Spurs Analyst Sean Elliott Talks Wembanyama, NBA Finals & More with Rich

Sean Elliott was the perfect guest with the Spurs back in the NBA Finals, in part because he has been here before. The last time San Antonio won it all, in 1999, it beat the New York Knicks. Now, improbably, it is Knicks and Spurs again, and Elliott was on that 1999 team.

He admitted he did not see this coming. Elliott pegged the Spurs as a mid-50-win group entering the year, reasonable for a team that lost Victor Wembanyama late last season and was without De'Aaron Fox for a long stretch. By midseason, watching them win convincingly on the road, he quietly believed they were better than almost everyone. Beating the defending champions and the two-time MVP in a Game 7 on the road, he said, confirmed it. "They have arrived. They're going to be a problem for a long, long time."

He spread the credit widely: coach Mitch Johnson, who turned an ESPN-projected 40-win team into a 62-win one by getting young players to defend; executive Brian Wright; the under-the-radar signing of Luke Kornet; and a young core of Dylan Harper, Stephon Castle, Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson, all orbiting Wembanyama. The big man, Elliott said, has Kobe Bryant's makeup in a seven-foot-plus frame, and has not begun to scratch the surface.

The real meat was the matchup. Elliott respects these Knicks, who beat the Spurs twice this season and nearly a third time before San Antonio rallied from 20 down at home. The key, he said, is Jalen Brunson, the head of the snake. Keep him off the foul line, make him work, limit how much he sets up everyone else, and the Spurs have a chance.

But this is not a one-man team. Elliott rattled off the threats: OG Anunoby as a physical two-way force, Karl-Anthony Towns, who once dropped 60 on the Spurs, Mikal Bridges as a matchup San Antonio has never solved, Mitchell Robinson's rebounding and rim protection, and Jose Alvarado, the high-energy pickup Elliott called a longtime pain. He wants to see Game 1 before forecasting, but he trusts his group. They survived a Western gauntlet, beating Anthony Edwards and Minnesota along the way, and they believe.

His advice for a Finals debut at Madison Square Garden was simple: calm the nerves early. It is the biggest spectacle in the NBA, the crowd unrivaled and hungry, so block out the noise, stick to your roles, and remember it is still basketball.

Elliott also pulled back the curtain on the culture that built all this, starting with Gregg Popovich. Before Wembanyama arrived, he said, Pop was staring into the abyss of retirement, and former players, Elliott among them, urged him to stay and give the French teenager a foundation. Pop gives the unvarnished truth, the same to legends as to rookies, and he is the one who started the team dinners now copied across the league.

Those dinners, Elliott said, are where everything dissolves. Win by 20 or lose by 30, the group gathers and the mistakes are forgotten, with Pop wandering the table asking about the Brunello or the gnocchi and lobster, trying to make his players cultured and aware that there is more to life than basketball. And if the Spurs win it all, the reunion dinner is on the organization. Nobody, Elliott laughed, wants to be saddled with that bill.