The San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics have combined for 23 NBA titles and 29 NBA Finals appearances. Despite that, they have never faced each other in the finals.
Is this the year that changes?
Such a proposition would have seemed ridiculous before the season, with the Celtics licking their wounds following Jayson Tatum’s playoff Achilles tear and an offseason spent shedding salary, and the Spurs still seeming at least a year away from doing anything important following a 34-win season. Vegas set preseason over-unders for the Spurs at 44.5 wins and the Celtics at 41.5.
Yet here they are, at the halfway mark of the season, standing as clear-cut contenders. San Antonio entered Tuesday at 30-13, with the second-best record in the Western Conference, the third-best scoring margin and owners of three wins over the mighty Oklahoma City Thunder. Boston, meanwhile, has the East’s second-best record and its best point differential.
I watched both teams in person during my travels this past week, witnessing San Antonio’s demolition of Milwaukee, where the Spurs led by 39 after three quarters, and Boston’s 132-106 rout of Atlanta, where the Celtics led by 40 in the third quarter.
Those two games underscored each team’s move into elite status. Come for the hilarity of Victor Wembanyama posting up AJ Green for a 3-pointer:
… and stay for Sam Hauser launching first and asking questions later in his 21 3-point attempt, zero 2-point attempt performance in Atlanta.
So … how did we get here? And what does it mean for these teams at the NBA trade deadline?
An easy explanation of the Spurs’ success is to just say “Wemby,” and Wembanyama’s brilliance is certainly a big part of it. But what stands out about San Antonio is how the Spurs have been able to succeed without him.
The team is 10-4 in the 14 games he’s missed and 11-5 in the last 16 games he’s played since returning from a calf strain, even though a minutes restriction has capped him in the mid-20s most nights. For the season, the Spurs have a minus-0.4 net rating with Wembanyama off the court, essentially playing opponents to a draw even without their best player. (With Wembayama on, they smash teams by 13.5 per 100 possessions.)
While a superstar year from Boston’s Jaylen Brown and the nightly wonder from Wemby have pushed these teams forward, the underlying story for both is that they’ve nailed most of the necessary secondary moves they needed to build out a solid roster from A to Z. Boston, amazingly, tore down half the roster while also building this juggernaut, and the Spurs have benefited more from high draft picks but also nailed a few key transactions.
It was pretty jarring to see the difference play out in person on Thursday between the Spurs and Milwaukee Bucks, as Giannis Antetokounmpo outplayed Wembanyama for long stretches of the first half, and it ended up not mattering at all because of the gulf between their two supporting casts.
Wembanyama actually left the game after two-plus minutes when he picked up a second foul and banged knees with Antetokounmpo, but the Spurs can play dynamic lineups even when Wembanyama is off the floor. The decision to sign Luke Kornet in free agency — ironically, because the Celtics couldn’t pay him in their cost-cutting mode — looks brilliant; he’s been one of the best backup centers in the league.
Kornet has proven more than capable of functioning in lineups next to Wembanyama as well. That frontcourt pairing has a plus-9.6 net rating in 72 minutes, and we could see more of it as Wembanyama’s minutes restriction loosens. It’s an intriguing thought to file away for a playoff series.
Otherwise, the real key to San Antonio’s post-Gregg Popovich rebuild was the previous offseason. The Spurs were patient with their cap room and ended up getting paid to take Harrison Barnes in the DeMar DeRozan trade because the Chicago Bulls wanted to pay Patrick Williams instead (oopsie). As a result, the Spurs own an unprotected 2032 pick swap from the Sacramento Kings. San Antonio also found 3-and-D wing Julian Champagnie on the scrap heap and signed him through its two-way program; he’s been a double-figure scorer with the team’s highest 3-point attempt rate and rebounds like a power forward, and he’s signed for barely over the minimum at $3 million a year. Don’t be surprised if the Spurs decline his $3 million team option after the season to lock in a longer deal instead.
Wait, there’s more. Pushing chips in for De’Aaron Fox last winter was a risk, but so far, he’s been the right complement for Wemby, adding a dose of speed to the Spurs’ attack that becomes particularly potent when reigning Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle (nailed that pick) and/or 2025 first-rounder Dylan Harper take the floor. Off the bench, Keldon Johnson is quietly having a monster season that could put him in the running for Sixth Man of the Year. Adding him and Devin Vassell to the mix means the Spurs have no negative minutes in their top nine.
In terms of development, there could be more fruit. Two-way David Jones Garcia has been impactful in his limited minutes after raising eyebrows with his summer league performance. Mid-first-rounder Carter Bryant pops on the tape defensively but needs to find his groove on offense, especially on a team that already struggles at times offensively. And obviously, if they can get Harper and Castle to shoot at a league average from the 3-point line, it will be a game-changer for San Antonio’s half-court offense.
That’s probably the biggest point of contention for the Spurs moving forward: whether they need to add another shooting wing to the mix and what they could give up to acquire one. San Antonio is third in defensive efficiency, first in defensive rebounding rate and second in opponent free-throw rate. Wembanyama alone assures they’ll be solid, but even across the rest of their top nine, you’ll find few easy marks.
But on offense, the shooting questions won’t go away. San Antonio ranked 10th overall in offense thanks to a high rate of foul drawing and low rate of turnovers, but from the outside, the Spurs are 16th in 3-point frequency and 21st in accuracy. The Fox-Castle-Harper three-guard unit is capable of playing blazing fast but at a cost of spacing and shooting. Another conundrum is that their best contract to put in a trade, Barnes’ $18 million expiring deal, belongs to their floor-spacing forward.
As far as Boston goes, it’s amazing to consider that, statistically, the offense is actually slightly better this year than it was last season with Tatum, partly thanks to the lights-out shooting from Brown. We are less than two years removed from Golden State trying the “just leave Jaylen wide open” defense. Now, he’s knocking down every jumper in sight, and defenses (such as that of the LA Clippers in his 50-point game) are scrambling to double him early. More than half of Brown’s shot attempts are midrangers, according to Cleaning the Glass, and he’s making 47 percent of them; that kind of volume and accuracy compels double-teams and opens the floor for Boston’s other shooters.
In fact, Boston has leaned even harder to what you might call “Mazzulla ball” this season, ranking third in 3-point rate despite losing Tatum and replacing their two stretch bigs with more traditional bangers. The other key is that Boston is now playing the “possession-ball” game on the offensive end; maybe those Brown middies aren’t the most efficient shot you could draw up, but Boston has the league’s lowest turnover rate because he gets into them so easily, and the Celtics are fifth in offensive rebound rate thanks to the changes in the frontcourt.
Those changes (bringing in Neemias Queta as a starter and Luka Garza as a backup) have made Boston less switchable and dropped the Celtics to 14th in defensive efficiency, but now they can mash on offense. Both Garza (16.6 percent) and Queta (13.3 percent) have huge offensive rebound rates that help Boston in the possession game; energizer Jordan Walsh (8.2 percent) has also been a factor from the wing.
Overall, it’s still amazing to ponder that Boston lost Tatum, Jrue Holiday, Al Horford, Kristaps Porziņģis and Kornet in the 2025 offseason and replaced them by adding Garza, Anfernee Simons and rookie Hugo Gonzalez, and promoting Queta, Walsh and 2024 first-rounder Baylor Scheierman.
On paper, it looked like a massive drop-off. But Boston has pretty obviously figured out player development. Hauser and Queta were little-used two-ways when they first arrived in Boston. Now, they start. Walsh was a second-round pick mired at the end of the bench for two years, and Scheierman looked like a bust his rookie season. Now they’re thriving too. (Another huge success, actually, was Kornet, originally added on a non-guaranteed minimum deal in 2021.)
All of this takes us full circle, with a little over two weeks to the trade deadline, to the question of what moves these teams should pursue next. Boston originally looked like it might be a seller, moving off Simons or Hauser to get all the way under the luxury tax and avoid some of the worst depredations of the repeater tax a year from now.
Now it seems that staying below the second apron might be enough, and otherwise, they can go for it. Boston still has draft capital and a huge expiring contract in Simons’ $27.6 million deal and is $7.6 million below the second apron. The cap sheet going forward is now relatively clear as well, with the Celtics $29 million from next year’s projected first apron (an extension for Simons would cut into that).
But Boston’s and San Antonio’s cases are different from most of the league’s other contenders (and even quasi-contenders), who, to at least some extent, are all-in on maximizing their teams right now. The Celtics and Spurs didn’t really expect to be in this same spot until a year from now, but here they are.
For Boston, is it worth going all-in for this year when next year’s team — adding Tatum and perhaps others and with no significant free agents likely to leave aside from Simons — is likely to be even better? Is there a move that can accomplish both and still keep a top-heavy salary structure (Brown and Tatum will combine to make $131 million in 2027-28) from pushing past the second apron and triggering draft pick penalties?
Similarly, is there a move out there for the Spurs, who have four picks swaps and an unprotected 2027 first from Atlanta in their quiver, in addition to two tradeable firsts and four swaps of their own? One of those swaps, with Atlanta in the 2026 draft, likely is a mid-first-round pick that could be tempting in the right package. While moving Barnes’ expiring deal might create one problem to solve another, the Spurs also have $20 million in expiring money with little-used bigs Jeremy Sochan and Kelly Olynyk.
San Antonio’s biggest limitation, in fact, is that it is looking at being Boston a few years down the road. Once Wembanyama, Castle and Harper qualify for extensions off their rookie contracts, they will become dramatically more expensive and likely keep the Spurs at or near the aprons.
I don’t have a crystal ball that says what they’ll do, and these two teams haven’t come up much when people in the league discuss trade suitors. Maybe they feel better playing it out and seeing what they have with their current groups. But fortune favors the bold, and both franchises have shown the willingness to pounce when an unexpected opportunity comes their way.
Boston and San Antonio moving into the upper realm of the contender class might have been unexpected, but now it creates a lot of new opportunities for these two teams and others around the league. Could this be the late plot twist that adds some drama to the trade deadline? Stay tuned.
Prospect of the Week: Aday Mara, 7-3 junior center, Michigan
I went to third-ranked Michigan’s 82-72 win over Washington on Wednesday, and while the main treat for the 15 credentialed NBA scouts was seeing Huskies big man Hannes Steinbach and Wolverines do-it-all forward Yaxel Lendeborg — both of whom are possible lottery picks — Big Blue has a dominant frontcourt that includes two other prospects in Aday Mara and 6-foot-9 Morez Johnson.
I was familiar with Mara from seeing him at UCLA his first two seasons after the Bruins recruited him from Spain, where he came in with one-and-done buzz that didn’t quite deliver. While the size and touch intrigued, he accumulated fouls too easily and failed to finish point touches too often. Also, his first name and how long it takes him to change ends had a bit too much in common.
However, in his third season of college basketball, he seems much more comfortable with the speed and physicality, and as a result, he’s impacting the game more frequently with his height, touch and feel.
While standing 7-3 makes him an obvious paint target, Mara isn’t a brute. He’s much more comfortable rolling into feathery jump hooks or dropping off passes to cutting teammates, and he threw in a couple of spicy dimes on Wednesday. He’s also become an automatic finisher around the rim and a more explosive lob threat than we saw at UCLA.
Mara finished the game 10-of-11 from the floor with two assists and three blocks, continuing a season where he is shooting 70.4 percent from the floor and, just as notable for a player this size, averaging 5.8 assists per 100 possessions. He also leads the Big Ten in block rate at 12.2 percent.
A few clips from Wednesday stand out. Watch here as he understands that Steinbach is going to lean into him and waits on the physicality before spinning away to get himself a dunk:
Also note how early he got down the floor and into this post-up; his end-to-end speed has definitely picked up a notch.
Later, he knows a double-team is going to arrive on his post-up, and he knows he has Lendeborg open at the 3-point line … but he still waits on the cut because he thinks he can get a layup.
Finally, here’s a quick reminder that players only receive assists on made baskets. This was a sweet no-look dime off the dribble, but his teammate blows the bunny:
Ranked 32nd on Sam Vecenie’s most recent Top 100, Mara looked plausible as a late first-rounder, with pathways to a Luke Kornet-type impact as a plus-length center with some feel and touch, even if the touch doesn’t extend past the free-throw line. (Mara is at 44.4 percent from the stripe this year. Can he start shooting jump hooks from there?)
