Can the Spurs Win a Championship This Year?

Two weeks ago the basketball world was asking if the Oklahoma City Thunder could put together a 73-win season.

After three losses to the San Antonio Spurs, including a blowout in Oklahoma City on Christmas day, the basketball world is asking if these young scrappy Spurs could actually win a championship this year.

It all escalated rather quickly, but for good reason. In each of those wins San Antonio proved a point, and the stakes of what they proved increased exponentially each time.

The Spurs’ 111-109 victory in the NBA Cup semifinal proved that they could actually hang with the Thunder and defeat them in a physical, important game at a neutral site. It got everybody’s attention and ended OKC’s 16-game winning streak, and Victor Wembanyama made an incredible impact in his return despite coming off the bench with a minutes restriction.

Nobody said that win made San Antonio a better team than Oklahoma City, but people did start asking if the Spurs could become a legitimate thorn in the side of the NBA’s best team.

When the Spurs throttled the Thunder 130-110 in San Antonio they answered that question with a resounding yes. They handed OKC their first 20-point deficit of the season, and they manhandled Defensive Player of the Year candidate Chet Holmgren. They thoroughly out executed a Thunder team that looked passive and disoriented with Wembanyama on the floor.

"There's this guy on their team that's 7 foot 5 and takes up a lot of space on the court," Jalen Williams astutely observed this week.

San Antonio got everyone’s curiosity with the first win, and with the second they got everyone’s attention. Now, the basketball world had a question for the defending champions who started this season on a historic hot streak before the upstart Spurs cooled them off: “How will you respond?”

Two days later on Christmas Day, a captive audience in Oklahoma City and around the world watched as the visiting Spurs answered that question for them with a 117-102 beatdown. They went into the Thunder’s house like the Grinch before his heart grew three sizes.

They were the fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench. They messed up Oklahoma City’s Christmas plans worse than John McClane did Hans Gruber’s, and they were rude about it.

Wembanyama said after the last game that there was no comparison between himself and Holmgren on the basketball court, and he continued his campaign of psychological warfare against him in this rather chippy affair on Christmas.

At one point Holmgren got Wemby to bite on a pump fake and drew free throws. When he missed the first Wembanyama turned to the hostile crowd and yelled in celebration. Holmgren also missed the second.

Victor Wembanyama is engaged in psychological warfare against Chet Holmgren https://t.co/36gpmVj4Vt
— Tom Petrini (@RealTomPetrini) December 25, 2025

“Trash talk, for me, can be used for two things: either to distract the opponent or give yourself and your team more energy,” Wembanyama said during the NBA Cup. “Some things like that on the court you don’t want to control, you don’t want to have a filter, because it goes with the flow of the game.”

With these three victories, Wembanyama has some pretty good material to deploy against the league leaders who the Spurs are suddenly nipping at the heels of in the standings. San Antonio now sits just 2.5 games back of the top seed who they’ve beaten three times in a row. The Thunder looked genuinely rattled on Christmas during a game where they really would have liked to silence their doubters.

The basketball world has some new questions to consider.

Are the Spurs actually the best team in the NBA right now?

If not, they have beaten that team three times in a wildly impressive month of December. San Antonio is now 10-1 in regular season games this month despite facing strong opponents and a difficult travel schedule. Shai Gilgeous Alexander acknowledged that their rivals have the upper hand right now.

“You don’t lose to a team three times in a row in a short span without them being better than you,” SGA said on Christmas. “So we have to get better, we have to look in the mirror and that’s everybody from top to bottom if we want to reach our ultimate goal.”

The Spurs have done all of this with Wembanyama either out or coming off the bench as he eases his way back into the rotation. As impressive as they’ve been, it feels like they’re only in third gear. That should terrify everyone else, including and especially the Thunder.

Could the Spurs win a championship this year?

San Antonio is a talented and well-coached team, but they lack the playoff experience that most groups need to be considered a true contender. They’ve missed the playoffs for six years running, and as great as Wembanyama already is, he’s only in his third season.

Ordinarily it would be insane to posit that a team with a third-year leader could end a six-year playoff drought with a title, but strangely enough that exact thing has happened before. And Wembanyama and the Spurs have the basketball world believing that Anything is Possible.

Kevin Garnett delivered that unforgettable line after the Boston Celtics won the 2008 title despite missing the playoffs in the previous two seasons. The Celtics took a big swing to add Garnett via trade, and in his first year in Boston their 66 wins beat their total from the previous season by 42.

The Portland Trail Blazers missed the postseason with a losing record in their first six seasons in the NBA before legendary big man Bill Walton delivered the franchise their first and only title in 1977. Walton was one of the most hyped prospects of the era, and he won Finals MVP just three years after being selected with the first overall pick.

Over the summer Wembanyama trained with KG, who loves the edge that Wemby is playing and talking trash with. Walton would have truly loved Wemby’s journey with the monks just as much.

San Antonio made their big swing last season and traded for De’Aaron Fox, who barely got to play with Wembanyama before the big man’s season ended unexpectedly. Harrison Barnes and Luke Kornet add championship experience.

Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell are steeped in the Spurs Way and starving for postseason play. Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper look like two of the best guards to come out of the last five drafts. Mitch Johnson has everyone playing an intense brand of basketball at an extremely high level.

It remains to be seen if the red-hot Spurs can best the Thunder and everyone else when it matters most, and it probably isn’t the most likely outcome. If they do, though, nobody should be shocked.

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