Spurs' biggest doubters must begin admitting their mistakes

They said they were unsure about Mitch Johnson. They didn't know if this team had enough shooting. Was De'Aaron Fox a winning player? They should trade one of their guards. They were wrong about all of it. San Antonio has been heavily discussed since Victor Wembanyama's arrival, and coming into the season, those talks have expressed nothing but doubt in what this organization was building.

They all seem so silly now. I know that there are teams like the New Orleans Pelicans and Washington Wizards that have been bad for so long, you just expect that to continue, but the Spurs don't fall into that category.

Former head coach Gregg Popovich was always going to leave a capable successor. Talented players will always find a way to exist together and thrive while doing so. The players who get to play for top-tier organizations usually improve. These factors should have always been taken into consideration.

The right trajectory for multiple Spurs was always there

Now that a guy like Keldon Johnson has truly found his role, he's playing some of the best basketball of his career. When you look back at his history, he's shown flashes of what he was capable of. He just needed to take the next step with his on-court maturity—taking better shots and taking care of the ball—and now, we see the Sixth Man of the Year capabilities all over his game.

Devin Vassell showed steady improvement year after year until last season. Now that he's back on track, everything is right again for Spurs fans who began to turn against him.

This team should have won more games last season. They faced immense adversity, and it grossly affected the outcome of the campaign, but if you remember how they were playing through last November and December, you recall people saying the same thing they're saying now: the Spurs are ahead of schedule.

They were 16-15 heading into January before everything went off the rails. Losing Pop the way they did caught up to them, the schedule got tougher, Wemby went down, and you know the rest. Their 34 wins weren't a fair representation of how good the team actually was.

Now people believe that San Antonio has skipped steps, when really they're just finally able to show what they've been working toward for years. The development was always working. It's a process, and sometimes, it's a slow one. That's what Pop kept trying to stress for years, and now all that patience has led us here.