Spurs fans can gripe all they want about Mitch Johnson’s rotations, but the organization isn’t moving on from him.
That’s the reality after Johnson, in his first full season as head coach, guided San Antonio to the NBA Finals. He took over in the middle of the 2024-25 campaign after Gregg Popovich stepped aside, and the bar was enormous from the jump. Instead of merely holding the seat warm, Johnson pushed the Spurs far beyond expectations and into title contention.
The frustration from fans makes sense because Johnson has some real juggling to do. Dylan Harper looks like a starter on almost any other roster, and he’s already broken out.
But San Antonio also has De’Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle, plus a loaded group at the forward spots. Those decisions are going to get messy on a nightly basis.
Still, none of that changes the bigger picture. This is an organization built on loyalty and stability, and San Antonio has only had two coaches since 1997.
They are not going to fire a head coach a few months after he got them to the NBA Finals. The Spurs are ahead of schedule, and Johnson is still the one steering the ship.
The jump this team made says plenty. San Antonio went from 34 wins to 62, a massive leap for a group that entered last season simply hoping to make the playoffs.
A first-round appearance would have felt like a bonus. Instead, the Spurs won three rounds, took the Western Conference, and knocked off the defending champion Thunder before falling to the Knicks in the Finals.
What makes the run even more striking is how little postseason seasoning this group had. Johnson was in his first season as head coach.
Fox had played in just one playoff series with the Kings. Wemby, Harper, and Castle were all making their first postseason appearance.
The only players on the roster with championship rings were Harrison Barnes and Luke Kornet.
That kind of run creates trust, and Johnson has earned plenty of it. For a franchise building around Wemby, moving on from a young coach who already proved he can outperform expectations would be a strange decision.
None of this means the season will be smooth. The Spurs brought in Tobias Harris, and that leaves Johnson trying to find minutes for 11 players who expect to play. In today’s NBA, depth matters, but so does managing egos, roles, and usage.
There will be games where he gets it wrong. There will be lineups fans hate and decisions that invite second-guessing.
That comes with the job. But calling for Johnson to be fired misses the point.
The Spurs need Harper to have some rough nights, too, because the larger goal is growth and a championship run, not perfection in November or December.
Johnson will take the heat when things go sideways. Fans will ask why one player was on the floor instead of another, or why a certain play was drawn up.
Those are fair complaints. What they are not is a reason to panic.
This is an 82-game season, and mistakes happen to every coach and every player. San Antonio has the look of a team headed somewhere big, and Johnson remains the one expected to keep pushing it there.
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What makes the schedule especially interesting is the way it could help San Antonio stack wins before the seasons toughest stretches arrive. There is already plenty of optimism around what the Spurs can be, and the broader read on this schedule is that it offers room for another jump if the team handles business early and avoids losing ground in the middle months. The numbers may ultimately tell a bigger story once the season unfolds, but for now the setup alone is enough to keep the Spurs on the radar as a team with real room to climb. [Read more 🡒]
Spurs Just Got Pulled Into A Stephen Curry Debate Fans Will Feel
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The salary side of the conversation makes the speculation even more interesting, because Curry could be in a position to become a free agent next summer and is eligible for a two-year, $136.7 million extension. Nothing about the idea is concrete, of course, but it does put a familiar Spurs question back in the foreground: how aggressive should they be if a star of that caliber ever becomes remotely available? [Read more 🡒]