Victor Wembanyama has already stacked up the kind of résumé that usually takes years to build, but the Spurs are staring at a bigger question now: how does San Antonio turn one Finals trip into something lasting?
The answer, at least in part, runs through the 7-foot-4 Frenchman himself. Mitch Johnson made that clear when he described Wembanyama’s drive with a line that sounded equal parts admiration and disbelief: “He wants to be the best player ever,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said, "which is a crazy statement ... (but) he’s never done anything that puts himself above the team. Ever.”
That balance has become the defining feature of Wembanyama’s first three NBA seasons. At 22, he’s already a two-time All-Star, a two-time All-Defensive First Team selection, an All-NBA First Team pick and the 2026 Defensive Player of the Year Award winner. He also led the league in blocks in each of those first three seasons, a stretch that has put him among the league’s elite in a hurry.
Last season was the clearest sign yet of just how far his game has come. Wembanyama put up 25 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 3.1 blocks per game on 51 percent shooting over 64 regular-season appearances while making a run at MVP. Then came his first postseason, where he averaged 23.8 points, 10.9 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 3.5 blocks across 22 games.
“He can literally do anything that you could possibly ask for,” De’Aaron Fox said.
San Antonio rose with him. After years of rebuilding around Wembanyama, the Spurs reached the NBA Finals as the third-youngest team in league history to do it. The run ended in five games against the New York Knicks, and that finish left Wembanyama with nearly 100 days to sit with what went wrong before training camp.
After Game 5 at Frost Bank Center, he didn’t hide the disappointment. "I'm not satisfied with not winning," Wembanyama said after Game 5 at Frost Bank Center, "but as I said, this is the biggest lesson of my life.
As a team, there's no better experience than what we just lived ... This has been a hell of a year in terms of experience."
What stuck with him most was how quickly the margin for error disappeared once the Spurs pushed deeper into the postseason. Against New York, mistakes that had been survivable earlier became costly in a hurry.
“Our errors, our mistakes," Wembanyama began, "are punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this. The ups are OK. The downs (are) the reason we lost.”
That lesson matters even more now that he’s entering Year 4. San Antonio isn’t trying to prove anymore that its young core can win.
It already did that by reaching the Finals. The task now is keeping the standard in place, and Wembanyama looks ready for a bigger hand in making that happen.
“That young man has a rare desire to step into every moment that’s in front of him,” Johnson said after Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals. “He has some rare, God-given ability. He puts in even more work and preparation into maximizing that.”
The Spurs also got another signal of where Wembanyama’s priorities sit when he signed a five-year, $252 million rookie maximum extension in July that keeps him in San Antonio through the 2031-32 season. He passed on the chance to use the Rose Rule for a bigger starting salary, choosing instead to leave extra financial flexibility for the team.
For a franchise trying to build something bigger than a one-year breakthrough, that choice fit the picture Johnson described.
Wembanyama’s numbers should keep growing if his first three seasons are any guide. But after his first playoff run ended the way it did, his next step may be less about the stat line and more about leadership. He said the experience left him with a pile of lessons.
“I don’t think we could have learned more and gained more experience in one playoff run and in one season,” Wembanyama said. “It’s been hard and full of lessons.”
And he made it clear he’s not trying to escape the sting of coming up short.
“I’m not running away from that,” Wembanyama said. “I’m using that to fuel me."
If the Spurs are going to match last season’s success, it won’t be enough for Wembanyama to simply repeat his production. In his fourth season, the next job is bigger: use everything the playoffs taught him to help show San Antonio how to do it again.
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Spurs Just Got A Costly Warning About Keeping This Core Together
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For San Antonio, the timing matters because Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper are both on paths that could put them in the same neighborhood when their own negotiations come due. The Spurs already have sizable money tied up in other core pieces, which makes the task of keeping everyone together more complicated, and this latest extension only sharpens the pressure theyll face when those talks arrive. [Read more 🡒]