Are the Spurs Legit Title Contenders? | Real Ones

The Ringer NBA Show

The Ringer

Sports

4.4 • 9.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Logan Murdock, Raja Bell, and Howard Beck are back with another edition of Real Ones, and they examine how the Spurs snapped the Oklahoma City Thunder's 16-game win streak in the NBA Cup semifinals. Victor Wembanyama returned with a vengeance, netting 22 points and nine rebounds in just 21 minutes of action. The guys ask whether the young and up-and-coming Spurs are actually ready to win now. Should the Spurs make a run at Giannis Antetokounmpo if the Bucks are open to trading him? Plus, the mailbag! (0:00) Intro (1:43) FanDuel ad break (2:33) Are the Spurs going to the NBA Finals? (20:28) Amazon Prime ad break (21:01) How the current Spurs compare with teams of the past (44:30) Mailbag https://www.theringer.com/2021/02/17/nba/jeremy-lin-g-league-santa-cruz-warriors-linsanity Hit the mailbag! [email protected] Hosts: Logan Murdock, Howard Beck, and Raja BellProducers: Victoria Valencia and Clifford AugustinAdditional Production Support: Ben Cruz and Conor Nevins The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out ⁠rg-help.com⁠ to find out more, or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Shopping. Streaming. Celebrating. It’s on Prime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's popping?
0:06.0	Ruins.
0:06.6	Logan Murdoch here.
0:07.7	Raja Bell and Howard Beck and a few great show for you guys today.
0:11.6	We talk about the ramifications of Saturday night's NBA Cup game between the Oklahoma
0:16.5	City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs.
0:18.2	What does this mean for the Spurs?
0:19.7	I mean, I know earlier in the season we talked talked about how the Spurs, are they a move away? Are they ready for this stage? Are
0:28.3	they a contender? I was very high on the Spurs, as you guys all know, Wemby for MVP. That was my pick.
0:34.6	And maybe we have time to do it, probably not. But hey, silly MVP right now in my heart.
0:39.9	But we talked about his trajectory.
0:42.7	We talked about team building as a whole.
0:44.6	We got into an old school discussion on what works for team building at the stage that the San
0:49.5	Antonio Spurs are in and the Oklahoma City Thunder are in.
0:52.9	What are the pitfalls of these types of
0:56.1	ascensions? What can break them apart? And most importantly, how do you keep a dynamic going over
1:02.6	decades? So it was really, really fun. Roger Bell has a great perspective on this. Howard Beck,
1:06.7	as you guys know, legend has covered a lot of these teams, has been around the league for a long
1:12.0	time, has been around teams that have been both great with team chemistry, not so great with
1:17.8	team chemistry, and still one and also not great as an organization as a whole and has done
1:23.0	a lot of losing.
1:24.2	So really, really fun show.
	...

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