On Saturday, the San Antonio Spurs did something they haven’t done in more than a decade. They punched their ticket to the NBA Finals, winning a do-or-die game on the road against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Now they head back home to begin the championship series against the New York Knicks, a matchup that echoes 1999 when the Spurs won their first title. But that’s where the similarities end.
This Spurs team is younger, faster and built around global phenomenon Victor Wembanyama — a player who’s not just changing games, but expectations. And the Knicks? A long-suffering franchise, suddenly looking steady, disciplined and quite dangerous
Jared Weiss, who covers the Spurs for the Athletic, joined the Standard to tell us what to expect in the matchup. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: For folks who don’t follow the NBA closely, what makes this Spurs run unusual or significant beyond just winning the big games at the right time? What changed?
Jared Weiss: I would say this is the equivalent of having the training wheels being taken off your bike last year and then this year winning the Tour de France.
They were a lottery team. So for people that don’t follow the sport, if you don’t make the playoffs — because there’s only eight teams in each conference in the NBA that make the playoff — you end up in a draft lottery.
The Spurs, four years ago, won the lottery, got the right to have the No. 1 pick. And they drafted [Victor Wembanyama] Wemby. It was the easiest draft pick to make since LeBron James entered the league 20 years earlier.
Then the next year, they ended up with a very good spot in the lottery. They drafted Stephon Castle, who is now their second best player. He’s their defensive demon. He’s the workhorse attacking the rim.
Then last year, they barely missed the playoffs. They have a very low seed in the lottery. They end up again winning the second pick in the draft and drafted a guy named Dylan Harper who, as a 20-year-old just put together a stat line that the only other person to ever do that at his age is Magic Johnson, who is one of the greatest players of all time.
So the Spurs have gotten very fortunate that they’ve hit on the draft lottery three years in a row and they’ve crushed it every time. They’re the fourth team ever to go from missing the playoffs the year before to winning 60 games the next year and now they’re heading to the Finals.
It’s the most incredible single-season turnaround I’ve ever been around.
That Thunder series is being talked about as a classic. It was being talked about that way just two or three games in that you were seeing the best of the best of pro basketball, almost redefining what pro basketball means with these two younger teams and the rest of the NBA looking on as if looking at the future.
Which is the better team in your opinion? The Knicks or the Spurs?
The Spurs, they’re the better team. Being the better team doesn’t mean you’re going to win the series. I would say injuries and shooting luck are the two biggest factors in who wins a series most of the time.
So I do think the Spurs are the better team. I do think that Knicks certainly have a chance. And I’m hopeful and optimistic that it’s going to be a very long series.
One final thing, and I ask you this in part on behalf of the many folks who may be listening who don’t care about basketball and yet they know what happened the last time the Spurs were a true championship team and how it kind of lit a fire under the city in a way: Spurs fans are unique in a lot of ways. What does this mean for San Antonio being in the big series now?
I moved to San Antonio at the beginning of this season. I came from Boston, where sports is the culture. Celtics are incredibly popular. The Spurs presence within San Antonio is at a different level. I’m sitting in a hotel in OKC right now, and I think it’s comparable there.
When you go to these smaller southern cities where there’s only one professional sports team, those cities bake that team into their identity. And you see every single building has flags. Everyone’s wearing jerseys.
People don’t say “have a nice day” in San Antonio right now. They say, “go Spurs go.” I’ve had people say, “go Spurs go” more to me than any other phrase in the last two months.
And so the city, I think it is a validating moment, right? Because when you win an NBA championship, you’re telling the entire country and the entire world, “our city means something, our city matters, pay attention to our city.”
I’m a big-city guy. I am a New York/Boston kind of guy. So it doesn’t fit my style of life. But what it does have, is it has real character, great food, which is the most important thing, and it has people that genuinely enjoy engaging with you and learning who you are. And that’s the part that I’ve loved about San Antonio.
And that is why Victor is such a perfect match for San Antonio, because he is someone who is curious, humanistic, and enjoys where his two feet are in the world.
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