Wembanyama, Castle, and Harper hand the Spurs a window no other contender in the West has

Sam Vecenie told Jason Timpf that he believes the Spurs will probably be even better this season than they were last year, pointing to their youth as the reason because they'll keep improving. The logic was pretty straightforward, and he's right. Sam is just underselling it.

For three years, the Silver and Black's youth was the asterisk attached to every compliment. "Great young core with a bright future, but they're not ready yet," was the overall sentiment. Then San Antonio went 62-20, knocked off the defending champion Thunder in Game 7, and walked into the NBA Finals as the second-youngest team ever to get there, behind only the 1976-77 Trail Blazers.

They lost to the Knicks in five, but the asterisk needs to come off anyway.

The youth knock has evolved into a Spurs weapon

Sure, you can always learn, and we expect the guys to continue doing so, but there's a difference between a young squad that theoretically might figure it out and a young team that already has. These guys have stood in a Finals huddle with the season on the line.

They know what that air feels like. Nobody needs to explain to Dylan Harper why the fourth quarter of a playoff game is different, because he put up 18 a night in the biggest series of his life at 20 years old. So you bet on this group now because they already know exactly what they were missing, and none of it was talent.

Go back to the Finals. The series was decided by an average of four points a game. The Knicks led for 23.6 percent of it. SA built a 29-point lead in Game 4 and then shot 8-of-39 after halftime, so it wasn't like they were completely outclassed. They lost a handful of possessions experience is supposed to teach you how to win.

Mitch Johnson couldn't have coached that into them during the parade of 82. You can only live it and learn from it. They just did that.

Most NBA contenders are done growing

Now look around the league, and let's start with the team that beat them. The Knicks' starting five of Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Josh Hart is 30, 30, 29, 30, and 31 years old right now. Those players are pretty much finished products. A great one, but finished, nonetheless. Their peak may have already happened in June.

It's the same story down the contender list. Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray are 31 and 29. Luka Doncic is 27. Those teams get better by adding pieces, because their stars have arrived.

San Antonio levels up by doing nothing except showing up to put in the work. Harper is 20, Stephon Castle is 21, Victor Wembanyama is 22, and Carter Bryant is 20. Wemby shot 27.3% from three in the Finals and still averaged 26 and 11. Steph shot 37.7% from the floor in that series. These are only starting points for the Spurs' core of the future, and they have plenty of room to move forward.

Then there's everything that doesn't show up in the box score. The Slash Bros. have played exactly one season together. We saw what it looks like when the two youngins run the offense themselves. The spacing, the reads, the knowing-where-he's-going-before-he-goes feel that championship teams are built on all compound with reps this roster has been building.

The only close exception is Oklahoma City. Jalen Williams is only 25, and Chet Holmgren is 24, so the Thunder have room to grow too. But Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 28. He has back-to-back MVPs, and he just declared himself the best player in the NBA. We can see most of OKC's ceiling from here. We can't see San Antonio's.

Nobody knows what a 25-year-old Wembanyama looks like, and we won't find out until 2029. The Spurs just have way more runway to improve than anybody else. Sam Vecenie says they'll be better. "Better" is the floor.

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