San Antonio Spurs

The San Antonio Spurs built the most boringly excellent dynasty in NBA history — five championships between 1999 and 2014, constructed on the twin pillars of Tim Duncan’s quiet greatness and Gregg Popovich’s volcanic coaching — and now they are building the next one around a player who makes Duncan look like a positional specialist. Founded in 1967 as an ABA charter member before joining the NBA in 1976, the Spurs play at Frost Bank Center, an 18,581-seat arena in a city that has no business being this good at basketball and yet has been precisely that for three decades.

Victor Wembanyama is not a basketball player. He is a basketball argument-ender. The 7-foot-4 French phenomenon averaged 24.3 points per game in his second season while leading the league in blocks for the second consecutive year, and the truly terrifying part is that he is nowhere near finished developing. Under Mitch Johnson, the Spurs finished 34-48, a record that matters about as much as the score of a pre-season friendly. The won-loss column is irrelevant when you possess the most gifted prospect the sport has ever produced.

Wembanyama shoots threes, blocks shots, handles the ball, and passes like a guard — at seven-foot-four. The comparisons to every great big man in history are not hyperbolic; they are insufficient. The Spurs’ development programme, refined through decades of turning good players into great ones, is the ideal incubator for a talent that defies categorisation. Australian fans who have been captivated by Wembanyama’s otherworldly abilities are watching something that will define the next decade of the NBA.

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The Spurs enter 2025-26 with the single most valuable asset in basketball and a development system that has been producing champions for a quarter-century. Wembanyama is the kind of generational talent around whom dynasties are constructed, and San Antonio — a franchise that turned a quiet power forward from the US Virgin Islands into the greatest winner of his era — knows exactly how to build one. The wins will come. The timeline is Wembanyama’s to dictate. Australian fans watching via ESPN and Kayo Sports are witnessing the early chapters of what will almost certainly become one of the defining careers in NBA history. Enjoy the construction phase. The finished product will be magnificent.

VS — Chief sports columnist, australiafootball.com