The Spurs are 1-2 and 11th in the West after three games this week. They lost 104-116 to the Thunder on October 20, lost 110-114 to the Rockets on October 23, then won 122-106 at the Mavericks on October 24. The Rockets and Mavericks games were a back-to-back. Last week's two-game win streak is over, and the team has not won consecutive games since.
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The standings have moved a lot. The Spurs were 2nd in the West on October 21 and 14th the next day. Power rankings tell the same story: they dropped from 3rd to 23rd in a week, and sat at 22nd after the Rockets loss.
Dylan Harper kept scoring. He had 18 against the Thunder, 20 against the Rockets and 22 at Dallas. Stephon Castle led the Thunder game with 24. Victor Wembanyama had 25 points and 13 rebounds against the Rockets, then 23 at Dallas. Harper now has a scoring line in every game listed, which extends his run as the rookie class's steadiest scorer. No scoring lines appeared this week for Jones Garcia, Gillespie or Quaintance. Bryant's one line remains the 8 points from October 14.
Tobias Harris's calf is the main injury story, and it has moved off the "no update" label. He went from Day-To-Day to Out on October 19, back to Day-To-Day on October 21, Out on October 22, Day-To-Day again on October 24 and Out again the same day. He is listed Out with a left calf injury. Two others were short-term. De'Aaron Fox was listed Day-To-Day with a right wrist issue on October 22 and was cleared October 23. Keldon Johnson was listed Day-To-Day with a mouth injury the same day and was cleared October 23. Both were available for the Rockets game's aftermath and the Dallas win.
The roster was quiet. No transactions appear after Jon Elmore and Kendall Brown left on October 16, and Malik Williams has not appeared since he left on October 15. After six moves in four days, the group has now held for more than a week. The roster stands at 17 players.
The lineup question is still open. A report on October 19 listed Harris, Donovan, Wembanyama, Harper and Gillespie together. On October 23, another report returned to the three-guard idea and named Wembanyama, Fox and Keldon Johnson. Neither report says who starts, and the idea first came up on October 17. One related item from that day: the Spurs exercised their 2027/28 options on Castle, Harper and Bryant.
The Spurs have a split result: two losses to a Thunder team and a Rockets team, and one road win. The next steps are whether Harris returns and whether the starting five settles.
Open storylines
as of Sun, Oct 25Harris flipped between Day-To-Day and Out four times this week and is listed Out as of October 24.
Reports on October 19 and 23 named players but never said who starts.
An October 23 report linked Fox, Keldon Johnson and Wembanyama to the idea, first raised October 17.
Harper scored in all three games, while Jones Garcia, Gillespie and Quaintance have no scoring line.
The Spurs are 11th at 1-2 after sitting 14th and falling from 3rd to 23rd in the power rankings.
The projection
all 30 teams →The season depends most on Victor Wembanyama (18.3 wins without him), Julian Champagnie (13.2 wins without him), Devin Vassell (8.0 wins without him), De'Aaron Fox (4.3 wins without him) and Stephon Castle (3.3 wins without him): on/off from 2026-27, details under Injuries. Computed Sun, Oct 25; the method is on the methods page.
The race
Western Conference · 79 games leftNext 5: vs Kings0%at Jazz50%vs Timberwolves100%vs Jazz50%vs Mavericks33%opponents win 47% of their games on average
Standings and games back are from the official table; the pace is the current record carried over 82 games, nothing more.
Day by day
30 days on the recordEarlier on the record26 more days · back to Thu, Sep 10
The franchise
Every season since the start →Public record →Nowupdated 2026-10-19
The Spurs enter 2026-27 under head coach Mitch Johnson, who took over permanently in May 2025 after Gregg Popovich stepped down but stayed on as president of basketball operations. Last season was the best regular-season mark since 2015-16: a 62-20 record, third in offense and third in defense, that carried San Antonio to its first Finals since 2014 before the Knicks won it. The core is Victor Wembanyama and De'Aaron Fox, both All-Stars last season, alongside Stephon Castle, Devin Vassell, Keldon Johnson, Julian Champagnie, Tobias Harris and Harrison Barnes. Fox arrived at the trade deadline two seasons ago in a three-team deal with the Bulls and Kings, while Castle came through the draft and was named Rookie of the Year. The payroll sits at $198.3 million, over the $165.0 million cap but under the $200.4 million luxury tax, with Fox's $49.8 million the largest number on the books. San Antonio owes its 2027 first-round pick to Sacramento and holds swap rights on several others in 2027, 2028 and 2030. The summer's headline move was exercising 2027-28 options on Castle, Dylan Harper and Carter Bryant, the picks from the 2025 draft that also brought Harper in at No. 2 overall.
Identity and rivalries117 words
The Spurs' identity still traces back to the Popovich era: unselfish passing, pace, and defensive accountability, the approach that shaped Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green and Tiago Splitter more than a decade ago. That style showed up again last season in a top-three offense and top-three defense. The organization's rivalries run through the same stretch of history — the Thunder, whom San Antonio eliminated in a seven-game conference finals last season after also beating them in the NBA Cup semifinals, and the Warriors and Heat from the Finals runs of the 2010s. What's at stake now is proving last season's breakthrough wasn't a one-off, with Wembanyama and Fox as the players carrying that burden into a new year.
Home, owners and numbers99 words
The Spurs play in San Antonio, a city with a large Hispanic population that the team has long honored through its "Los Spurs" and "Noches Latinas" jerseys and events, first launched in the 2006-07 season. The franchise's retired numbers and Hall of Fame names include Tim Duncan, the only player to reach 1,000 wins with a single franchise, and David Robinson, both former No. 1 overall picks. The team colors have been black, silver and white since becoming the San Antonio Spurs in 1973, with the Eurostile "Spurs" wordmark and stylized spur logo defining the look across uniform eras.
What they are chasing108 words
San Antonio is chasing a return to the Finals after falling to the Knicks last season, with Wembanyama and Fox now carrying real championship experience. On the roster side, the question is whether Harper, Bryant and the rest of the rookie class beyond Harper develop into rotation pieces worth the options the Spurs just exercised on them. The lineup itself is unsettled early, with reports floating a three-guard look built around Fox, Keldon Johnson and Harris without naming who actually starts. Fans are also watching Tobias Harris's calf injury, unresolved since early October, and whether the roster churn of the season's first weeks settles into a stable group.
The long view476 words
San Antonio's franchise began in 1967 as the Dallas Chaparrals of the American Basketball Association, coached by player-coach Cliff Hagan. Poor Dallas attendance pushed the team to try a regional format as the Texas Chaparrals in 1970-71, splitting games between Fort Worth's Tarrant County Convention Center and the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum, before returning to Dallas. After missing the playoffs in 1972-73, a group of 35 San Antonio businessmen led by Angelo Drossos, John Schaefer, and Red McCombs leased the team, briefly called it the San Antonio Gunslingers, then settled on the Spurs and the black, silver, and white colors still used today. The team debuted at HemisFair Arena in 1973 before a crowd of 6,000, built around James Silas, Rookie of the Year Swen Nater, and George Gervin, who joined from the Virginia Squires on February 7, 1974.
In June 1976, the Spurs joined the NBA in the ABA-NBA merger alongside the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, and New York Nets, one of only four ABA teams to survive intact. They are one of two former ABA teams to win an NBA title, along with the Nuggets, and the only one to win more than one.
The Gervin era produced five division titles in the franchise's first seven NBA years, but playoff heartbreak followed against the Washington Bullets, Boston Celtics, Houston Rockets, and Los Angeles Lakers, including a blown 3-1 lead to the Bullets in the 1979 conference finals. Gervin won the 1977-78 scoring title in a famous duel with Denver's David Thompson, scoring 63 points in New Orleans. He was traded to the Chicago Bulls after the 1984-85 season, and the team collapsed to a 115-213 record from 1985-86 through 1988-89, bottoming out at 21-61. The 1987 draft lottery brought David Robinson, who arrived in 1989-90 after his Navy service and, with Sean Elliott and Terry Cummings under new coach Larry Brown, drove the biggest one-season turnaround in NBA history, a 56-26 record and a division title.
The championship years came under coach Gregg Popovich, spanning the careers of Robinson (1989-2003) and Tim Duncan (1997-2016): titles in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014. From 1999-2000 through 2016-17 the Spurs won 50 games every season, an 18-year streak, and in 2018-19 they matched the NBA record of 22 consecutive playoff appearances. By 2022-23, their 50th anniversary season, they held the best winning percentage among active franchises.
The Spurs moved from HemisFair Arena to the Alamodome, setting the record for the largest NBA Finals crowd in 1999, then to Frost Bank Center (formerly SBC Center and AT&T Center). Since 2003 the February "Rodeo Road Trip" has sent them on the road, including an NBA-record eight wins in nine games in 2003. Title parades run as boat trips down the River Walk, and figures like Robinson (Carver Academy) and Gervin (George Gervin Youth Center) remain fixtures in San Antonio.