By most projections, the San Antonio Spurs are ahead of schedule.
They drafted Victor Wembanyama with expectations that he would lead them to title contention. But the NBA is a league in which even stars of Wembanyama’s stature are expected to face playoff hardship and pay their dues before reaching that goal.
Michael Jordan did. Shaquille O’Neal did. Kobe Bryant did. Wembanyama’s Spurs predecessors David Robinson and Tim Duncan did.
None of those multi-time champions and first-ballot Hall of Famers made the Finals in their first postseason. But here’s 22-year-old Wembanyama playing alongside a 21-year-old Stephon Castle and a 20-year-old Dylan Harper, standing four wins away from an NBA title.
There was no postseason hardship for this group despite facing the gantlet of the Western Conference bracket with the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder standing in their way. Now that they’ve survived it, they’ll face the New York Knicks as favorites to win the title.
Wemby: Finals spotlight ‘doesn’t motivate me’
So how does Wembanyama feel about the pressure and the spotlight of playing on basketball’s biggest stage now that he’s here? It’s no big deal.
Game 1 on Wednesday will be just another game. So he says.
“It doesn’t motivate me,” Wembanyama said Tuesday when asked how the spotlight of the Finals motivates him. “At the end of the day, only 20,000 people fit in the arena. So it doesn’t really remake a difference.”
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Wemby: Spurs still need to ‘re-center’ from emotion of WCF win
But Wembanyama’s not a machine. This means something to him, as the emotion he demonstrated after Saturday’s Game 7 win over the Thunder made clear.
And while he says the spotlight of the Finals isn’t a factor in his mind, he acknowledged Tuesday that the Spurs still need to reset and refocus coming off Saturday’s emotional win.
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“The emotion was really something I haven’t felt in a while, I won’t even know since when,” Wembanyama said. “And coming back down from this is a challenge. And it’s not done yet.
“We still need to really come back down to Earth and realize that we haven’t done the hardest yet. The job isn’t done at all. So we’ve still got about — I don’t know, what time is it? — 30-plus hours to re-center.”
Castle: Spurs’ youth ‘was never a problem’
Castle also addressed media on Tuesday. A second-year pro, the Spurs guard is even greener than Wembanyama and will be starting in the NBA Finals. He told reporters that San Antonio’s youth and inexperience hasn’t been an issue so far, and he doesn’t expect it to be one against the Knicks.
“I mean, I don’t think that was ever a problem for us,” Castle said. “I think for us, that was really just all outside noise. And in house, we have nothing but confidence in each other.”
Like Wembanyama, Castle has played in the spotlight before. Wembanyama led France to the silver medal in the 2024 Olympics in front of a home crowd in Paris. In his only season in college, Castle helped lead UConn to a national championship.
That’s got to count for something for both players as they step onto the Finals stage. They haven’t been here before, but they have experienced pressure and the spotlight. And, per Castle, they’re confident in their process.
“We take it game by game and try to walk this thing down,” Castle continued. “And, I mean, we’ve got to this point. I mean, we’ve been making history with like every game, like, we see something new.
“I mean, yeah, we got we got four more to go, and we got this far. But, I mean, we still haven’t really done anything yet.”
So, on one hand, the Spurs have made history just by getting here. On the other, it won’t mean nearly as much if they fall short of four more wins. And they won’t know what the Finals spotlight truly feels like until it glares down on them Wednesday night.
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