Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs are staying the course in terms of playoff preparation, even as the All-Star acknowledges he’s dreamt of bringing a title back to SA.
SAN ANTONIO — The Spurs‘ resident Alien is no stranger to pulling off magical feats on the hardwood.
And if Victor Wembanyama’s first three seasons in the NBA have seen him entering the league’s spotlight, his first taste of playoffs action will be about seeing what tricks he can accomplish when the lights are brightest.
At the team’s practice session Wednesday – four days before they tip off against the Portland Trail Blazers for the Spurs’ first playoff game since 2019 – Wembanyama said it’s a moment he’s been thinking about for a long time.
“These moments are what you work on all year, but really your whole career,” the 22-year-old All-Star said. “We’re dreaming of the playoffs as kids before we come here.”
The “here” is a place of massive excitement, but also massive expectations for a Spurs team whose turnaround from the doldrums of back-to-back 22-win campaigns earlier this decade entered hyperdrive when they ended this regular season winning 30 of their last 34 games.
Their final record of 62-20 represented a 28-win improvement over last year—the third-best turnaround in franchise history.
Now comes the part where they see if their pedigree as the second-best team in the Western Conference stands up to other NBA elite chasing a title.
“You can feel it for sure,” Wembanyama said. “Everybody’s a little more locked in. Everybody’s a little more involved.”
“I’ve missed playing in high-stakes games.”
When he suits up for Portland, it’ll be his first time doing so this season, thanks to the quirks of scheduling and timing with injuries he’s contended with this year. The Spurs still went 2-1 against the Trail Blazers, but the team isn’t resting on those laurels entering the best-of-seven playoff bout.
“They’re gonna get up and challenge you to handle the basketball, try to get you out of your sets or at least your normal rhythm and tempo,” head coach Mitch Johnson said. “And they’re really gonna challenge your transition. (They’ve) got a lot of guys who can really attack with the basketball in their hands.”
“It should be a really competitive and well-fought series,” added Johnson, in his first full year at the reins for San Antonio.
The head coach is approaching the playoff series with a simple mentality: Don’t change very much.
His main goal for this week’s practice and preparation?
“Be better,” he said. “There’s a lot of external (factors) that will obviously now be more present and try to be at the forefront of what’s going on, but there’s really not a lot of different themes and topics we’ll be emphasizing.”
For his part, Wembanyama said he expects to be at 100% in time for tipoff on Sunday evening, while acknowledging that NBA players are never really at 100% except in the offseason thanks to the grind of the game.
“I think I’m really close,” he said. “In terms of regular-season shape, I’m really close.”
Johnson added he also expects Dylan Harper, who left the regular-season finale against Denver with a thumb injury, to play on Sunday. That puts the team on course to be full-strength for their highly anticipated return to playoffs action.
It’ll be against a franchise that San Antonio met in the 2014 playoffs, amid its last successful title run. That Spurs team, featuring the Big Three and a young Kawhi Leonard, beat the Trail Blazers 4-1 in the Western Conference Semifinals.
That postseason would end with San Antonio getting its revenge over the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals—a series that Wembanyama, who was just 10 at the time, said featured in “some of my earliest NBA memories.”
Fast-forward 12 years, and Wembanyama has been transparent about his aspirations – and expectations – all season.
In the preseason, when most oddsmakers estimated they wouldn’t get more than 45 wins, Wemby said he expected to make the Play-In Tournament. When the team began making serious buzz as a contender in the season’s second half, he, at the behest of reporters, laid out a detailed argument for why he should become the youngest MVP in league history.
He also acknowledged Wednesday that it’s hard not to dream about bringing San Antonio its sixth NBA championship in 2026.
“But we have to stay grounded,” Wembanyama emphasized. “Stay in the moment. Before even thinking about Game 1, I have to think about showing up the right way at practice.”
And yet?
“I dream about it every day.”