Even Spurs Analyst Sean Elliott Is Stunned by San Antonio’s NBA Finals Berth

The word Rich reached for to open the show was "arrival," and Sean Elliott loved it, alien-movie connotations and all. The Spurs analyst leaned into the joke: Victor Wembanyama is the alien, and he has arrived.

Then Elliott got honest about how little he saw this coming.

Going into the year, he pegged San Antonio as a mid-50-win team, reasonable for a group that lost Wembanyama for the final 18 games a season ago and was without De'Aaron Fox for roughly 16 after finger surgery. A title push, in his mind, was a next-year conversation.

The season changed his math. By the midpoint, watching the Spurs win convincingly on the road, Elliott quietly started to believe.

"I haven't really seen a team that's really better than us," he said. "We're better than almost everybody out there."

Even so, he did not expect the group to arrive this fast, and he does not think anyone in San Antonio did either. The proof of how far it has come was Game 7, on the road, against the defending champions and the two-time MVP. The Spurs made the plays down the stretch.

"This team has grown up. They have arrived," Elliott said. "They're going to be a problem for a long, long time."

Asked why it is happening now, Elliott started with the bench boss. He has been saying it all year, he told Rich, and not enough people listened: Mitch Johnson is the coach of the year. ESPN projected the Spurs to win 40 games. They won 62.

The reason, in Elliott's eyes, is defense. Johnson got a young roster to buy into the hardest thing in the league, guarding people, when everyone else is chasing numbers. His guys accepted roles and defended all year.

He spread the credit around. Brian Wright is his executive of the year, and the under-the-radar signing of Luke Kornet was, to Elliott, the best move of the summer. Fox arriving at last year's trade deadline mattered, too. So did the draft.

Elliott is all the way in on Dylan Harper, whom he flatly calls a superstar. The rookie plays beyond his years, never rattled, and by the second half was San Antonio's best three-point shooter, on a team that includes Julian Champagnie. He defends, finishes at the rim, and is bigger than people realize.

Around him, Steph Castle keeps building on his Rookie of the Year form as a two-way force, while Devin and Keldon have matured into team leaders.

And then there is Wembanyama, who pulls it all together. Elliott called him a terror on defense whose offense is still arriving, a player who has not scratched the surface of his potential.

"I've never seen a player have the defensive impact that he has," Elliott said. It is not just the blocks and deflections. It is the shots that never happen, the drives that get kicked back out into well-contested threes.