The summer break is over. The Western Conference championship banner is in the past. And on Monday, the San Antonio Spurs began talking about what comes next.
The defending Western Conference champions gathered at the Victory Capital Performance Center for Media Day, officially turning the page from a 62-win season and run to the NBA Finals to a new challenge: doing it again, and this time taking the final step.
Coach Mitch Johnson opened the day before Tobias Harris, De’Aaron Fox, Dylan Harper, Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle took turns meeting with reporters.
And while expectations surrounding the Spurs have changed dramatically in the past year, Johnson said the team’s approach shouldn’t.
I think in a way, hopefully, the same way that we dealt with last year,” Johnson said when asked how the Spurs will handle increased expectations. “Again, I understand that’s what comes with the field we’re in and the positions that we hold in our jobs, but it really doesn’t mean anything. Whatever the expectations were last year, whoever was making the expectations had no influence on our approach or how we played, or decisions we made.There’s things we want to improve upon, and things that we felt like we did a good job of that we want to continue to grow in. And again, the expectations are kind of like big games, right? There’s added enthusiasm, excitement, criticism, opinion, and I guess I’d say I’ve been on both sides of it now in this league, one way or another, and I’ll take the expectations.
For Johnson, who guided San Antonio to a 62-20 record and the Western Conference title last season, the focus remains on finding another level from a team that already established itself among the NBA’s elite.
One area where he’d like to see continued growth is from Wembanyama, particularly in the way he controls games offensively.
“I think he has a ton of room to improve in all aspects,” Johnson said. “I think offensively, since you asked, I think one thing for him will just be continue to manipulate the game and dictate the game, not just by scoring, but by making plays for his teammates, forcing the defense to make a decision, and taking advantages of opportunities that are in front of him, and probably continuing to connect those throughout the game, where he’s almost puppeteering the game as we see the best players in their game do, and we’ve seen him doing. I think that’s an area for him to continue to grow in.”
Wemby wants more
Then came the player at the center of it all.
Wembanyama arrived at Media Day just days after securing his long-term future in San Antonio with a new contract extension.
The 22-year-old is coming off a season in which he averaged 25 points and 11.5 rebounds, was unanimously named NBA Defensive Player of the Year and earned Western Conference Finals MVP honors as the Spurs knocked off Oklahoma City in seven games to reach the NBA Finals.
His new five-year extension could be worth more than $250 million, keeping the centerpiece of the franchise in San Antonio for years to come.
But Monday, Wembanyama was still thinking about how last season ended.
Asked how long he allowed himself to sit with the Finals loss, Wembanyama offered one of the most revealing answers of Media Day.
I can’t answer that question because it’s not over,” Wembanyama said. “It evolves with time. But I’ve had a few sleepless nights. Of course, maybe not sleepless nights, but hard to find sleep sometimes, or hard emotions, haunting sometimes. But there is just a point where you accept that you have to go through it, and you have to feel all of it. We don’t want to hide from anything. So we’re gonna face these emotions, face the reality that we have 100 games to play, 100-plus, and this is the reality of it. We’re in a great spot. We’re very hopeful, very ambitious, and we’re ready.
When asked whether losing in the Finals provides the ultimate motivation for this season, Wembanyama needed only one sentence.
“I can’t imagine a better motivation.”
And Wembanyama isn’t lowering the bar.
“We have some goals between us that we’re going to keep between us,” he said. “But we have some other goals that are obvious. We won the West last year. We don’t want to do anything less this year, and we want to be the first seed. And we want to keep fighting for this top spot.”
For a franchise that only a few years ago was rebuilding, Wembanyama said being discussed among the NBA’s contenders now feels natural.
“It feels like we’re in our place,” he said. “It already felt like this last year when we were getting closer to the top of the conference. It feels normal. I would say it felt weird not being in that place in the past.”
A veteran joins the mix
Harris was the first player to follow Johnson and one of the new faces in San Antonio.
The veteran forward signed a two-year, $31 million deal with the Spurs during the offseason after averaging 13.3 points and 5.1 rebounds with Detroit last season.
For Harris, the attraction was straightforward: San Antonio gives him an opportunity to chase something he has yet to accomplish.
First off, excited to be here,” Harris said. “Ever since I came in the league, this has been an organization that has truly epitomized just excellence. And when the opportunity came in the offseason, obviously I looked at the talent of the group, the trajectory of the team, and just the willingness of wanting and striving to win a championship, and all those things align with me personally.
Harris also made it clear he isn’t arriving in San Antonio with demands about whether he starts or comes off the bench.
“I only have one goal here, and that’s to win,” Harris said. “Whatever opportunity, role is presented is the one I’m going to make the best of. I think that there’s this unwritten rule in the league of expectation, and I don’t really play by that rule. You’ve got to come in here, you’ve got to work your butt off in training camp, you’ve got to earn every single minute. Doesn’t matter what type of pedigree you have in this league, resume, whomever, and that’s how I go at it, and that’s my mentality.”
Harris has already spent time working with Wembanyama and came away impressed.
“I’ve been in this league for 16 years. Going into my 16th season, I have not seen a guy work as hard as he works,” Harris said. “When you have that as your focal point of your team, your organization, it really sets the tone for everyone else to fall in line.”
Fox knows getting back won’t be easy
De’Aaron Fox enters his second season in San Antonio and his first full training camp with the Spurs.
Fox now has the benefit of an offseason alongside Wembanyama, Castle, Harper and the rest of a group that knows what it feels like to play deep into June.
But Fox cautioned against assuming last year’s breakthrough means another trip to the Finals will simply follow.
“I definitely think it’s big, but being in this league, it’s hard to get back to that spot,” Fox said. “Regardless if you won or lost, getting back to the Finals, I think, is harder. We’ve seen teams that have won in the past five, six years and haven’t gotten past the second round since then, or we’ve seen teams that have lost in the Finals in the past five, six years and haven’t gotten past the second round.”
Harper enters Year 2
For Dylan Harper, Media Day marked the beginning of his second NBA season after an impressive rookie year.
Harper averaged 11.8 points during the regular season before raising his production to 14.1 points and 5.6 rebounds during the playoffs. NBA.com singled him out as San Antonio’s potential breakout player this season after he emerged as a key contributor during the Spurs’ postseason run.
Harper said his approach won’t change despite the expectations now surrounding both him and the team.
I feel like the goal for me doesn’t change as last year, and the biggest goal for me is getting better every day,” Harper said. “I feel like I did a great job last year doing that and just trying to win every day. And I feel like that’s the same mentality I come up with this year. With expectations means you’re doing something right. So just having the expectations from everyone, it’s only going to make us even hungrier.
Unlike Fox, Harper said the Finals loss is something he doesn’t expect to ever completely leave behind.
“It’s definitely still with me,” Harper said. “It’s probably gonna be with me forever. That’s probably a moment that I think we all will never forget, and personally, I just use it as fuel to the fire for the whole year and for years to come.”
Harper also believes the experience gained during the playoff run has changed a young Spurs roster.
“I feel like we’re all prepared, heavily equipped,” Harper said. “Last year we played in every big game you could think of, so just having that one year of experience taught us a whole lot of life lessons, all the ups and downs, the ebbs and flows that we kind of went through. I think it’s going to build us for ultimately what we’re trying to do this year.”
Castle and the young core
Stephon Castle followed Wembanyama as another key piece of a young core that has quickly transformed San Antonio from a rebuilding team into a championship contender.
Castle continued his development last season, including a significant jump as a playmaker. His assists per 36 minutes increased from 5.5 as a rookie to 8.9 last season.
Like his teammates, Castle knows the Spurs won’t sneak up on anyone this time.
It’s going to be a lot harder to even get back in the position that we were in last year,” Castle said. “But coming into this year, I think everybody on our team has gotten better. We brought all the troops back. We have a lot of clarity on why we feel like we lost and what we can do to get better. Obviously, it’s going to be a different look. It’s going to be a different look with, like you said, being the targeted and the hunted. But I don’t think it’s anything that we’re not ready for.
Castle said the Finals experience also reinforced a message that he expects to carry with him long after last season.
“I think the part that will stay with me the longest is just how close we were to winning it,” Castle said. “So I think that it’ll just shape our character for really the rest of our lives. I mean, really outside of basketball, just walking into everything. I think just leaving everything out on the floor and playing with no regrets, it was a message in our locker room a lot, especially in those final minutes. So just trying to take that with me to motivate myself to leave everything on the court for every game, whether it’s a regular season game or a Finals game like that.”
Together, Wembanyama, Castle and Harper give San Antonio three young players who have already experienced a run to the NBA Finals and now enter another season with expectations dramatically different from just a few years ago.
Training camp begins Tuesday, with the Spurs’ first preseason game scheduled for Oct. 8 against Atlanta at Frost Bank Center. The regular season begins Oct. 20 with a Western Conference Finals rematch against Oklahoma City in San Antonio.