A MASSIVE 80-BY-60-FOOT tifo, black with the San Antonio Spurs logo in the background, covered Section 114 at Frost Bank Center on Saturday, jittering wildly as the noise reached deafening levels.
Unfurled after the introduction of the starting lineups for Game 5 of the NBA Finals, the tifo, in all caps with white letters and outlined in San Antonio's fiesta hues of yellow, orange, turquoise and pink read: BELIEVE.
The organization has taken that message to heart. Even in the dizzying aftermath of a 4-1 series loss to the New York Knicks, the Spurs still believe they were the better team. San Antonio led by double digits in every game of the NBA Finals, only to fall at the finish each time, as the Knicks captured their first championship in 53 years. The Spurs spent more time leading (62 minutes, 21 seconds) by double digits than the Knicks spent ahead by any margin (56 minutes, 42 seconds) in the series. But in the moments of truth, when the games were decided, that belief wasn't enough to carry the Spurs to victory.
"As a team, there's no better experience than [the one] we just lived," Victor Wembanyama said.
Still, it hurts, as reflected by the result and the somber scene in the losing locker room, where NBA Sixth Man of the Year Keldon Johnson tearfully dapped up teammates one by one, as the squad finally broke for the summer. San Antonio understands the experience gained in this latest failure remains germane in the learning process conducive for long-term success.
"I'm not going to get into what I told them," Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. "The general sentiment is just I want them to feel all the emotions. I feel that, too. Whatever they feel, that's real. That's what competitiveness is. That's what makes you better, what pushes you to continue to improve in the dark, long hours when nobody is around. We've been blood, sweat and tears for nine months, basically. It's over."
Or perhaps this marks the beginning of San Antonio starting another dynastic run. San Antonio finds itself back in the national spotlight, having ascended to championship contention sooner than many expected. Inexperience dogged the second-youngest team to reach the NBA Finals since the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers.
In his first full season at the helm, Johnson and the young core of Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper and Carter Bryant fueled a Finals run that few outside of San Antonio saw coming, with help from veterans De'Aaron Fox, Julian Champagnie and Johnson.
But the Finals exposed some of the Spurs' weaknesses: Their lack of a reliable stretch big in the dunker spot to play opposite Wembanyama to add lineup flexibility being one of them. They also needed a backup center capable of eating up the minutes that exhausted Wembanyama for long stretches since Luke Kornet never played more than 10 throughout the series.
"We know we'll do everything we can -- scratch, fight -- to get back into this position and have a different outcome," Devin Vassell said. "But right now, it's tough."
FOR THE FIRST three rounds of the postseason, the Spurs brushed off questions about their playoff inexperience, proving their doubters wrong with wins over the Trail Blazers, Minnesota Timberwolves and defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. Their victory in the conference finals came after trailing 3-2 in the series, and for a moment it seemed they could buck the trend of teams needing to experience postseason disappointment before reaching championship success.
Then the Finals provided a heavy dose of reality. Wembanyama made critical errors at the end of Game 2, resulting in a one-point loss. Then, with a chance to deadlock the series 2-2 and head back to San Antonio for Game 5, the Spurs allowed the largest comeback in NBA history. They didn't recover after New York rallied from a 29-point deficit to prevail on an OG Anunoby tip-in off a Jalen Brunson miss with 1.2 seconds left in a crushing 107-106 defeat.
While the tip-in will live in infamy in San Antonio, so much else went wrong for the Spurs leading up to that play.
With 13.5 seconds left and the Spurs leading by one, Fox -- one of the team's few players with playoff experience prior to this season -- scooped up a Brunson miss and raced to the other end. But rather than dribbling out the clock and forcing the Knicks to foul, Fox drove directly to the basket for a layup, which was blocked by Anunoby to set up his game-winning tip.
Before that, Wembanyama missed back-to-back free throws that would've given the Spurs a three-point lead.
After the loss, Wembanyama admitted fatigue was a factor. That could've been mitigated by better substitution patterns from Johnson, especially early when San Antonio was up big. Wembanyama played 44 minutes, including all but 58 seconds of the second half. Wembanyama's primary backup, Kornet, who signed a four-year, $41 million contract last summer as a free agent, played four minutes.
"Looking back on the game, I think I could have done better in that regard," Johnson said.
The situation highlighted the fact that San Antonio's collective inexperience wasn't limited to the players. Johnson, who took over for Gregg Popovich on an interim basis after the legendary coach's stroke last season, was in his first full campaign as head coach. While he had won a G League championship as an assistant with the Austin Spurs in 2018, he had never been on an NBA bench for a playoff game before this season, much less been the head coach for one.
Meanwhile, the Spurs who did have playoff experience weren't much help. Kornet, who won a championship as a reserve for the Boston Celtics in 2024, saw his minutes dwindle in the Finals. Harrison Barnes, a key player on the Golden State Warriors title team of 2015 who played 77 regular-season games for San Antonio this season, played just 17 combined minutes in Games 1 and 2 against the Knicks and was benched for the entirety of Games 3 through 5.
Then there was the curious case of Fox, who had forced his way from Sacramento to San Antonio a season ago to play alongside Wembanyama. The former NBA Clutch Player of the Year averaged 12.8 points in the Finals, shooting 34.3% from the field and 25% from deep. In the season-ending Game 5 loss, Fox shot 3-of-15 for seven points.
Fox averaged 18.8 points on 46.2% shooting and 34.6% from 3-point range over the first two rounds of the playoffs as San Antonio rolled to an 8-3 record. Fox suffered a high right ankle sprain in Game 4 of the second round when Ayo Dosunmu crashed into his leg diving for a loose ball.
The injury forced the veteran guard to miss the first two games of the conference finals. When Fox returned, he shot 35.3% from the field the rest of the way and 24% from deep.
"I got shots that I've made in the past," Fox said after the Spurs were eliminated. "Sometimes you don't make them. Some of them felt good. Back rim and out. Obviously, I wish I had made those shots. That team is physical. They force you into taking jump shots trying to keep you out of the paint. But the shots didn't go down for me."
The 2025-26 NBA playoffs marked just the second time in Fox's nine-year career that he had participated in the postseason.
That didn't quiet calls on social media for Fox's demotion in favor of Harper, who in Game 5 became the sixth rookie in league history to score 25 points when facing elimination in the NBA Finals. San Antonio traded for Fox in February 2025 with an agreement in place to sign him to a max deal later that summer before knowing it would land the No. 2 pick in the NBA lottery three months later and draft Harper. The addition of the Rutgers standout created a logjam in the backcourt.
Harper voiced displeasure earlier in the season about a lack of playing time and his role, but those increased as the season progressed and the rookie gained more experience.
Internally, the Spurs remain committed to Fox as their franchise starting point guard. Sources called Fox a calming presence and the team's closer for most of the season, adding that one rough series essentially playing on one leg doesn't change that. The four-year, $229 million contract extension Fox signed last summer kicks in next season, raising his salary from $37.1 million to $49.8 million. He's scheduled to make $61.7 million in the final year of the deal in 2029-30, when he'll be 32 years old.
It's expected that calls from Harper's camp for a spot in the starting lineup will grow louder going into next season. But it's not an issue San Antonio needs to address right away. Fox's contract won't become a potential eyesore until after Wembanyama's upcoming rookie extension kicks in, and when the Spurs are looking next summer to extend Castle to what should be a max deal.
"Teams that have been in this space before typically have a group of people that have played together for some time," Johnson said. "A lot of times that shows itself in the slowest parts of the game and at the end of the game. These guys are going through that for the first time this year. They're typically a lot better in Year 2 and Year 3. We have to get better individually. That's as a coach and as players. They'll continue to learn about each other and be better."
WITH A CORE in place the front office believes is capable of title contention for several years, the club's plan is to keep the group together while improving on the fringes. Spurs general manager Brian Wright has said on multiple occasions the front office would first evaluate how all the players on the roster fit around Wembanyama before making any major decisions.
So far, so good in that respect. The starting lineup of Wembanyama, Fox, Castle, Vassell and Champagnie finished the regular season with a 21-3 record, good for second best in the league among starting lineups behind Oklahoma City. San Antonio will continue to develop Castle and Harper as shooters, along with Bryant, who averaged 8.5 minutes in the playoffs and is expected to take on a more prominent role next season as a 3-and-D wing and the team's second-best defender behind Castle.
"I definitely learned a lot in this playoff run," Harper said. "A whole lot to grow on, a whole lot to learn. Can't keep moving forward if you don't have a positive attitude. We lost and I wanted to win. We've got to bounce back."
There's no guarantee that will happen.
After Portland made its magical run as the youngest team to reach the NBA Finals in 1977, it fell the next season 4-2 in the conference semifinals. Led by a young Shaquille O'Neal and Anfernee Hardaway in 1995, the Orlando Magic suffered a 4-0 sweep by the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals and didn't return until 2009. More recently, a young, talented Oklahoma City squad featuring Kevin Durant, James Harden and Russell Westbrook advanced to the NBA Finals in 2012. When OKC finally returned to the NBA Finals last season, all three of those players had spent time with multiple teams, distant memories trapped in the rearview mirror of a Thunder fanbase focused on a future starring Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
"You hope to have as many joys as you can, but also the sufferings come with it," Kornet said. "I've been on teams where we've won the Finals and lost the Finals. Honestly, the ability to just be with each other in the suffering and grow together in it is a unique opportunity. It's weird to say, but it's an honor in itself being able to experience that on the biggest stage and experience that loss and that suffering and choosing [how] you're going to respond to it. That's the position we're in right now and you even have to be grateful for that, accept it and try to move forward."
San Antonio could use a backup stretch big as it reloads for next season, and a combo stretch big man who can start and possibly play alongside Wembanyama in bigger lineups such as Rui Hachimura. The opportunity to play alongside Wembanyama, the franchise's success, its culture and collective youth make San Antonio a preferred destination, sources said, adding that multiple big men are already trying to get to south Texas.
The Spurs possess the financial flexibility to make it happen. Fox is the only player earning more than $30 million per season, and San Antonio currently sits $44 million below the luxury tax and well below the first and second aprons. The Spurs will also have access to the $15 million non-taxpayer midlevel and $5.5 million biannual exceptions to fill needs. Considering San Antonio could become an exorbitantly pricey team in the future with extensions upcoming for Wembanyama, Castle and Harper, the urgency exists to add complementary players.
San Antonio also holds the 20th pick in the upcoming draft, as well as three second-rounders (35, 42 and 44), not to mention plenty of future draft options that include four tradable first- and 14 second-round picks.
On the day after the NBA Finals, four players became extension eligible in Wembanyama, Champagnie, Vassell and Kelly Olynyk. Wembanyama and Champagnie are the team's most pressing concerns.
Wembanyama will likely sign a five-year, $251 million rookie extension, which would go down as the largest in NBA history. Because Wembanyama was ineligible for league honors in 2024-25 because of injuries, he's not yet eligible to receive 30% of San Antonio's salary cap in the first year of the extension despite him winning NBA Defensive Player of the Year this past season.
It's also worth noting that the Spurs can include a player option in the last season of the deal. Paolo Banchero became the first player since Luka Doncic and Trae Young in 2021 to receive a player option on his rookie max extension last summer. Such an option on Wembanyama's deal allows him to become a free agent in 2031 at age 27.
Champagnie, meanwhile, is coming off a season in which he averaged career highs in minutes (27.6), points (11.1) and rebounds (5.8) in addition to playing 82 games for the second straight season. The 24-year-old also set a franchise single-season record with 195 3-pointers. Currently on a team option next season for $3 million, Champagnie will likely receive a more lucrative long-term deal this summer.
The club will also look to bring back veteran leader Barnes, a pending free agent who started 52 games this season, before Champagnie replaced him in the starting lineup. Barnes had started all 82 games in each of the previous three seasons.
As the Knicks celebrated on San Antonio's home court after winning the title, Wembanyama sat in a chair behind a black curtain leading into the locker room processing what had just transpired. Keldon Johnson, meanwhile, wearing a black cowboy hat and brown leather jacket, stood in front of a screen in the locker room. Tears still welling in his eyes, Johnson wrestled with disbelief about how their belief in one another was finally betrayed on the game's biggest stage.
Even after cigar smoke wafted through every nook and cranny of Frost Bank Center and celebratory champagne stood in puddles on the hardwood, the Spurs left their home floor for the night still believing they were the better team.
Next season, it's up to them to prove it.
"We're the youngest team to do it, no experience," Champagnie said. "Never played in the playoffs, never played in the championship, no real vets or X, Y, Z, whatever people wanted to say. But we still got here. We did the unthinkable, honestly. We found a way. If there was a will, there was a way for us, and we figured it out. We kind of exceeded expectations. [But] we didn't exceed our expectations. We wanted a championship."