With roughly a week left in the month of February, and the All-Star break officially over, the Spurs are starting things back up with a bang as they face a team that has pretty much confounded them thus far in the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n
This will be round three for these teams, and the long layoff should favor San Antonio, who are hungry for a win in the season series and healthier than they\u2019ve been when facing the Suns this season.<\/p>\n
The Spurs are coming into the contest with zero starters on the injury list, and the Suns are now the ones looking a little banged up, having had several players on the injury list just before the break, and still without defensive provocateur Dillon Brooks in the fold due to suspension.<\/p>\n
Brooks, in particular, has a long-standing history of elevating his game against the Silver and Black, having gone for 25 points against the Spurs in their last match-up, and had been carrying that average over the last 10 games prior to his suspension.<\/p>\n
Like the Spurs, the Suns have been earning their keep on the defensive end, with a top 10 defensive rating to show for it, and their earlier victories no longer look quite as fluky with more than half the season behind them.<\/p>\n
San Antonio seemed to be hitting another gear before the break, though, and they\u2019re carrying a six-game win streak into the game, and onto their home court, where they\u2019re 19-6. As long as they maintain that defensive intensity and match the #3 offensive rating of the last 6 games, they should be able find a win here.<\/p>\n
After all, they\u2019ve been 2nd in net rating over that stretch, while the Suns have slumped to 24th.<\/p>\n
The key for San Antonio will be shutting down the Suns from long-distance, as their offense depends heavily on their three-point marksmanship. They\u2019re 10th in the league in three-point percentage, 6th in three-pointers attempted, and 8th in three-pointers made.<\/p>\n
Head coach Jordan Ott has the Suns playing shrewd, error-free ball, so the Spurs will have to continue to dominate the boards (3rd in rebounding, 6th in rebounding percentage) to corral any misses, and do their best to play cleanly against a team that depends heavily on other team\u2019s mistakes (3rd in points off of turnovers) to power their offense.<\/p>\n
The Suns also depend heavily on cohesive ball movement (with only one player averaging 6+ assists per game) to create their openings, so the Spurs will need to clog the lanes rather than key in on a single ball-handler.<\/p>\n
This means they cannot just depend on the defensive excellence of Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle, and must be defensively cohesive across lineups and quarters.<\/p>\n
A steady approach is their best solution for the problem that the Suns have been. Any streakiness, however, will play right into their hands and likely lead to more of the same.<\/p>\n
February 18th, 2026 | 7:30 PM CT<\/p>\n
Watch: KENS| Listen: WOAI (1200 AM)<\/p>\n
Spurs Injuries: Mason Plumlee – Out (Conditioning), Lindy Waters III – Out (Knee)<\/p>\n
Suns Injuries: Cole Anthony – Out (Not With Team)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With roughly a week left in the month of February, and the All-Star break officially over, the Spurs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534,5595],"class_list":{"0":"post-611320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-spurs","15":"tag-spurs-game-previews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116096595634213395","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}