SAN ANTONIO — Ordinarily, a listing of the most important events of 2024 for the San Antonio Spurs would begin with Victor Wembanyama’s ascendance to the upper tier of the NBA’s star players. After all, the 7-foot-4, 20-year-old from Paris has followed his unanimous selection as 2023-24 Rookie of the Year with improvement in every measurable positive category, from minutes played and scoring to blocks and steals, through the first 32 games of the 2024-25 season and is a clear leader among candidates for Defensive Player of the Year.
Nowhere can you find a preseason prediction that had the Spurs among contenders for the playoffs in the super-competitive Western Conference. With only a New Year’s Eve game remaining, there they are, still in position to make a run to the postseason.
Wembanyama is the primary reason. But everything that happened for the Spurs in the calendar year now ending — even Wembanyama’s excellence — has been overwhelmed by an event that happened off the basketball court.
The stroke suffered on Nov. 2 by Hall of Fame head coach Gregg Popovich dominates a Spurs year that has been defined both by great promise and remaining challenge.
The Spurs had played only five regular-season games when the 75-year-old, the winningest coach in NBA history, suffered a mild stroke shortly after arriving at Frost Bank Center for a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Assistant coach Mitch Johnson, 38, took over as acting coach that night and has continued in the role for the past 27 games, during which the Spurs have gone 14-13.
Initially, the team provided no information about the condition that caused Popovich’s absence. While calling it only an illness, the Spurs said he would be out indefinitely. Then, on Nov. 13, the team revealed the illness had been a mild stroke and that Popovich already had begun a rehabilitation program, expected to make a full recovery.
Without question, Popovich’s health has been the most compelling event of 2024 for the five-time NBA champions.
“Coach Pop” has missed 27 games, and his return to the bench does not appear imminent. However, Spurs fans recently received reason to believe such a return might happen in 2025. Through the team, Popovich sent a message of gratitude to all those who had reached out to him during his post-stroke convalescence. In concluding his message, he left a veiled assurance that he will eventually resume coaching the team he has led since taking over early in the 1996-97 season.
The ray of optimism was based entirely on a dose of his famously dry humor.
“No one is more excited to see me return to the bench than the talented individuals who have been leading my rehabilitation process,” Popovich stated. “They’ve quickly learned that I’m less than coachable.”
Those who have known Popovich longest understand quite the opposite is far more likely when it comes to his alacrity for the rehab process. If any 75-year-old is apt to beat the odds for making a quick recovery from such a difficult prognosis, Popovich would be high on the list.
His lifelong dedication to daily workouts that have kept him fit and trim is a plus for such a prospect. And, were full recovery to happen sooner than later? It would instantly become the biggest Spurs story of 2025.
For this review of 2024, though, Johnson’s success in filling in for his boss must be deemed nearly as impactful as Popovich’s absence. Spurs CEO R.C. Buford and general manager Brian Wright immediately opted to make the young assistant “acting coach Johnson.”
A four-year starting point guard at Stanford who began working for the Spurs in 2014, Johnson’s only previous head-coaching work had been during a summer-league assignment. A factor in putting Johnson in charge, rather than fellow assistant coach and former Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown, 63, was the youth of roster. Despite adding 39-year-old Chris Paul and 32-year-old Harrison Barnes in the offseason, the team remains one of the youngest in the league, with an average age of 24.8 years. Only the Portland Trail Blazers (24.2) are younger.
Johnson has said he and Popovich communicate frequently, often stressing that aggressive defense remains the bedrock of the team’s approach to every game because “that has always been Pop’s primary emphasis.”
Johnson has met Buford’s and Wright’s expectations, and then some. If and when Popovich returns this season, Johnson will remain both a valued presence and a prime prospect for an eventual head-coaching position, in San Antonio or elsewhere.
Mitch Johnson talks with guard Chris Paul during the second half of a game against the Kings earlier this month. (Scott Wachter / Imagn Images)
The fact Johnson had worked closely with Wembanyama, both at practices and before games, after Wembanyama came to the team as the No. 1 pick of the 2023 NBA Draft, was a bonus for Johnson when an acting coach had to be named. That Wemby has played some of the most impactful games of his young career since Johnson took over isn’t coincidence.
Clearly, Wembanyama’s rise to the elite level of NBA superstardom would have occurred had Popovich not suffered the stroke, so the nature of the coach’s medical misfortune should not diminish what the young star has managed through the year now ending. His significant improvement from his Rookie-of-the-Year season is clearly the team’s most meaningful on-court development.
Wembanyama had begun asserting himself more thoroughly in the final four weeks of the 2023-24 season, when Popovich eliminated a restriction on the young star’s playing time. The Spurs made a late-season semi-surge, winning eight of their final 15 games to avoid the worst record in club history by prevailing in Games 81 and 82. Wemby averaged 27 points and 12.6 rebounds in the final eight games he played — he sat out three of the final 10 — and scored 34, with 12 rebounds, in a stunning upset of the defending champion Denver Nuggets in the penultimate game of the season.
A couple of months after being named unanimous Rookie of the Year, Wembanyama departed San Antonio for France to begin working out with the French national team, Les Bleus. His development would continue in the 2024 Olympics in his native country. There, he would establish himself as a clear leader among international players. His outstanding play in the gold medal game against Team USA — he scored a team-high 26 points — gave France a shot at an upset. It took Stephen Curry’s four 3-pointers in the final 2:47 of that game to vanquish Wembanyama and his French teammates.
Wembanyama showed in the knockout rounds of the Olympics that his 3-point game likely would be a big part of his second season with the Spurs. However, he got off to such a shaky start beyond the arc in his first nine regular-season games — 14 for 56, 25 percent — that many Spurs fans questioned his shot selection.
Popovich, pre-stroke, had defended his star’s penchant for the 3.
“He’s more of a perimeter player than he is a post player,” Popovich said. “We want him to be able to do everything: isolate, shoot, do the whole deal.”
Popovich also had warned the world that Wemby’s long summer was apt to make for a slow start.
“I don’t think he’ll be in a great rhythm to start the season,” Popovich said about a week before his team’s season opener. “He’s had a long year. He’s dinged up a little bit.”
Popovich was right again. After his first five games, Wembanyama was averaging only 18 points and 8.1 rebounds.
Both Popovich and Wembanyama knew the rhythm would return relatively quickly. Now, after the 82nd regular-season game of the Spurs calendar year, a Sunday night road loss to the Timberwolves, his per-category improvements from the 2023-24 season in nearly every category are impressive: Scoring, 21.4 PPG to 25.5; field-goal percentage, 46.5 to 47.8; 3-point percentage, 32.5 to 36.0; free-throw percentage, 79.6 to 88.0; blocks; 3.6 to 4.0; minutes played, 29.7 to 33.0.
Wembanyama must share credit for the Spurs’ better-than-expected early showing this season with some new teammates. Wright’s free-agent signing of Paul; his addition of Barnes by agreeing to take the veteran forward for absolutely nothing of value (while also getting the right to swap first-round draft picks with the Sacramento Kings in 2031); and his drafting of Connecticut guard Stephon Castle qualify his offseason moves as some of the smartest in recent Spurs history.
Paul’s signing, for a relatively inexpensive $11 million, was a master stroke that has paid huge dividends. Popovich had assured Paul he would be the team’s starting point guard and play significant minutes, something Paul valued above all. He arrived in San Antonio insisting he was on the roster “to hoop” and would not be “coaching” his young teammates. In fact, every player on the roster, even Barnes, has learned from “The Point God,” who says he has seen enough from his new team that each of his young teammates should go into every game expecting to win. Recently, he advised them to put “wait until next year” in the rearview mirror.
GO DEEPER
Wemby, young Spurs step into professor Chris Paul’s classroom
Paul and Barnes are the only Spurs who have suited up for — and started — all 32 games this season. Barnes often stays after practice to work with end-of-bench players, advising them about all manner of situations and skills, and is a valued locker room voice.
Castle was squeezed into the starting lineup by early injuries to both Devin Vassell and Jeremy Sochan. He took advantage to show off the defensive aggression that earned him selection as the No. 4 pick of the 2024 Draft. Though his shot remains a work in progress — 38 percent overall, 27 percent from deep — no less than LeBron James declared, after watching Castle go for 22 points and five assists in a Spurs loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Nov. 15, “he’s going to be special.”
The play of Sochan has been redemptive this season after the dispiriting assignment as a 6-8 point guard that spoiled nearly half of his 2023-24 season. Now he is a productive interior running mate for Wembanyama, averaging 14.9 points and 8.7 rebounds, all the while defending one of the opposition’s top scorers.
Taken together, the developments that have turned the Spurs into the most surprising of Western Conference playoff contenders — Wembanyama’s ascendance, Wright’s offseason acquisitions, Johnson’s outstanding work as acting coach, Paul’s on-court leadership and ability to impart knowledge to his much younger teammates, Barnes’ steadying influence, Sochan’s solid play at both ends — might well serve as a positive inducement for Popovich as he accepts the “coaching” of his rehabilitation team.
If one takes the 2024 portions of the past two seasons and turns them into one 82-game campaign, the Spurs’ record would stand at 33-49 — 17-33 in the 2024 portion of 2023-24 and 16-16 in the current season. That is just about where most preseason estimates for the 2024-25 season had put the Spurs record.
Soon they will have 50 games to try to prove those predictions faulty.
If Popovich is back on the bench in time for a stretch run with the playoffs in sight, that will make for a truly impactful first portion of calendar year 2025.
(Top photo of Gregg Popovich and Victor Wembanyama: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
