SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 As Devin Vassell reflected on what could have been for the San Antonio Spurs, reality loudly interrupted his thoughts.<\/p>\n
The sounds of the New York Knicks and their fans celebrating the team’s first NBA championship since 1973 spilled into the recesses of the Frost Bank Center, drowning out Vassell’s postgame interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal was to win, obviously,” Vassell said. “We don\u2019t want a participation trophy to where we just got here; we wanted to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York point guard Jalen Brunson stymied that dream, scoring 45 points to lead New York to a 94-90 victory on Saturday night as the Knicks clinched the series 4-1.<\/p>\n
The Spurs built double-digit leads in the first quarter of every game of the finals, but the Knicks rallied to win all but Game 3.<\/p>\n
That San Antonio was even in the conversation was surprising to most.<\/p>\n
\u201cShout out to the Spurs, they are the real deal,\u201d New York center Karl-Anthony Towns said.<\/p>\n
The Spurs exceeded preseason expectations by toppling 2024-25 champion Oklahoma City to win the Western Conference with a youthful roster led by 22-year-old superstar Victor Wembanyama.<\/p>\n
San Antonio won 62 games to tie for the second-most victories in franchise history just two seasons after a second straight 22-win season.<\/p>\n
There was much for the Spurs to celebrate this season, just not on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, it\u2019s a little early to go there,” San Antonio coach Mitch Johnson said.<\/p>\n
The Spurs were seeking their sixth league championship and first since 2014 after missing the postseason for six straight seasons.<\/p>\n
The lack of postseason success hurt San Antonio in the closing minutes of each loss as New York took advantage of every mistake to rally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe margin of error is very thin,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cOur domination stats are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of the series. But our errors, our mistakes, are punished so hard that we can\u2019t have ups and downs like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with Wembanyama, the Spurs have 21-year-old Stephon Castle and 20-year-old Dylan Harper to build around and now they have the anger and frustration of what might have been to add to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope they take the same thing that we\u2019ve taken from our success,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI hope it leads to them be hungrier than they\u2019ve ever been, and I hope it leads them to be more motivated than they\u2019ve ever been, and hopefully that leads them to be more \u2014 yeah, just to continue to improve in every facet.”<\/p>\n
This story has been updated to correct that Oklahoma City won the NBA title in the 2024-25 season, not in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 As Devin Vassell reflected on what could have been for the San Antonio Spurs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32000,2715,31021,41987,113771,15131,188,202,196,88795,198,199,942,82,84,83,1504,509],"class_list":["post-335784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-devin-vassell","tag-dylan-harper","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-karl-anthony-towns","tag-knicks-spurs-nba-finals","tag-mitch-johnson","tag-new-york","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40800-ap-new-jersey-sports-only","tag-product-40802-ap-new-york-city-sports-only","tag-product-40803-ap-new-york-state-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-stephon-castle","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335784","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=335784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}