Keldon Johnson’s next step in San Antonio won’t come from adding flash. It’ll come from cleaning up the moments when the game speeds up and the decision has to be made in a split second.
That’s the real swing skill for Johnson entering a critical season with the Spurs. He doesn’t need to turn into an elite shot creator, a full-time playmaker or a deadeye shooter for San Antonio to get value out of him. What he has to do is much simpler in theory and much harder in practice: be smarter with the ball.
The playoff run made that plain. Johnson had stretches where his drives into traffic looked forced, especially when he pushed into the paint in half-court settings or tried to attack in transition without enough support around him.
Too often, he barreled ahead with defenders already waiting for him. The result was ugly.
He finished with 24 turnovers against 20 assists, and his per-36-minute turnovers climbed from 1.4 in the regular season to 2.1 in the playoffs.
That kind of slippage is fixable, but only if he tightens his control and shows more patience when the pressure rises.
The key is learning when to go and when to reset. Johnson’s ability to read a defense and recognize the moment to attack the rim - versus the moment to pull the ball out and slow the possession down - could make a real difference for the Spurs’ offense.
Not every drive needs to end at the basket. Sometimes the smarter play is the one that keeps a possession alive and avoids handing the other team a chance to run.
That matters even more now because the Spurs have more depth around him. Johnson is entering the final year of his four-year, $80 million deal, and with the team’s new additions and Carter Bryant’s growth, his minutes are likely to dip from last season. If he wants to stay central to what San Antonio is doing, he has to make the most of the time he gets.
None of this means Johnson should stop playing downhill. His aggressiveness still has value, and the Spurs still need his ability to get into the paint.
But the timing has to be cleaner. He has to pick his spots better and bring more control to those drives if he wants to be a steady piece in both the regular season and the playoffs.
Spurs fans will be watching closely to see how he answers the criticism that followed him all offseason. For Johnson, this year is about trust as much as production, and his decision-making will go a long way toward determining how much of that trust he earns back.
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Thats where the DeAaron Fox conversation starts to get interesting, because the Spurs have more to sort through than just playing time at guard. If Harper is going to be part of the front line moving forward, Fox becomes the name that could alter the rotation and the roster balance in a hurry, with one scenario even sending him to Houston. For a team still defining its next version, the decision could say plenty about how quickly San Antonio wants to accelerate the timeline around Wembanyama and the young guards beside him. [Read more 🡒]
Victor Wembanyama Is Entering The Season With Massive MVP Pressure
Victor Wembanyama is walking into the season with a different kind of spotlight, and it is not hard to see why. NBCSports.coms analysts all pointed to the Spurs star as the early favorite for the NBAs Most Valuable Player award, leaning on what he already showed at an MVP level last season and the sense that there is still more room for him to grow. For San Antonio, that kind of recognition is a sign of how far the franchise has come in a short time, with Wembanyama no longer viewed as a future candidate so much as the standard everyone else is chasing.
The race will still have familiar heavyweights around it, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo all part of the conversation. But the real weight on Wembanyama is clear: this is the sort of projection that depends on him staying on the floor and the Spurs looking like one of the Wests best teams. For a player this young, the expectation is already enormous, and the season ahead could turn that buzz into something much bigger. [Read more 🡒]