Brian Wright didn’t bother with the usual GM speak. The San Antonio Spurs’ top basketball executive looked at his team’s 2026 draft haul and essentially said yeah, we knew exactly what we were doing.
Jayden Quaintance at 6-foot-9. Tarris Reed Jr. at 6-foot-10. Maliq Brown at 6-foot-9. That’s three big bodies the Spurs added last week, and Wright made it clear it wasn’t an accident.
“As you can see, we had a type,” the 43-year-old GM said. “We added a couple of big bodies, physical and athletic.”
The Spurs watched the playoffs unfold like everyone else. What they saw was a game tilted toward physical play, toward guys who could shove back. Wright figured San Antonio needed more of that muscle, especially given what they already have going on.
“I think the thing you learned across the playoffs was the physicality part, right?” Wright said. “I think you all saw it. We all felt it. I thought our team raised our level across each series in how we adapted and how we brought our own physicality.”
The big man math
Quaintance went 20th overall but probably won’t be ready when the season tips off. He’s recovering from an injury and the team isn’t rushing him. Reed, picked 26th, could slide into the rotation faster. And then there’s Victor Wembanyama. The Spurs see something here. A frontcourt that could actually bother people.
“We’re a fast-paced, fast-playing team, and in order to do that, you’ve got to get stops,” Wright said. “You’ve got to rebound. You’ve got to protect the rim, play off your defense.”
Brown came off the board at 44. He played at Duke and knows how to guard multiple spots. The Spurs might stash him in the G League to start, but he fits the same profile as the other two guys. Long. Active. Annoying to play against.
“The ability to guard in different coverages, screening, those types of things are incredibly important,” Wright said. “You don’t hear that as much sometimes when you talk about the draft and upside, but those are things that are very important to how teams function.”
Tennessee guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie rounded things out at pick 42. He’s the small guard of the group, which makes sense as a change of pace. But the story here is the size. The Spurs just came off an NBA Finals run and decided they needed to get harder to score on in the paint. That’s the takeaway.
Wright didn’t dance around it. He called the physicality the playoffs taught him and acted like his front office took notes and went shopping from that list. “The more depth you have, the more ability there is to manage minutes,” he said. “We just think that they’re two really good players that add dynamics and elements to our team that we really value.”
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