The San Antonio Spurs will be on the second game of a back-to-back after a tough win against the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night. The Spurs needed a fourth-quarter comeback to take down Toronto, and will now be on short rest against the Brooklyn Nets.<\/p>\n
Brooklyn and San Antonio\u2019s records are almost exactly flipped: the Spurs are chasing the number-one seed in the West, and the Nets are looking to secure the number-one pick in the draft. Brooklyn is on a five-game losing streak, while the Spurs have won ten games in a row. On paper, this is a game the Spurs should win handily, but anything can happen on a back-to-back on the road.<\/p>\n
San Antonio beat Brooklyn 118-107 in their home opener earlier this season. A lot has changed for the Nets since then. Exciting young players like Nolan Traore and Drake Powell have emerged, and Cam Thomas, who scored 41 points against the Spurs earlier this season, is not on the team. The Nets have enough talent to make things interesting, but if the Spurs continue their streak of stellar play, they should be on their way to an 11-game winning streak.<\/p>\n
February 26th, 2026 | 6:30 PM CT<\/p>\n
Watch: Fan Duel | Listen: WOAI (1200 AM)<\/p>\n
Spurs Injuries: Released by 1 pm CT.<\/p>\n
Nets Injuries: Tyson Etienne \u2013 Out (G League), Chaney Johnson \u2013 Out (G League), E.J. Liddell \u2013 Out (G League), Josh Minott \u2013 Questionable (G League), Ben Saraf \u2013 Out (G League)<\/p>\n
The blueprint for guarding Victor Wembanyama these days is simple: be as physical as possible and don\u2019t let him get into any position. It\u2019s the defensive style that the Detroit Pistons and Raptors used to slow him down in the Spurs\u2019 last two wins. Brooklyn has the necessary bigs to enact this strategy on Thursday night. Nic Claxton is a strong, mean defender inside, and Day\u2019Ron Sharpe is a good interior defender and rebounder. This will be another good test for Wembanyama against a physical front court.<\/p>\n
The Nets are a young team that makes young team mistakes. They don\u2019t really have a true point guard besides Traore (who is only a rookie), so they tend to turn the ball over a lot. The Nets cough it up 15.5 times per game. San Antonio\u2019s aggressive perimeter defense with Wembanyama patrolling the paint should give them an advantage against the young Nets. Look for De\u2019Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle to get out into the passing lanes early to help the Spurs build a lead.<\/p>\n
Devin Vassell\u2019s shooting<\/p>\n
Vassell has been red hot lately. He followed his 28-point night against Detroit with a 21-point performance against the Raptors on Wednesday. The wing has shot 12-17 from three in those two games. Vassell has been taking advantage of teams overindexing on Wembanyama, or trying to take away driving lanes from the Spurs\u2019 guards. He\u2019s gotten a ton of open looks and is making teams pay. Watch for San Antonio to get Vassell involved early as he looks to keep his hot streak going against Brooklyn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Antonio Spurs will be on the second game of a back-to-back after a tough win against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,6,671,5595],"class_list":{"0":"post-625731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn-nets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-brooklyn-nets","11":"tag-brooklynnets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nets","14":"tag-spurs-game-previews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116136235813600058","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625731","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=625731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}