The 1996-1997 San Antonio Spurs limped, literally and figuratively, to a 20-win season.
Standout center David Robinson missed the first 18 games of the season as he worked his way back from a back injury, and the Spurs began the year with a 2-13 record. Head coach Bob Hill was fired after 18 games, and replaced by general manager Gregg Popovich. While Robinson returned after the first 18 games, he then suffered a broken foot after playing just six contests for San Antonio.
He missed the rest of the season and San Antonio finished with a 20-62 record.
Still, that was not the worst record in the NBA that year. That honor went to the Vancouver Grizzlies, who finished 14-68. But while the Grizzlies had the best odds of winning the first-overall selection in the 1997 NBA Draft lottery, as an expansion team the previous year they were ineligible for that pick.
Instead, the team with the second-best odds of earning the top pick was the Boston Celtics. Boston finished 15-67 that season, and with two lottery picks the Celtics were in the driver’s seat for the first pick.
However San Antonio, with the third-best odds, won the lottery.
And the rights to Tim Duncan.
(As an aside, in the lead-up to the 1997 NBA Draft Popovich, then entrenched as the San Antonio head coach, took some time on ESPN to hold a pre-draft chat with fans. One Celtics fan asked him flat out what it would take for San Antonio to trade the rights for the first pick to Boston, and Popovich was kind and polite enough to reply, and make it clear that a move would be unlikely.
Thus, my brief time as an NBA insider came to an end.)
The rest, of course, is history. San Antonio went on to win two NBA titles with the pairing of Robinson and Duncan, and San Antonio would win three more during Duncan’s tenure with the organization.
Could history, somehow, repeat itself here in 2025?
Second-year star Victor Wembanyama is expected to miss the rest of the 2025 NBA season after he was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in his right shoulder. According to reports, the Spurs believe this is an isolated occurrence, and expect Wembanyama to make a full recovery.
At the moment, the Spurs have a 23-29 record and sit 14th out of 15 teams in the NBA’s Western Conference.
They also sit tenth in the current NBA Draft order.
Right now San Antonio has just a 3% chance at securing the top pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, and a 13.9% chance of securing a pick in the Top 4 selections. But with Wembanyama sidelined for the rest of the season, it is unlikely that the Spurs suddenly turn things around in the standings.
Instead, it is far more likely that San Antonio’s losses mount, and their odds of securing a pick inside the Top 5 — or better — improve.
In the latest SB Nation NBA Mock Draft the Spurs selected Texas G Trey Johnson, but the injury to Wembanyama potentially puts them in a position to land a true difference-maker. Imagine a healthy Wembanyma returning for next year with someone like Ace Bailey or Asa Newell, along with the recently acquired De’Aaron Fox.
Or, dare we say, Cooper Flagg? Khaman Maluach? Could the Spurs form an updated version of The Twin Towers? Flagg is a consensus No. 1 pick in NBA mock drafts right now, so that is probably too much of an ask, but you might excuse the Spurs fan in your life for dreaming.
But Flagg’s Duke teammate Maluach is rising up draft boards, and giving San Antonio a pair of seven-footers in the front court would be imposing.
So while the Wembanyma news is a bitter pill to swallow for Spurs fans, there is a bright side. While it is extremely unlikely that San Antonio could truly repeat history, and land the first-overall pick as they did in 1997 after losing David Robinson, there is a chance that the silver lining to the Wembanyma injury is a pick in the top five.
Which could set San Antonio up for another stretch of success in 2026 and beyond.
