Ranking the Spurs most to blame for the ultimate NBA Finals choke job, including Wemby

A lot of fans were quick to crown the San Antonio Spurs as NBA champions after they outlasted the Oklahoma City Thunder in a classic Western Conference Finals. The Spurs certainly looked the part as they built early double-digit leads in every game of the NBA Finals ... only to blow each one and lose four of five to allow the New York Knicks to complete an iconic championship run.

The moment appears to have been too much for the young Spurs, who skipped multiple steps to reach the Finals in their first playoff appearance as a group. The Knicks, on the other hand, got progressively deeper into May over each of the past four seasons, giving them the battle scars necessary to handle adversity that San Antonio hadn't experienced yet.

While Victor Wembanyama was quick to point out how the Spurs were dominating the series despite the overall scoreboard, it comes across as sour grapes after San Antonio proved quite incapable of closing out New York. Let's take a look at the four Spurs most responsible for their epic Finals collapse — a group that does include Wemby.

4. Keldon Johnson

Johnson was a crucial part of this Spurs team during the regular season and even into the playoffs. Former coach Gregg Popovich moved Johnson to the bench prior to the 2023-24 season and things clicked this year, when Johnson won Sixth Man of the Year honors by becoming the first Spur to score 1,000 points in a season as a reserve.

But the Spurs didn't get much from Johnson in the Finals offensively, as he averaged just 4.4 points per game while shooting 34.8 percent from the floor — a drastic drop-off from the previous two rounds in terms of performance. Johnson also wasn't tremendously effective as a defender on Jalen Brunson, losing some playing time and putting more pressure on the Spurs' already shallow wing depth to step up on both ends of the floor.

3. Mitch Johnson

Any time a team loses double-digit leads four times in a five-game series, it reflects poorly on the head coach. Mitch Johnson was Popovich's choice to succeed him after the latter was forced to retire due to the after-effects of a stroke, but Johnson was ill-prepared to stop the Spurs' collapses each and every time.

Johnson placed too much trust in De'Aaron Fox to initiate offense despite the fact that rookie Dylan Harper was far more effective in the Finals. The Spurs also struggled to draw up offensive plays late in clutch situations, which is an indictment of Johnson's failure to prepare his team. Game 4 was particularly bad for Johnson, who let his team keep chucking 3s in the second half despite the fact those misses opened the door for the Knicks to complete the biggest comeback in Finals history.

2. Victor Wembanyama

A surface-level look at Wemby's numbers in this series makes it hard to justify his inclusion on this list. A deeper dive, however, shows that the Alien's performance left a lot to be desired, including the fact that his dirty plays (including an uncalled flagrant foul for shoving Jalen Brunson's head and multiple landing-zone violations that went uncalled) created a massive distraction for his teammates.

The Spurs also needed to see Wemby be more assertive late in games, where he was far too content to take deep jumpers instead of attacking the rim to either score through contact or draw a foul to get to the line. The Game 2 loss can also be tied directly to Wemby, who turned the ball over to allow Brunson to hit the go-ahead free throw before missing a game-winning jumper at the other end. Wemby's poor fourth-quarter performance throughout the series speaks for itself.

1. De'Aaron Fox

There is no question that Fox was slowed by the ankle injury he suffered in the second round against Minnesota. Fox shouldn't lose points for playing through pain to help his team, but he made several uncharacteristic mental mistakes that cost the Spurs dearly throughout the Finals.

The most obvious blunder came at the end of Game 4, when he stole a pass with the Knicks down one and tried to go right to the basket instead of waiting to be fouled. OG Anunoby blocked him to deny the Spurs two points they desperately needed, and Fox's explanation afterward — that he thought he could beat Anunoby to the rack — is one you'd expect from a rookie like Harper, not someone who was the NBA's Clutch Player of the Year in 2023.

Fox's poor performance made things worse because it took the ball out of the hands of Harper, who was easily San Antonio's most effective perimeter player in the series. Harper made a strong case to be the starting point guard for San Antonio next season, which is a bit of a problem since Fox's new max extension hasn't even kicked in yet.

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