As the San Antonio Spurs were preparing to open the season, star center Victor Wembanyama set a goal of achieving a top-six seed, which would mark another strong step for a young core continuing to build. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, the Spurs blew past expectations, surging to a 62-win season, the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference and a return to the playoffs for the first time since 2019. \u00a0<\/p>\n
San Antonio\u2019s playoff opener against the No. 7 seed Portland Trailblazers arrives at 8 p.m. Sunday in the Frost Bank Center, televised on NBC and streamed on Peacock. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Both teams enter the series at nearly full strength. On the NBA\u2019s official injury report, the Spurs list only guard Jordan McLaughlin as out with an ankle sprain. Portland\u2019s lone injury is to guard Damian Lillard, who has sat out the entire season due to an Achilles tendon tear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the fifth playoff series between the Spurs and Blazers after they squared off previously in 1990, 1993, 1999 and 2014. The Spurs are 14-6 overall after having won three of those matchups and are 10-0 in the postseason at home against Portland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among the Spurs\u2019 starting five, only one player has appeared in the postseason \u2014 Fox, who played in one 7-game series for Sacramento in 2023. Only five players on the roster own more than 10 games of playoff experience \u2014 Harrison Barnes, Luke Kornet, Bismack Biyombo, Kelly Olynyk and Mason Plumlee.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the San Antonio Spurs were preparing to open the season, star center Victor Wembanyama set a goal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-257447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-san-antonio","9":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","10":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}