A man of the world and a man of adventure, Victor Wembanyama wasn’t about to let a calendar cramp his offseason style.
He played chess. He read books. He trained with a rugby team, a decidedly different exercise in Zen from the Chinese monks he visited a year earlier.
The Spurs’ All-Star center even managed to squeeze in some hoops, suiting up for France in a pair of FIBA World Cup qualifying games.
The difference between the most recent busy summer and previous ones for Wembanyama? Thanks to the Spurs’ surprise run to the NBA Finals in June, Wembanyama had to stuff his offseason exploits into two minuscule months.
“It was good,” Wembanyama said. “It was short.”
When it comes to offseasons for Wembanyama and the Spurs going forward, short is the new normal.
As last season proved, the days of punching out by mid-April are done.
For the Spurs, Tuesday’s season opener against Oklahoma City marks the beginning of a new phase – one in which working into June is no longer a hope, but an expectation.
“You want to get back in that situation,” swingman Devin Vassell said. “But you can’t skip a day. You can’t skip training camp. You can’t skip preseason. You can’t skip opening night. The season is long, and nothing is guaranteed.”
With the 22-year-old Wembanyama leading the way through an All-NBA season, the Spurs rode the good times all the way to the Western Conference finals, where they toppled the defending champion Thunder in seven games.
The music finally stopped in the NBA Finals, where New York brought the upstart Spurs back to earth in five games.
The Spurs spent a short summer – one that at times must have felt interminable – stewing over that defeat and champing at the bit to resume their title pursuit.
“When you look back, we were close,” said forward Keldon Johnson, now in his eighth season with the Spurs. “You can’t help but think about those things that we wish we could have done better, things we should have done better.”
Whether in front of the chess board or on the rugby pitch, Wembanyama spent the offseason with a number in the back of his mind.
One hundred.
That’s how many games, give or take, the Spurs will have to play before potentially clawing their way back onto the Finals stage.
“We don’t want to hide from anything,” Wembanyama said. “We’re going to face these emotions, face the reality that we have a hundred games to play. … We’re in a great spot. We’re very hopeful, very ambitious, and we’re ready.”
The path back will not be easy. No team has reached the Finals in consecutive seasons since Golden State did it in 2018 and 2019.
Harrison Barnes knows what that kind of staying power requires. In a previous basketball life, the Spurs reserve forward was part of a Warriors team that reached the Finals in 2015 and 2016.
The secret to doing it again, Barnes said, is to treat another Finals trip not as a birthright, but as something to be earned all over again – game by game and quarter by quarter.
“I don’t think it’s one of those things where you simply carry momentum from one season to the next,” Barnes said. “You have to come back and start the journey from day one.”
Backup center Luke Kornet likewise understands how fleeting a championship window can be. He was part of Boston’s most recent title team in 2024.
A year later, the Celtics’ repeat bid ended in the Eastern Conference semifinals against New York, derailed in part by the devastating Achilles tendon tear star guard Jayson Tatum suffered in Game 4.
The experience left Kornet with an appreciation for how much must go right to reach the mountaintop – and how quickly the climb can go sideways.
“A big part of it is the humility to know how difficult it was to make the Finals,” Kornet said. “And even if you’re fortunate enough to win, there’s a lot of bounces that could have gone the other way.”
If nothing else, last season provided the Spurs with long-awaited proof they could compete with the NBA’s best.
The club brings back its top 10 players from last season’s Finals roster in both scoring and minutes played, giving the Spurs a foundation few championship hopefuls can match.
Wembanyama, the league’s first-ever unanimous Defensive Player of the Year, is poised to again anchor the Spurs on that end of the floor.
Up-and-coming young guards Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper are limbered up to make another leap. All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox, at age 28, remains firmly in his prime.
All of the above now come with the added bonus of Finals experience on their resume.
“That word ‘experience’ came up a lot last year,” coach Mitch Johnson said. “Now we have an opportunity with this group to be able to take examples and experiences from last year and apply them to this year. We have to do it appropriately to be valuable.”
The front office made one major addition over the summer, signing veteran forward Tobias Harris to a two-year, $30.8 million deal. At 34, Harris brings size, shooting, rebounding and 15 seasons’ worth of NBA experience to a team looking to turn last season’s breakthrough into a springboard for something more.
Harris left a 60-win Detroit team that finished with the top record in the Eastern Conference last season for the express purpose of chasing a championship in San Antonio.
“The team has got very close to that last year in the finals and had a phenomenal year,” Harris said. “We fit in terms of what I bring to the table, but also in terms of what the team is striving for.”
If all goes to plan, the Spurs are hoping next summer takes just as long to arrive as the last one did.
Wembanyama, for one, already has an item in mind for his 2027 summer to-do list – one that would make another abbreviated offseason well worth it.
A championship river parade.
“I couldn’t imagine a better motivation,” Wembanyama said.
Subscribe
There’s more to San Antonio with the Express-News. Subscribe today for just 25¢.
This article originally published at For the Spurs and Wembanyama, only one goal remains: the NBA championship.
