Former Spurs assistant Sean Sweeney has shared his thoughts on why San Antonio fell short in the 2026 NBA Finals, suggesting the loss had more to do with the Spurs themselves than the New York Knicks.
Sweeney, who recently left San Antonio to become the Orlando Magic’s head coach, offered several reasons why the Spurs couldn’t finish the job.
“I think a few things,” he said on The Ryen Russillo Show. “One, I think there’s a little attrition having to go through the previous series. Two, bad luck. They told me if the games were like 46 minutes or whatever, we would’ve won 4-1.”
San Antonio entered the Finals after surviving a physically demanding seven-game Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Despite leading every game of the championship series by double digits, the Spurs were unable to close out four of the five contests as the Knicks repeatedly stormed back late.
Sweeney believes those collapses came down to San Antonio making mistakes it hadn’t made earlier in the playoffs rather than anything fundamentally changing about the team.
“Jalen [Brunson] obviously had a monster game in that last one. Coached him in Dallas. Happy for him – kind of. I think we just made more mistakes than we had made in the previous series,” Sweeney added. “You can maybe say something to that, but you don’t do what you did, and then all of a sudden become young.”
Brunson capped off the series with a franchise-record 43-point performance in Game five as New York secured its first NBA championship in 53 years.
Sweeney also suggested the bright lights of the NBA Finals may have affected San Antonio’s young roster away from the court as much as on it.
“The one thing I think that’s a little different in the finals than the other rounds is when you have to do media in the finals, you have to answer questions even when you’ve played poorly or struggled,” Sweeney said. “And you don’t have to do that in previous rounds.”
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