Photo: Aaron McGuire
Way back in the day, when dinosaurs like Duncan still roamed the court, the San Antonio Spurs had a distinct air of inevitability. They were the grim reaper, the taxman, the white walkers. From the 1999 finals onward the Spurs were a part of the championship calculus for over a decade straight. Not an emotional team, not a repeater team, almost a “default” champion. They were dry. Dependable. Quiet. Always ready to scuttle a team’s offense and throw their opponents into a mud pit.
That was then. The 2026 Spurs may presage an era of inevitability, it’s true. Many analysts wax philosophic about how well the Spurs are positioned for the future, how impossible it will be for the league to catch up with them, how the sub-atomic quarks of their dominance are vibrating together game-by-game. That may well end up being true. 1 But to this Spurs fan, what makes this season so unbelievable is that these Spurs absolutely weren’t inevitable. Not even close.
As a fan, every lead in this Western Conference Finals felt like traipsing over a silo of grain — all leads could (and sometimes would!) collapse at any time. 2 For me, this is one place where the heart lagged the head. Through this entire season, the Spurs have played amazing basketball. They’ve spent the bulk of the year with a statistical profile strongly asserting that they are one of the best handful of teams in the NBA. Not only that, their small but consistent edge over the Thunder in their five regular season matchups made a close series even more likely. On paper there wasn’t really a -logical- reason to think they were about to fall into shambles.
Until you watch the games. There was an active unsteadiness as the Spurs charged down the court, especially as tired legs would catch up in the closing quarters. Victor bobbling the ball as he loses his handle in transit. Harper passing grenades that were -just- off-target, forcing shooters to take a shaky half-step to finish the play. Castle challenging too aggressively 50 feet away from the basket, on Thunder players all-too-familiar with exploiting defensive aggression. Keldon isolating OKC’s best defensive players the second he takes the court. There was always just enough unsteadiness and jitters to give anxious minds something to glam onto.
But they persevered. They played through it. And now they’re in the finals anyway. These Spurs are entirely their own thing. Partly owing to their status as constant contenders, the Spurs of the Robinson, Duncan, and Kawhi eras were always hyper-reflective of the leagues they played in. The Robinson Spurs reflected the futility of the Jordan/Olajuwon era. The first wave of the Duncan Spurs reflected the punishing defensive sluggery of the post-Jordan era. The final wave of the Duncan Spurs reflected the burgeoning movement towards collective offense and ever-connected ball movement. The Kawhi Spurs even got in on the action, reflecting the league’s endless free agency drama with the surprise Aldridge signing and (eventually) an explosive trade request.
These Wemby Spurs, though? They reflect their era too. We’re in an era defined by (relative) parity. This season will extend a run of eight distinct champions in eight seasons — the 19 Raptors, the 20 Lakers, the 21 Bucks, the 22 Warriors, the 23 Nuggets, the 24 Celtics, the 25 Thunder, and whoever prevails between this year’s Spurs and Knicks. 3 We’ve had a lot of consistently strong teams through the last eight years, certainly, but injuries and the team-building restrictions of recent collective bargaining agreements have made every finals team feel a little bit like the Spurs did this playoff run. That is: a tiny bit unsteady. A bit off kilter. A few players getting minutes where you grit your teeth through every one of their possessions. A few good breaks, a few injury scares, and more than a few possessions the fans would like to take back.
Lack of inevitability leads to vulnerability. The (currently) 12-2 Knicks aside, we’re far from the days of the 16-1 machine-of-death Warriors or the 16-1 Kobe/Shaq Lakers going for their wholly inevitable repeats. Every title contender since the twilight of the Warriors has had moments of deep vulnerability. 4 And despite their startling finals trip, the growing pains and unsteady passes and inexperience of the 2026 Spurs make them as welcome an avatar of the modern league as the 2013 Spurs were a welcome avatar of whip-smart passing and the ever-evolving roars of old lions.
The “story of the season” is generally written by a season’s champions. The New York Knicks are going to have a major say in that story. The Spurs are going to be hard-pressed to write a victorious end when they’re facing such a well-built foil across the court. The Knicks are larger, more experienced, more rested, and (frankly) playing better than I’ve ever seen them play in my lifetime. They very much feel like a team of destiny, while the Spurs feel like a team of the future. Not necessarily the present, not yet; they’re still being forged in the crucible of the playoffs right before our very eyes.
But the forging is the part that’s fun. Whether the season is San Antonio’s to win or not, they’ve ousted last year’s inevitable team of destiny, and in doing so, they’ve etched the first major achievement on the road to eternity. And I for one cannot wait to see what they’ve got for us next.
Hey — sincerely, thanks for reading this post! It’s been a while. Haven’t really written anything for fun in a decade. All of my writing has been for work (extremely dry white papers for credit risk models, analysis of new underwriting legislation, or new statistical practice), pals (my sort-of yearly letter to friends and family), or my OKCupid profile (… well, not for the last 7 years, my wife and I have been together for 7 years! We have a daughter! What!) … But I’ve been feeling the urge for a bit and the excitement of another finals run brought me the sorely-needed inspiration. My hope is that I will write a few more occasional posts. The Finals start on Wednesday. Get the popcorn popping, everyone!
Footnotes
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… although, honestly, the exact same language was used about OKC last year and Boston the year before, so perhaps we should all be a bit more circumspect in our collective enthusiasm for the NBA’s next “unbeatable” dynasty. ↩
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You may think “what kind of a metaphor is this?” But walking in a grain silo is actually extraordinarily dangerous! Grain entrapment is a serious problem; voids in the grain lead to sudden sinkholes that engulf and trap farm workers. You have 2-3 seconds to react; after 4-5 seconds you are trapped with enough force that it’s impossible to escape without assistance, and after 22 seconds you are completely buried and engulfed. There are a lot of modern practices and contraptions to help mitigate the deadly risk, but entrapment still has a 40-50% fatality rate, even in the modern era. All this is to say that if you personally find yourself on a farm, you should probably avoid waltzing around inside a grain silo unless you have a ton of supervision. ↩
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Honestly, I’m mostly just including this list because I’m feeling wistful. This is such a fun list of champions. They’re all weird as hell, in their own ways. We’re living in a really cool era of basketball, folks! ↩
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Some more than others, to be sure. The 2023 Celtics were certainly more dominant than the rest of the teams in this mini-era, although even then, the Eastern Conference Finals against the 2023 Pacers were nail-bitingly close despite the sweep. And the Celtics were 1-1 in both the first round and the second round, which made both those series feel close for a bunch of the proceedings. Just saying! ↩