{"id":647583,"date":"2026-05-16T23:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T23:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/647583\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T23:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T23:32:09","slug":"precocious-spurs-arrive-right-on-time-in-the-conference-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/647583\/","title":{"rendered":"Precocious Spurs arrive right on time in the conference finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs have rapidly arrived as championship contenders.<\/p>\n

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 The\u00a0San Antonio Spurs weren\u2019t supposed to be this far along at this point in their development, entering the Western Conference Finals with confidence, momentum \u2014 and just about everything they need on the court except for significant\u00a0NBA\u00a0playoffs experience.<\/p>\n

The Spurs aren\u2019t concerned about everybody else\u2019s timeline. They\u2019ve got another series to play soon <\/a>against the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, and they\u2019re aiming to win it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand the general expectations of what we were supposed to do in October aren\u2019t necessarily aligned with where we\u2019re at right now,\u201d coach Mitch Johnson said after the\u00a0139-109 romp past the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night<\/a>. \u201cWe never talked about what we were going to be or what we were going to do. We just knew that we had a lot of potential and we were going to try to be the best team we could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drafting Victor Wembanyama with the first overall pick in 2023<\/a> was the most obvious step toward this moment for a proud franchise that won a collective five NBA championships over coach Gregg Popovich\u2019s storied tenure from 1996-2024, but the way they\u2019ve assembled a strong, smart, speedy and slick-shooting backcourt around him has proven to be a masterpiece in roster building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs have rapidly arrived as championship contenders. MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 The\u00a0San Antonio Spurs weren\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99,17654,279315],"class_list":["post-647583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-spurs","tag-thunder-game-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}