Victor Wembanyama isn’t pretending the Spurs’ Finals loss has already faded.
San Antonio’s superstar said Monday on media day that the sting from the five-game defeat to the New York Knicks is still there, and he didn’t try to dress it up.
“I can’t answer that question because it’s not over,” Wembanyama said, via the Spurs. “It evolves with time, but I’ve had a few sleepless nights. No, maybe not sleepless nights, but hard to find sleep sometimes or hard emotions, haunting sometimes, but there’s just a point where you accept that you have to go through it and you have to feel all of it, and we don’t want to hide from anything.
“So we’re going to face these emotions, face the reality that we have 100 games to play and 100-plus, and this is the reality of it,” Wembanyama added. “We’re in a great spot. We’re very hopeful, very ambitious, and we’re ready.”
That message fits the way the Spurs are built right now. They didn’t lose any major pieces from that Finals run, and the young core should keep getting stronger.
At the center of it all is a 22-year-old who already looks like a force of nature. Wembanyama put up 25.0 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 1.0 steals and 3.1 blocks per game in 2025-26, then became the first unanimous DPOY winner. He also finished third in MVP voting, and he’s already operating as one of the league’s elite players.
Even for someone who never seems short on fuel, that loss to New York gave him something extra.
“I couldn’t imagine a better motivation,” Wembanyama said.
The wound is fresh because the Spurs were right there at the top. Wembanyama, the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, had just helped San Antonio knock off the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in seven games in the Western Conference Finals and was rolling into the Finals with momentum.
Instead, the Spurs fell short, and Wembanyama was part of the problem down the stretch. San Antonio also famously coughed up a 29-point lead in Game 4, one of the defining blows of the series. Afterward, Wembanyama said the Spurs were punished for their mistakes and called the loss the biggest lesson of his life.
If the Spurs get back to that stage in 2027, the expectation is that those errors won’t repeat.
For now, San Antonio still looks like one of the teams built to chase the West. The Spurs and the Thunder are viewed as the clear favorites there, though one of those teams took a hit this summer. Oklahoma City traded Lu Dort, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins for second-round draft picks and did not add anyone in free agency.
The Spurs’ biggest addition was veteran Tobias Harris, and Wembanyama said he sees Harris as a perfect fit with the young group and is looking forward to sharing the floor with him.
San Antonio also locked Wembanyama in long term with a five-year, $252 million extension. He chose the 25% max instead of the 30% supermax escalators, which could have taken the deal to $303 million, and he explained the decision by making it clear he wants the team to stay together.
For Wembanyama, the mission is obvious. The pain is still there, the motivation is even stronger, and he sounds convinced the finish line is coming soon.
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander offered a useful example of that mindset when he said his offseason focus was on improving his off-ball offensive play, a detail Team Canada coach Gordie Herbert also noticed. For a roster built around upside and internal improvement, those are the kinds of next steps that matter. The Thunder do not just want their young players to look promising now. They want to know what happens when the games slow down, the film stacks up and the expectations keep rising. [Read more 🡒]