The Spurs may not have their full group available when they meet the Rockets in Austin on Friday night.
San Antonio’s official injury report lists De’Aaron Fox as questionable with a right wrist sprain and Keldon Johnson as questionable because of a mouth laceration. Tobias Harris is out with a left calf strain, and Jayden Quaintance is out after right knee surgery.
Houston’s report is lighter, but not clean. Steven Adams is questionable with right calf tightness, while Reed Sheppard is questionable with a left knee contusion.
This is also a very different Rockets team than the one San Antonio saw last season. The Spurs won the 2025-26 series 3-1, and the final two victories came by double digits, 111-99 and 145-120. Houston spent much of that stretch short-handed, with Fred VanVleet out for the entire year and Adams sidelined for most of it.
That’s changed now. The Rockets backed up Wednesday night’s win over the Dallas Mavericks with a performance that looked like a team ready to be taken seriously. Dallas never looked comfortable, and Houston’s defense strangled the Mavericks in the second quarter before the game turned into a chase the Mavs couldn’t finish.
VanVleet’s return matters because it lets the rest of Ime Udoka’s roster settle back into its proper roles. Houston no longer has to ask Amen Thompson to handle the offense while he’s still learning on the job for a team with contender-level ambitions.
For the Spurs, the bigger issue is sorting out their own rotation. They’re still trying to make sense of the three-guard lineup, and while that group held up well for 12 minutes against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday, the rest of the night went sideways.
The easiest move, in my view, would be to send Dylan Harper back to the bench. Even when that unit gives up too much defensively, Harper brings enough scoring punch to answer back.
If San Antonio can’t consistently stop teams from attacking the paint when Victor Wembanyama sits, then at minimum it needs to keep up on the other end. That part remains unresolved, though there’s still time for the Spurs to settle it. Friday night would be a good place to start.
Tipoff is set for 8:30 pm CT at the Moody Center. It’s the first of three games the Spurs will play in Austin this season, with the other two coming during the Rodeo Road Trip on February 26 against the Grizzlies and February 28 against the Nuggets.
In Other News...
Spurs Are Competing But One Early Problem Is Already Hard To Ignore
The Spurs are already getting a clear early-season snapshot of where they stand, and Sunday night in Houston only sharpened it. San Antonio was right there in a 114-110 loss to the Rockets, with Victor Wembanyama doing plenty of heavy lifting again at 25 points and 13 rebounds, but the result still left the club at 0-2 and searching for a cleaner way to turn competitive stretches into wins.
Houston had its own answer in Alperen Sengun, who finished with 29 points, and the matchup exposed a problem the Spurs cannot keep ignoring if they want this season to take shape quickly. The schedule does not get much of a breather from here, either, with Dallas up next and another chance for San Antonio to show that being in the game is not the same as finishing it. [Read more 🡒]
Wembanyamas Early Spark Cant Hide One Spurs Concern
Victor Wembanyama gave the Spurs an immediate lift in their game against the Rockets, scoring the first basket as San Antonio tried to steady itself after a season-opening loss to Oklahoma City. The early flash was a reminder of why he has already become the centerpiece of everything the Spurs want to do, coming off a first full campaign in which he won Defensive Player of the Year and put up elite numbers across the board.
Still, the bigger concern for San Antonio is not hard to spot, even with Wembanyama setting the tone. The Spurs are trailing Houston in the second quarter, and the margin for early missteps is already thin with Dallas next on the schedule. For a team trying to turn individual brilliance into wins, the next stretch will say plenty about whether the opener was just a stumble or the start of a larger problem. [Read more 🡒]
Wemby Showed Up But Spurs Already Have An Early Problem
Victor Wembanyama gave San Antonio plenty to build on in an early-season meeting with Houston, finishing with 25 points and 13 rebounds, but it still wasn't enough to get the Spurs into the win column. The Rockets held on for a 114-110 victory, with Amen Thompson's block on Wembanyama's final shot attempt sealing the result and leaving the Spurs to keep searching for their first breakthrough of the season.
Even with the 0-2 start, there is no sense around the team that this is a lost cause, and there shouldn't be this early. The bigger issue is the one that usually follows promising box scores and narrow defeats: San Antonio has shown it can hang around, but now it has to start turning those competitive stretches into actual wins before the calendar gets much older. [Read more 🡒]