The Spurs went into Denver hoping to win the biggest game yet for this group and advance to the next round.
They brought the All-Star guard they recently traded for to pair with their All-Star big man, a solid group of seasoned shooters, a steady seven footer, a veteran swingman by way of Sacramento, and some exciting young players with big potential.
An undrafted shooter who developed in the G League provided spacing in the starting lineup, and the longest-tenured Spur provided the heartbeat for the team and scoring pop off the bench.
On the other end of the floor was Nikola Jokic, who finished the game with a 21-point triple double, and Jamal Murray, who came up clutch. The Nuggets built their lead up to almost 20 in the third quarter, and San Antonio stormed all the way back.
Trailing by four with about 30 seconds to play, the Spurs had all of their veteran leadership on the floor, and I mean all of it. Gregg Popovich stepped off of the sideline and onto the playing surface, screaming at LaMarcus Aldridge and Patty Mills to foul. They didn’t, and neither did DeMar DeRozan or Rudy Gay or Bryn Forbes. Aldridge would later say they couldn’t hear over Denver’s feral home crowd.
That crowd got to revel in the sweet victory of Game 7 of the 2019 Western Conference first round. It gave Jokic and Murray their first playoff series win ever, and gave the franchise and the fans their first playoff series win in a decade. It marked a disappointing end to the Spurs’ 22nd consecutive postseason appearance under Popovich.
A lot has changed since then. Jokic and Murray have now won 10 playoff series, including the 2023 NBA Finals which Jokic earned MVP honors in. He’s a three-time NBA MVP, a seven-time All-Star widely regarded as the best basketball player in the world right now and probably for most of these last seven years.
San Antonio is riding a different sort of playoff streak since that day: six years in a row without a postseason appearance. Aldridge and DeRozan are long gone, as are Dejounte Murray, Derrick White, Jakob Poeltl, Marco Belinelli, and every other player on that roster.
Popovich went to the front office after suffering a stroke last season. Assistants Will Hardy, Ime Udoka, Ettore Messina, and Becky Hammon have all since become head coaches elsewhere, with legendary shooting coach Chip Engelland joining the Thunder.
Mitch Johnson and Keldon Johnson would join San Antonio’s bench the next season. Athletic Trainer Will Sevening is the only member of the staff and roster that remains.
Sevening has participated in 264 playoff games in his almost 30-year tenure with the Spurs, and every single one meant more than San Antonio’s duel with the Nuggets this past Friday night to see who would advance from the “Group of Death” to the knockout stage of the Emirates NBA Cup.
Still, Sevening is uniquely qualified to understand what this game meant for every player and coach who withstood years of struggle and now sees the bright lights of the playoffs at the end of the tunnel.
Once again, the Spurs went into Denver hoping to win the biggest game yet for this group and advance to the next round.
They brought the All-Star guard they recently traded for to pair with their All-Star big man, a solid group of seasoned shooters, a steady seven footer, a veteran swingman by way of Sacramento, and some exciting young players with big potential.
An undrafted shooter who developed in the G League provided spacing in the starting lineup, and the longest-tenured Spur provided the heartbeat for the team and scoring pop off the bench.
On the other end of the floor was Nikola Jokic, who finished the game with 21 points, 10 assists, and 9 rebounds. Jamal Murray put up 37. The Nuggets built their lead up to almost 20 in the third quarter, and San Antonio stormed all the way back.
There were a few differences this time, though. San Antonio’s All-Star big man is now Victor Wembanyama, and he’d be an MVP candidate if not for the injury that kept him out of this game and several others so far. The All-Star guard is now De’Aaron Fox, who has unlocked a new level to his scoring and his game this season.
Basketball itself is different now too. In that Game 7 Denver shot just 2-20 from 3 in the win, which seems borderline impossible. The Spurs weren’t much better at 6-23.
“Tonight was an odd game,” Popovich said. “I thought both teams set basketball back in the first half. I’m surprised people stayed. You might want to go home and get a glass of wine and watch it on TV.”
In the more recent contest, the teams combined to shoot 33-81 from deep and score 99 more total points than they managed that night in 2019. Denver surged to an 18-point advantage in the third behind their perimeter shooting, and the Spurs ripped off a 20-3 run with theirs just as quickly.
Another difference is that this time, San Antonio was the team that took control late and forced their opponents into mistakes. They rotated wing defenders on Jokic and left a big man in help position to effectively force the ball out of his hands. His teammates were hitting shots, but Denver turned it over 19 times in the game.
The back and forth lasted the entire fourth quarter, and with a minute and a half left De’Aaron Fox ran a pick and roll with Luke Kornet, passing it to the big man on the short roll when Jokic doubled Fox at the arc. Kornet found Devin Vassell, who found the bottom of the net to make it 129-126 Spurs.
After an uncharacteristic travel by Murray, Fox once again found Kornet, who found Vassell, who was way less open this time but fired anyway and set the net on fire with his seventh 3 of the game. Denver called timeout, and Vassell talked his talk all the way to the bench where Keldon Johnson joined in the yelling.
WALKING BUCKET @Yvngdevo 🪣 pic.twitter.com/VkAJRLE447
— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) November 29, 2025
Keldon has been in San Antonio for everything since that Game 7 in Denver, yelling the whole time. Vassell arrived the next season, and they’ve fought desperately to get to the playoffs together ever since. It speaks to how difficult that fight has been that unlike Sevening, this win has to rank as the most important victory of their NBA careers so far.
This game would have been important even without whatever added juice the NBA Cup provides, and there’s definitely some. The Spurs were able to tie Denver at 13-5 and move to fourth in the Western Conference about a quarter of the way through the season, and they did it without Wemby and reigning Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle.
De’Aaron Fox has stepped up, and Harrison Barnes and Luke Kornet bring some championship pedigree, but the roster is short on experience in high-pressure NBA games. For a team like this looking to build chemistry and confidence as quickly as possible, they have to treat the Cup as a dress rehearsal for the real thing.
Success in this tournament was a stated goal coming into the year, and it was a difficult one considering they’d need to survive a group with Denver, the Houston Rockets, the Golden State Warriors, and a fun young Portland Trail Blazers squad.
That goal becomes even more difficult without key players for long stretches, but that hasn’t mattered, and that shines a light on what makes this feel really, truly different from the Spurs team that met its end six and a half years ago in Denver.
Even if those teams went on to win a play-in game or two in the time since then, the long-term prospects for this franchise looked like play-in purgatory and deep uncertainty in the wake of Kawhi Leonard’s departure. Now San Antonio has the new generation’s generational talent and the perfect star to pair with him. The team around them has grown leaps and bounds and developed the ability to play at a high level even without the stars on the floor.
Friday’s win in Denver is this group’s biggest win yet not because they advance to the knockout stage of this mid-season tournament, but because it shows that San Antonio has officially arrived as a problem for the rest of the league now and for years to come. It’s something these players can draw on when the calendar turns to April. We may look back on it as the true start of this new era of Spurs basketball.
“We’re a deep team,” Vassell said after finishing with 37 in the win. “It’s exciting to think that we’re just scratching the surface.”