The San Antonio Spurs carry a four-game winning streak as they continue their hunt for the top spot in the Western Conference while hosting the hapless Indiana Pacers on Saturday.
The Spurs (52-18) have captured 20 of their past 22 games, most recently a 101-100 decision at home over Phoenix on Thursday. It took a game-winning jumper from erstwhile MVP candidate Victor Wembanyama with 1.1 seconds to play to produce the win for San Antonio, which in the process clinched its first trip to the playoffs since the 2018-19 season.
“When you’re building something, it doesn’t happen overnight,” San Antonio coach Mitch Johnson said. “It’s not something that you get all these players and then you just say, ‘Oh, damn, we good.’ It took some time and it took some development. It took some growing up and those type of things. And slowly but surely we here.”
San Antonio remains three games in back of league-leading Oklahoma City for the top spot in the West with 12 regular season games to play. The Spurs are seven games clear of the third-place Los Angeles Lakers.
Wembanyama finished Thursday’s game with 34 points and 12 rebounds, marking his 14th game this season with 30 or more points. Four of those have come in March.
“I feel like he’s playing at an MVP-type level,” Johnson said about Wembanyama. “It’s hard to deny when he’s doing what he’s doing on both ends of the court and he’s leading us night in and night out to wins.”
De’Aaron Fox finished with 23 points, Julian Champagnie scored 14 and Devin Vassell added 12 for the Spurs, who played without star point guard Stephon Castle (right hip tightness).
After Saturday’s contest, the Spurs hit the road for three straight beginning in Miami on Monday.
Into this pressure cooker come the Pacers (15-55), who have plummeted to the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings as they’ve lost a franchise record 15 consecutive games. Indiana’s most recent setback was a 127-119 home loss to Portland on Wednesday as Ivica Zubac had 18 points to lead eight Pacers in double-figure scoring.
Jalen Slawson tallied 17 points, Aaron Nesmith had 15 and Quenton Jackson added 13 points, while T.J. McConnell dished out a game-high 10 assists in the setback, in which Indiana clawed back from 22 points down to within three in the final quarter before running out of gas.
“First half, we give up 79 points and then we give up 48 in the second, you know, that’s just the difference between playing with the best level of energy and not enough,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “So second half, obviously, a lot better. But we got to put it together for 48 minutes.”
Zubac, who left Wednesday’s game in the second half with a head contusion, also suffered a fractured rib in the contest and will miss the rest of the 2025-26 season, according to a Friday report in the Indianapolis Star.
The Pacers have not won a game since capturing back-to-back contests on the road against the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets on Feb. 10 and 11, respectively. Indiana is 5-30 away from home and is tied with Washington for the fewest road wins in the league.
The teams played Jan. 2 in Indianapolis, with the Spurs earning a 123-113 victory.
