Barack Obama Watched the Spurs in the Finals. He Thinks Their Best Basketball Is Still Ahead.

The San Antonio Spurs didn’t win the NBA championship. But Barack Obama saw something in that loss that most people might have missed.

Sitting down with the “All the Smoke” podcast, the former president spent a lot more time talking about what the Spurs did right than what went wrong. And his reasoning basically boils down to this: the Spurs are scary young, and they’re only going to get scarier.

“I love this young San Antonio team,” Obama said flatly.

He’s not just parroting headlines either. He got specific. Obama pointed to rookie Dylan Harper nearly stealing Game 5 with a few critical late-game plays. He talked about Stephon Castle’s development. He talked about Victor Wembanyama like the guy is still somehow underrated despite being seven-foot-four and doing things nobody his size has ever done.

“I think Wemby will end up being as good as we are projecting,” Obama said. “And I don’t remember somebody that big moving like that.”

But Obama didn’t stop at the obvious stuff. He mentioned Harper specifically as a guy who’s already ahead of schedule. “I think Harper will be that guy, but he’s 20,” Obama said. He even dropped a little personal perspective on that: his youngest daughter Sasha just turned 25, meaning Harper is five years younger than Obama’s own kid. The point being we’re asking a 20-year-old to carry a franchise in the NBA Finals, and he nearly did it. That’s not a problem. That’s a sign.

What Obama saw that stats don’t measure

The thing that seemed to stick with Obama most wasn’t a box score number. It was how the Spurs carried themselves.

“I like their demeanor,” he said. “When they were on the court, they got that kind of game face on.”

Composure in June is rare for a team this young. Most unproven squads crumble when the lights get hot. The Spurs didn’t. They lost, but they never looked lost. Obama noticed that.

He also touched on something else that’s been floating around Spurs circles for a while: does De’Aaron Fox fit as the long-term answer at point guard? Obama called Fox a terrific player but seemed to hint that San Antonio might eventually want a more traditional floor general — the Chris Paul type, or even a Maurice Cheeks type. He suggested Harper could grow into that role naturally over time.

Wembanyama still has room to grow

Obama was clear about Wembanyama’s future. He thinks the kid will be as good as everyone projects. But he also pointed out a few things the Spurs’ center still needs to work on.

“He’s gotta figure out what his go-to move is. He’s gotta put on some weight. And he’s gotta work on his conditioning,” Obama said.

That’s not a criticism. It’s reality. Modern NBA defense demands centers who can rotate across the floor, recover to shooters, and defend in space. Wembanyama does that already at a level nobody his size has managed. But doing it for 35 minutes a night in June takes a different kind of gas tank.

Obama has talked about Wembanyama before. Back in 2024, he compared him to Magic Johnson, Kevin Durant and Larry Bird all in the same breath. The fact that he’s still talking about the Spurs the same way after the Finals loss says something. This isn’t a casual bandwagon take. He genuinely believes the foundation is real.

The Spurs didn’t just prove they could hang with the Knicks. They proved they have the young talent, the mentality and the pieces to keep coming back. In Obama’s view, the Finals loss wasn’t an ending. It was a first chapter.