The Spurs are headed to the playoffs for the first time since 2019, with Game 1 against the Portland Trail Blazers set for 8 PM CT on Sunday. In the meantime, we’re looking back one of the best regular seasons in franchise history.
In Part 1, we reviewed the first part of the season, whuch featured a strong start despite missing De’Aaron Fox to start the season and Victor Wembanyama for 12 straight games. In Part 2, we recalled their memorable and arguably season-defining stretch in the second half
of December, which featured Wemby’s return and a Cup Semi-finals win plus two more in a 12-day span against the defending champion Thunder, officially putting the Spurs on the map. Finally, in Part 3, we looked at their one rough patch of the season during the month of January, but in hindsight, it may have actually been a character-defining stretch, and that showed at the turn of the month, where we’re kicking off today.
Part 4: February 1 – April 12 (29-4)
On paper, the Spurs’ home win against the Orlando Magic on February 1 simply met expectations. They beat a decent but inferior opponent by nine points, but there was a lot more context that made this game a turning point. They went through a lot just to play that game, having been trapped in Charlotte the night before due to a snow storm, and when they finally started heading back to San Antonio the day of this game, they had to make an emergency landing in Atlanta due to mechanical issues with their plane (which players admitted was a scary situation). It would have made sense for the NBA to just postpone the game (or better yet, have postponed the Charlotte one and not even put the Spurs in that situation), but instead it got pushed back a mid-afternoon game to a night one, and the Spurs had to go straight to the arena from the airport.
They would have been forgiven for being too tired and dropping this one, but instead, they showed grit and fight to pull out the exhausting win, which ended up being a character-defining moment and kicked off one of their best extended stretches in franchise history. It started their first 11-game win streak since 2016, which ran all the way through February — making the Spurs the first team to have an undefeated month while scoring 110 or more point in every game — to the penultimate game of the Rodeo Road Trip (which started/ended a week later than usual).
That run featured many memorable games, including consecutive 40-point games from Stephon Castle and Wemby against the Mavs and Lakers, respectively, with Castle’s performance also being triple-double.
But perhaps the two wins that showed the Spurs had not only returned to their December form but had officially “arrived” as contenders came against the same team: one as they started the second leg of the RRT after their two Austin games, and the other in their “return home from the RRT” game against the East’s top seed: the Detroit Pistons. Not only did the Spurs convincingly win both of those games (both were close, but the Spurs were always in control), led by 28 points from Devin Vassell in Detroit and 38 from Wemby in San Antonio, but it helped squash the narrative that they couldn’t handle physical teams.
The Spurs ran away with the second seed in the West from there (albeit unable to catch the similarly hot Thunder for the top seed), but there were plenty more thrillers along the way. One came the very next night, when an exhausted Spurs team faced Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers for the first time this season. It seemed the Spurs had nothing left in the tank and found themselves down by as much as 25 early in the second half before a massive rally back to steal the game, including two huge buckets from Wemby in the final minute, in both cases to retake the lead, followed by some free throw drama. It was such a physically and emotionally draining game that it literally had Wemby in tears afterwards.
Probably much to every Spurs fans’ satisfaction, they would go on to sweep the season series against the Clippers, and Kawhi’s team would lose in the play-in while his future with his desired club is up in the air due to the Aspiration scandal. For the first time in 8 eight years, it finally feels like karma is back on the Spurs side, and we have officially moved on from the destruction his actions brought upon the franchise.
Another memorable game was a chaotic win against a then-potential first round opponent (but not anymore) and thorn-in-the-side Phoenix Suns team on March 19. The Suns led most of the way before the Spurs made another fourth quarter comeback, and this time it was a Wemby jumper with 1.1 sec left that sealed the deal. While not officially a buzzer-beater, it was the first go-ahead game winner of his career.
In all, the Spurs went an unprecedented 29-4 to close the season, and coming together during the RRT followed by strong Marches have always been a calling card of the Spurs championship teams, so it’s good to see them returning to a formula that has always been successful. If there was one concern in that stretch, it was three of the losses were to a Denver Nuggets team that will likely be their second round opponent. The good news is Wemby only played in one of them — an OT loss in Denver — and even without him the other two were close, but it was especially frustrating in the regular season finale when Nikola Jokic only played in the first half and the Spurs had a chance to knock them back to the 4th seed and to the Thunder’s side of the bracket.
Regardless, the Spurs came into this season with the play-in or a lower playoff seed seeming like a reasonable goal, and they far exceeded those expectations. They still have to prove themselves in the playoffs, but the only thing that could make this season a bust at this point would be a first round upset, which seems unlikely (*knock on wood). They may or may not need that “learning” year (i.e. experiencing and learning from a playoff loss) before they can truly chase a championship, but the bottom line is this has been far and away a better regular season than any of us could have asked for, and it has been so much fun going back through it.
We will have more on the opening round match-up against the Blazers while we patiently wait for Sunday evening to get here, and in the meantime be sure to tell us about more of your favorite memories from this season!
