A NEW
How a Young Team Dethroned the Champions and Carried San Antonio to the Finals
Out to prove a point, Victor Wembanyama dazzles against Mavericks
The Spurs’ superstar put on a dazzling show against Mavericks, making plays over Anthony Davis and other Dallas defenders in a statement victory.
MIKE FINGER • OCT. 23, 2025
DALLAS — They all looked like school kids.
Anthony Davis, one of the most dominant NBA big men of the millennium, half-heartedly waved his arm as Victor Wembanyama toyed with him. He might as well have been 12 years old.
Davis’ Dallas teammates, no better equipped to stop or even to fathom the force that overwhelmed them, scattered like kindergartners, spinning and jumping with no clear purpose.
And over on the Spurs bench? Giggling, wide-eyed millionaires fell over themselves in childlike wonder, as though a hero from their comic book had come to life before their eyes.
In a way, he had.
Julian Champagnie, one of those giggling millionaires, couldn’t believe what he’d seen. When Wembanyama, on his way to
a 40-point, 15-rebound, no-turnover masterpiece Wednesday in the Spurs’ 125-92 season-opening romp over the Mavericks, approached the scorer’s table in the second quarter, Champagnie tried like a kid to pantomime the astonishing reverse-windmill baseline dunk he just watched.
Wembanyama grinned.
“It was nice, wasn’t it?” he said. If he needed any confirmation of that, all he had to do was look around.
Believers were everywhere.
Yes, this was just one game. But it was the first real one Wembanyama had played since more than eight months ago, when he received a blood-clot diagnosis that briefly made him worry about his career and his long-term health.
His doctors have assured him that’s no longer a concern. And Wednesday night, Wembanyama set about showing that the
only people who should be concerned about their well-being are the 29 teams who have to figure out a way to deal with him for the next decade.
“He wanted to prove a point,” Champagnie said. “Well, point proven.”
That was the thing about Wembanyama’s otherworldly performance. After his layoff, he didn’t need to be this good, this soon. He didn’t need to turn every lob into a dunk, and he didn’t need to annihilate every play Dallas tried to run in his general vicinity, and he didn’t need to swish a flurry of the most unthinkable step-back jumpers any 7-foot-4 human in history has attempted.
He could have just been good. Considering how long it had been since he played in a regular-season game, good would have been amazing.
Instead, he was darn near perfect.
“Every day we try to lay a brick to build a huge mansion, and it felt like the job was done for the day,” Wembanyama said. “This is what we’ve been working for. This is what we’ve struggled for, for so long, and I just felt like it fits.
“I felt like I was in my place.” It was almost like the world he traveled last summer needed a reminder of that. Wembanyama looks like he belongs
“He wanted to prove a point. Well, point proven.”
JULIAN CHAMPAGNIE ON VICTOR WEMBANYAMA
OPPOSITE: San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) celebrates his reverse dunk with teammate Stephon Castle (5) during the first half against the Dallas Mavericks at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Oct. 22, 2025. TOM FOX / DALLAS MORNING NEWS
REGULAR SEASON | DEC. 23, 2025 VS. OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER SAS 130, OKC 110
Wemby warming to rivalry talk after Spurs topple Thunder again
Victor Wembanyama still isn’t ready to label what the San Antonio Spurs have going with OKC as a rivalry, but the gap is narrowing.
JEFF M c DONALD • DEC. 24, 2025
Victor Wembanyama still isn’t ready to call whatever the Spurs have going on with the Oklahoma City Thunder a bona fide rivalry.
But ask him again in a couple of weeks.
Wembanyama’s Spurs blasted the defending NBA champions 130-110 on Tuesday night, their second victory over the powerful Thunder in the span of 10 days.
After the first, a two-point nailbiter over OKC in the NBA Cup semifinal in Las Vegas on Dec. 13, Wembanyama downplayed the growing grudge between what just might be the top two teams in the Western Conference.
“They are in their own tier,” Wembanyama said then, giving deference to the Thunder and their resume.
Wembanyama only slightly changed his tune after Tuesday’s rematch.
“It feels like saying it is a rivalry would be a weird thing, because it’s something that happens naturally,” Wembanyama said. “I
didn’t say that it’s impossible that it can be in the future.”
A week and a half ago, the Thunder were 24-1 and on pace for the best record in NBA history.
Since then, the Spurs have beaten them twice. Tuesday marked Oklahoma City’s most lopsided defeat of the season.
The most interesting part of the night for the Spurs was that they handled the Thunder without Wembanyama needing to have a big night.
Coming off the bench for the fifth consecutive game after returning from a calf injury, Wembanyama supplied 12 points and five rebounds. He saw his streak of consecutive games with a blocked shot end at 101, the third-longest in NBA history.
De’Aaron Fox, the Spurs’ second-leading scorer, managed only six points.
And still, the Spurs blew out the champs, outscoring the Thunder 43-28 in the fourth quarter to blow apart a game that had been
within single digits to that point.
“It tells me how much better we are from the beginning of the season,” Wembanyama said. “We can still get much better. We’ve got a few wins before we can catch up on them. But yeah, it’s been something for sure.”
Keldon Johnson led the Spurs with 25 points, the seventh player to lead the team in scoring during its seven-game winning streak.
Stephon Castle added 24 points and Harrison Barnes added 20, as the Spurs overcame a 33-point performance from reigning NBA MVP Shai
Gilgeous-Alexander.
After the final horn sounded, Wembanyama led a delirious sold-out crowd of 19,133 in a cheer, banging a literal drum as he shouted along.
If Spurs-OKC isn’t yet a rivalry, it might not be a long wait.
The teams meet again for a ballyhooed Christmas Day showdown at Oklahoma City on Thursday, with two more showdowns looming before February is out.
As for all that rivalry talk?
“I hope it will be soon,” Wembanyama said. “We’re definitely getting closer.”
“It tells me how much better we are from the beginning of the season. We can still get much better.”
VICTOR WEMBANYAMA
OPPOSITE: San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama beats on a large drum as the crowd claps in unison following the Spurs’ 130-110 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Dec. 23, 2025. SAM OWENS / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
ABOVE: San Antonio Spurs forward Carter Bryant (11) dunks on the Oklahoma City Thunder during Game 6 of the Western Conference finals at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, May 28, 2026. The Spurs won 118-91 forcing a Game 7 in the series. SAM OWENS / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
OPPOSITE: San Antonio Spurs guard Dylan Harper (2) reacts to a play during Game 6 of the Western Conference finals at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, May 28, 2026. SAM OWENS / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
CONFERENCE FINALS AT OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER
SAS 111, OKC 103
How Victor Wembanyama lived up to the hype, and to an impossible dream
Victor Wembanyama on the Game 7 victory over the Thunder that sent the Spurs to the NBA Finals: ‘It’s almost like the meaning of my life.’
MIKE FINGER • MAY 31, 2026
OKLAHOMA CITY — Like a child. Doubled over with tears in his eyes, searching for somebody to hug, that’s how Victor Wembanyama looked amid the on-court hysteria at Paycom Center.
It’s also how he looked from the stands of another arena seven years earlier.
That was when the Spurs first saw their future. Even if it was impossible to imagine it would arrive this fast.
Halfway up the lower bowl Saturday night, there were men who still remembered that initial glimpse of the skinny miracle who would change their franchise, their city, their league. They would love to be able to claim that, way back then, they saw all of this coming.
But really, now. Who could have expected this?
Who even could have dreamed it?
Only a child could.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Wembanyama said, still choked up by the
realization that a 111-103 Game 7 victory over the Thunder had sent the Spurs to the NBA Finals. “It’s almost like the meaning of my life.”
The men who followed him to a place called Bourg-en-Bresse, France, in the spring of 2019 had no clue about anything so grand as his destiny. All they knew was that a Spurs international scout who’d been looking at another prospect mentioned something about a prodigious 15-year-old, and that it supposedly would be worth the team’s while to send a contingent to the French U18 Final Four.
There, in a mostly empty gym, playing alongside much older boys who had to crane their necks to look up at him, was the kid with the potential to turn an entire sport on its head. But the Spurs never were so crazy as to think he could live up to the hype that just was beginning to build. And they never were so crazy to think that even if he did, they’d be lucky enough to have
him do it for them.
But across an ocean from where he started, there that kid was Saturday night, wearing the jersey of the storied franchise that hadn’t made a playoff run since he’d caught the team’s eye as a 15-year-old. There he was, putting the finishing touches on a series he dominated against the defending NBA champions, and the two-time league Most Valuable Player.
There Wembanyama was, blocking Shai Gilgeous-Alexander from behind to set the third-quarter tone. There he was, pouring in fundamental Tim Duncan bank shots and cold-blooded Manu Ginobili 3-pointers. There he was, screaming for Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle and Julian Champagnie, and all of the other teammates who kept following his lead.
“We needed him to be demonstrative,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “We needed him to play with strength. We needed him to bring his will.”
The will always is the hardest part to be sure of. You could have looked at Wembanyama when he was 15, or 17, or 20, and known that he was capable of doing things on a basketball court that few humans ever had attempted, let alone pulled off. You could have watched him for a few minutes as a rookie and realized that he could block shots like Rudy Gobert, and attack the rim like Giannis Antetokounmpo, and shoot like Kevin Durant.
But to do what Wembanyama did Saturday, a player needs more than talent. To disprove the ancient, previously irrefutable NBA law that says every superstar has to experience postseason failure before he can achieve postseason glory, a player has to show he has every clichéd part of the torso: Backbone.
Guts.
Heart.
Two summers ago in Paris, Wembanyama provided glimpses of all of that during the
OPPOSITE: San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama (1) and guard Devin Vassell (24) embrace as they celebrate the Western Conference finals win over the Oklahoma City Thunder at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, May 30, 2026. The Spurs defeated the Thunder 111-103 in Game 7 to advance to the NBA Finals against the New York Knicks. SAM OWENS / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
How the Spurs have arrived at the NBA Finals, well ahead of schedule
With a Finals date against the New York Knicks set, Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs are bent on bucking basketball history.
JEFF M c DONALD • MAY 31, 2026
Late Saturday night, Keldon Johnson stood inside a still-buzzing visitors locker room in Oklahoma City, surveyed the bedlam surrounding him and tried to fathom the unfathomable.
Atop his head, the Spurs forward was wearing one of his trademark Stetson cowboy hats. Almost everyone else in the room — starters, benchwarmers, G Leaguers and team staffers — had donned crisp black ballcaps bearing the Spurs’ logo that proclaimed the next stop in the team’s magical mystery tour of a season: “2026 NBA Finals.”
“This is one of the most emotional, rewarding nights I’ve ever been a part of,” said Johnson, the only player in franchise history to endure six seasons without a playoff berth. “Starting with last year, coming in this year, believing in ourselves. It takes a village to be where we’re at.”
One season after finishing with the thirdworst record in the Western Conference, two seasons after posting a second consecutive 22-win campaign, the Spurs are headed to the Finals for the seventh time in franchise history and first time since 2014.
The Spurs face the New York Knicks, in a rematch of the 1999 Finals that produced the first of five title banners hanging in the Frost Bank Center rafters. Game 1 is Wednesday in San Antonio.
Supposedly too young, too callow, too inexperienced for any of this, the Spurs got here by knocking off defending champion Oklahoma City in Game 7, on the road, by way of a brutally professional 111-103 victory Saturday.
It was the type of triumph authored by a defiant team bent on bucking basketball history, in no mood to wait its turn.
“Words like competitiveness, resolve,
togetherness, execution, habits,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “They don’t give a damn about the word ‘experience.’ “
Victor Wembanyama was named the Western Conference finals MVP, following a series in which he averaged 27.3 points, 10.4 rebounds and 2.7 blocks. He closed out the Thunder with 22 points in Game 7.
The 22-year-old Frenchman did not so much outduel two-time league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as survive him. Gilgeous-Alexander went down swinging with 35 points, doing everything he could to keep OKC’s title defense afloat.
Wembanyama and the Spurs, however, left the Paycom Center with a Western Conference championship trophy under one arm and a date with the Knicks on the calendar.
“I want to have this feeling plenty, plenty more times in my life,” an emotional
Wembanyama said.
For the Spurs, Saturday fulfilled the promise first planted three years ago, when they won the NBA draft lottery and the right to select Wembanyama, the 7-foot-4 game-changing, franchise-altering savant from France.
Still, nobody expected Wembanyama’s Spurs to come this far, this fast. Least of all Wembanyama’s Spurs.
Back in October, a few weeks before the start of his third NBA campaign, Wembanyama was asked what it would make for a successful Spurs season.
Just make the playoffs, he said then. To Wembanyama, at least a sixth-place finish in the rugged Western Conference would constitute progress.
The bar seemed somewhat high at the time, considering the Spurs hadn’t qualified for the postseason bracket since 2019. It
OPPOSITE: Thunder players can only watch as San Antonio Spurs guard Stephon Castle (5) is left wide open for a slam dunk during the first quarter of Game 7 of the Western Conference finals at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, May 30, 2026. SAM OWENS / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS