field day getting to the rim in the non-Victor minutes. From the outside looking in, he also appears to be a revered teammate that brings a lot of conviviality and humor to this tight-knit group inside the locker room and on the court. One of my favorite moments of the season was when Kornet had a game-saving block at the buzzer on the road in Orlando against the Magic on December 3rd and then spontaneously celebrated by doing the iconic Vince Carter pose from the 2000 NBA Slam Dunk contest.
As of the time of completing this post, Victor Wembanyama’s status for Game 3 tonight is still questionable. He is more than 60 hours into the process of working through his concussion protocol and the good news is that it was confirmed yesterday that he did travel with the team from San Antonio to Portland in preparation for Game 3. Like countless Spurs fans around the globe, I’ve been waiting with bated breath and fingers crossed constantly refreshing my news and social media feeds hoping against hope that I will receive the update I so desperately want to hear: there will be an encounter of the third kind at the Moda Center in Portland, OR this evening. Please, Fortuna, Feronia, Minerva, Salus, and Fides, holiest of holy basketball gods and goddesses, impart thy divine healing on the savior and allow us, his flock, to go forth with the relief that this wicked desultory accident was just a minor blip and not a major setback 🙏 Regardless of whether Wemby is able to clear protocols and suit up tonight or not, the #BlackAndSilver have to embrace playing in the most hostile environment most of our young core will have ever experienced to date and come out with the type of focus and force (which we have displayed consistently enough all year to win 62 games) to snatch our home court advantage in this series immediately back. Even without Vic, I believe we are still better than these young and scrappy Trail Blazers and that being the case, we should have the capability to make the necessary tactical adjustments as well as bring the energy and desire necessary to outwork our opponent and grab a victory this evening in the PNW. With Vic? We are the better team by an astronomical amount. Should he successfully clear the concussion protocol and play, expect Game 3 to be another otherworldly dominant une victoire écrasante. We got the guillotine, you better run.
#GoSpursGo
Featured & Headline Image Source: San Antonio Express-News