Victor Wembanyama’s first trip through the NBA Playoffs left the San Antonio Spurs with a bitter ending, but not without plenty to take away from it.
The Spurs reached the NBA Finals in 2026, their first postseason appearance since 2019, before falling to the New York Knicks in five games. Even with the loss, the run showed a young team operating with no shortage of confidence, and Wembanyama was right in the middle of it. He was in just his third NBA season, while head coach Mitch Johnson was also still settling in after his first full season as the team’s main voice.
Looking back, Wembanyama said the experience taught him plenty about what really matters in the playoffs.
"I think coaching plays a huge role in going far in the playoffs: the quality of the coaching staff, and then obviously the quality of the players, along with their willingness to sacrifice and execute the game plan," Wembanyama said to the French media about playing in the NBA Playoffs.
"At the end of the game, there are always situations - not coin flips, but where the players' talent and their ability to handle the moment make a big difference and heavily influence the game. In the Playoffs, that happens a lot; in a lot of those games, these are the biggest games for us.
It's long! But yeah, there are a lot of things like that."
For a player who stands 7'5" and can create mismatches almost anywhere on the floor, the postseason still brought real resistance. The Spurs had to grind through three teams before finally getting stopped by the Knicks in the Finals, and the path made the whole run feel like a crash course in playoff basketball.
That lesson appears to have landed. Wembanyama came away from it talking like a player who knows the next step is more than just talent - it’s repetition, execution, and handling the biggest moments without blinking. The Spurs, too, seem to be carrying that same hunger forward.
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Spurs Already Learned The Finals Lesson The Knicks Should Fear
The NBA's long view is already taking shape, and ESPN's Summer Forecast panel has gone out on a limb with its June 2027 Finals pick. The projection has the Oklahoma City Thunder meeting the New York Knicks, a pairing that would bring plenty of baggage for New York given its recent history against Oklahoma City and the lingering memory of how the Spurs handled the Knicks on the league's biggest stage.
San Antonio's own lesson from the 2026 Finals is the part that still hangs in the air. The Spurs were in position to close out the title, only to let the chance slip away, and that kind of experience tends to travel with a team. If these two franchises cross paths again, the Spurs would have the benefit of having lived through the mistake once already, while the Knicks would be left wondering whether the same pressure points are waiting for them again. [Read more 🡒]
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What makes the debate so compelling is that the Spurs may not be limited to a simple two-man discussion for long. Castle and Harper both bring the kind of upside that gives San Antonio enviable flexibility, and DeAaron Fox only adds another layer to a core that can be argued with the leagues best groups on paper. For a team that has spent years chasing the next wave, the bigger question now is not whether the talent is real, but how far this cluster of high-end pieces can push the organization once it fully settles in. [Read more 🡒]
Kevin Garnett Nostalgia Is Creating A New Timberwolves Debate
The basketball card market keeps finding new ways to reward collectors chasing the stars of the 1990s, and San Antonios place in that conversation is no small one. Alongside names like Allen Iverson and Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan has been part of a broader surge that has pushed values higher across the hobby, with cards tied to that era drawing fresh attention from buyers who once might have focused mostly on the biggest marquee names from Kobe Bryant to Shaquille O'Neal.
For Spurs fans, the intrigue is less about nostalgia than about what it says regarding Duncans standing in the games collecting economy. Recent auction results and sharp price increases have shown that there is real demand building around his cards, but the market is still sorting out just how high that ceiling can go as the hobby reassesses players whose prime came before todays boom in card speculation. [Read more 🡒]