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The Silver and Black have an opportunity to advance past the first round of the playoffs tonight for the first time since the 2016-2017 season, when they got all the way to the Western Conference finals against the Golden State Warriors. If they win
tonight, they will face either the Minnesota Timberwolves or the Denver Nuggets, who are engaged in a close series where the Wolves lead 3-2 with a chance to close it out Thursday night in Minnesota. If the Nuggets win Game 6, there will be a game on Saturday in Denver with the winner advancing to the second round and the loser going fishing.
The Spurs can’t afford to look ahead to the second round, because the Trail Blazers have shown that they are a team that can play well enough for parts of a game to give the Spurs trouble. The Spurs have been able to win three of the four games by coming up with dominant stretches when they need them, but they have not yet had a game where the Alamo City team dominated from start to finish, and it would be great to see that kind of effort tonight. San Antonio played one of their worst halves of the season in the first half on Sunday afternoon to trail by 17 going into halftime, but exploded out of the locker room in the third quarter to immediately erase the deficit and win by 21 with Jordan McLaughlin scoring the final points for the good guys.
Victor Wembanyama has had a journey in his first playoff series, with a scary fall in the first half of Game 2 that kept him out for a game and a half in concussion protocol. The Spurs handled his absence with a comeback win led by Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper as the young guard duo took over the game when the Spurs needed them to. De’Aaron Fox has been up and down a bit in the series, but he definitely put his stamp on Game 4 with 28 points and key defensive plays. Tonight is the night for the Spurs to put it all together to close out the series and avoid another west coast trip and gain a rest advantage on their eventual second round opponent. LET’S GO SPURS!
Game Prediction:
The game is not close in the fourth quarter, and ESPN viewers end up finding out a lot about Dave Pasch and Doris Burke’s hobbies, which are just as boring as you might have imagined.
San Antonio Spurs vs Portland Trail Blazers, First Round, Game 5
April 28, 2026 | 8:30 PM CT
Streaming: ESPN app
TV: ESPN
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