San Antonio Spurs 2026 Season Preview
by Joel Piton
Sportz Nation - 9/22/2026
Training camp is in session, the offseason is officially in the rearview mirror, and basketball is finally starting to feel here again. It’s time to turn our attention to one of the most fascinating teams in the NBA: the defending Western Conference champion San Antonio Spurs. A year ago, San Antonio went from a young team overflowing with potential to standing just two wins away from an NBA championship. What once looked like a rebuild quickly became a full-blown title chase, with the Spurs announcing to the rest of the league that their time has arrived, and much sooner than anyone anticipated.
But getting to the NBA Finals is one thing. Finishing the job is another.
With expectations through the roof and a target firmly planted on their backs, the question surrounding San Antonio is no longer whether this team is good enough to compete. It’s whether they have what it takes to take that final step. So, as training camp gets underway, let’s break down everything surrounding the Spurs and determine just how legitimate their case is to bring the Larry O’Brien Trophy back to San Antonio.
Calling San Antonio’s last season a success would be an understatement. It was the year everything started coming together at once. Mitch Johnson finally began stepping into his calling as one of the league’s brightest young minds, De’Aaron Fox earned the second All-Star selection of his career, Stephon Castle took a major leap as both a playmaker and scorer, and even Carter Bryant made noise by finishing second in the Slam Dunk Contest. Then there's Dylan Harper, the No. 2 overall pick who easily could have complicated an already crowded young backcourt. Instead, he adapted and came off the bench beautifully for Castle, earned All-Rookie First Team honors and saved some of his best basketball for the biggest stage, exploding during San Antonio’s run through the NBA Finals.
And somehow, none of that was even the craziest part.
Victor Wembanyama did not look human. At just 22 years old, Wemby unanimously captured his first Defensive Player of the Year award after leading the NBA in blocks for the third consecutive season, effectively turning everything inside the free-throw line into a hazard zone. He added First Team All-NBA honors, powered San Antonio to a staggering 62 wins and then helped knock off the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. By the end of the year, the Spurs were no longer some fun young team building toward the future. They had arrived—and they came frighteningly close to finishing the job.
The Spurs are far from done putting together the team they want. If San Antonio’s draft told us anything, it’s that this front office has a type—and that type is grit. The Spurs used the No. 20 pick on Jayden Quaintance, a 6-foot-10 former five-star recruit who graduated high school early just to get a head start at the Division I level. A 2024 McDonald’s All-American with elite defensive tools, Quaintance earned Big 12 All-Defensive and All-Freshman honors at just 17 years old. His lone season after transferring from Arizona State to Kentucky was limited to only four games, but San Antonio clearly saw enough upside to take the swing.
They followed that up by grabbing undersized Tennessee guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie, who led an Elite Eight squad with 18 points per game, before adding Duke forward Maliq Brown, the ACC Defensive Player of the Year and an absurdly efficient finisher who shot well north of 65% from the field in college. And they weren’t done yet. Acquiring bruising UConn big man Tarris Reed Jr. from Denver after he earned First Team All-Big East honors while converting 67% of his attempts from the floor is a HUGE steal. See the trend yet? Defense. Physicality. Efficiency. Toughness. San Antonio already has plenty of offense—the goal on draft night was to surround it with players willing to do the dirty work.
So how exactly does a team improve after winning 62 games and reaching the NBA Finals? Before dissecting the roster, start with the man steering the ship. Mitch Johnson’s first full season as head coach could hardly have gone better. He earned an All-Star head coaching nod, guided San Antonio to its best record in nearly a decade and oversaw an offense that finished fourth in the NBA at 119.6 points per 100 possessions. And while Johnson was brought up alongside Gregg Popovich’s system, this didn’t feel like someone simply trying to recreate the glory days. His Spurs played fast, attacked the paint relentlessly and empowered a collection of ball-handlers: De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper and Victor Wembanyama—to initiate offense rather than funneling everything through one traditional star. Johnson himself emphasized pace and ball movement as two of the biggest reasons San Antonio’s offense took off. The results were especially impressive late in games: by the time Johnson was selected to coach at All-Star Weekend, San Antonio owned 17 clutch victories and a ridiculous 124.8 clutch offensive rating, third-best in basketball.
There is, however, one enormous wrinkle—and perhaps Johnson’s biggest challenge entering Year 2. That late-game machine was exposed in the postseason. San Antonio went just 3-8 in playoff clutch situations and managed only 93 points across 97 clutch possessions, a brutal 96.0 offensive rating. Johnson is still phenomenal; if anything, those losses give the team an obvious avenue for growth. The foundation is there, but now Johnson has to make San Antonio’s free-flowing, multi-creator offense just as reliable when the game is on the line. And that can only really be done through experience. I think Johnson's lack of true playoff experience kept him from knowing exactly what to do when New York buckled up.
Then we get to the backcourt—and this is where things get really interesting. De’Aaron Fox willingly minimized his offensive role last season and still managed to earn his second All-Star selection, averaging 18 points and six assists while coaching the younger guards. It was a noble sacrifice, but Fox is also just 28 years old, and standing beside him are two oversized point guards in Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper who may possess even greater long-term upside. Castle already took a massive step forward as a scorer and playmaker, while Harper went from the No. 2 pick to an All-Rookie First Team selection before exploding on the biggest stage imaginable in the NBA Finals. Last season proved that all three can coexist, but maintaining that balance could become increasingly difficult as Castle and Harper inevitably demand more touches, more creation opportunities and more responsibility. San Antonio doesn’t necessarily need to push Fox aside, but the hierarchy may have to evolve. If the Spurs truly believe Castle and Harper are pillars of their next championship core, then Year 2 may require leaning even further into the young guns and allowing Fox to be more of a complementary weapon.
The wing rotation might quietly be San Antonio’s deepest group, and the addition of Tobias Harris only makes things more interesting. Some will argue that Harris and Harrison Barnes are essentially the same player at this stage of their careers, but Harris still provides a little more offensive juice. He’s a more selective scorer, a stronger rebounder and a more dangerous floor spacer. Barnes, meanwhile, is an iron man—a veteran who can start, come off the bench, defend multiple positions and seemingly suit up for all 82 without blinking. Beyond the veterans, the Spurs are loaded. Julian Champagnie established himself as a nightmare from deep, and somehow became even more dangerous in the clutch. Keldon Johnson deserves just as much credit for embracing a reduced role after averaging 20-plus points per game, ultimately reinventing himself as the league’s Sixth Man. Carter Bryant remains the wild card; if his offensive game develops, San Antonio suddenly has another legitimate stud athlete to throw into the mix. Devin Vassell, who continues to fly slightly under the radar, is a smooth perimeter scorer, reliable shooter and sneakily effective defender. There may not be a single superstar on the wing, but few teams can match San Antonio’s depth from one through five.
And perhaps the most important move San Antonio made this summer had nothing to do with adding another player. Wemby officially committed to the franchise, signing a five-year, $252 million rookie-scale extension that will keep him under contract through the 2031-32 season. The timing is massive. Wemby will still play out the final year of his rookie deal in 2026-27 before the extension kicks in the following season, meaning San Antonio now has its generational centerpiece contractually secured for essentially the rest of the decade. The fifth year carries a player option, but even that leaves the Spurs with Wembanyama under team control through at least 2030-31 before he can realistically reconsider his future. In a league where championship windows can disappear almost overnight, San Antonio now knows exactly how much time it has to build around its superstar.
He basically locked himself in regardless of what he accomplishes next season. For a franchise eventually preparing to pay Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper as well, any money saved could be enormous. Castle can negotiate his rookie extension next summer, and Harper becomes eligible the following year, meaning their eventual paydays will begin overlapping with Wembanyama’s new contract. Wemby didn’t just commit to San Antonio—he gave the front office extra breathing room to keep this tandem together. Legally, the centerpiece is secured. Financially, the Spurs have been handed flexibility. Now it’s on the organization to capitalize on a championship window that suddenly stretches well into the 2030s.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how quickly all of this happened. Only two seasons ago, the San Antonio Spurs were a 22-win lottery team. They had missed the playoffs for four consecutive years, the legendary Gregg Popovich era was approaching its conclusion and the franchise was firmly rebuilding. Then Victor Wembanyama arrived, Stephon Castle followed, Dylan Harper joined the party and seemingly overnight the rebuild was over. San Antonio went from 22 wins in 2023-24 to 62 wins and a Western Conference championship just two years later. That isn’t gradual improvement. That’s a complete transformation. And for longtime Spurs fans, there is something extremely familiar about seeing San Antonio standing atop the Western Conference again. From 1997-98 through 2018-19, the Spurs reached the postseason an NBA-record-tying 22 consecutive times. During that run they won five NBA championships and became Western Conference champions six times—1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2013 and 2014. They didn’t literally represent the West every season during the 2000s, but it felt like San Antonio was always lurking around the championship picture.
Now, more than a decade after their last trip to the Finals, the Spurs are back in familiar territory. They're fresh off their seventh Western Conference championship in franchise history, and now comes a challenge San Antonio hasn’t faced since the Duncan era: defending it. The last Spurs team to win consecutive Western Conference titles was the 2013-14 group, which responded to a heartbreaking Finals loss by returning the following year and finishing the job against Miami. This version of the Spurs fell one series short, but unlike those older veteran championship teams, its centerpiece is only 22 and much of its supporting core is still developing. San Antonio spent years searching for the next era. Somehow, that era may already be here.
For all of what San Antonio’s does well, the Finals proved this team is far from flawless. The Spurs actually built double-digit leads in all five games against New York, yet watched the Knicks erase those advantages again and again—including a staggering 29-point comeback in Game 4. That wasn’t a talent problem as much as an execution problem. Once games slowed down, San Antonio’s transition attack became far less dependable, and its postseason clutch offense cratered. New York also discovered ways to weaponize San Antonio’s greatest defensive strength against them, using five-out spacing and repeatedly dragging Wembanyama away from the rim. To me, that's San Antonio's biggest weakness, and where evolution needs to be had.
If San Antonio wants to establish itself above a team like Oklahoma City and the rest of a loaded Western Conference again, the Spurs need cleaner half-court execution when shooting opportunities disappear, another dependable late-game creator alongside Wemby, and defensive answers that don’t require their 7-foot-5 safety net to erase every mistake. They already proved they can beat the defending champs in a seven-game war. The next step is becoming the team that doesn’t merely overwhelm opponents for three quarters, but can calmly put them away in the fourth.
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So Spurs fans, the floor is yours. After 62 wins, a Western Conference championship and a trip to the NBA Finals, what exactly counts as success now? Is it simply proving last season wasn’t a fluke? Another deep playoff run? A return trip to the Finals? Or has this team officially reached the point where anything short of raising Banner No. 6 feels like unfinished business?
Wemby is locked in. Castle and Harper are only getting better. The backcourt is loaded, the wings run deep. Is this the year San Antonio finishes what it started and brings the Larry O’Brien Trophy back home? Let us know what you’re expecting from the Spurs this season.
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Thanks for reading!
-Joel Piton
(@jpiton7)
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