After NBA Cup surge, Spurs and Magic eye Pacers-style postseason breakthrough
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The Indiana Pacers showed in 2024 that a deep run in the NBA Cup can serve as a springboard to playoff success. Eighteen months after reaching the first Cup final, Indiana pushed the Oklahoma City Thunder to seven games in the 2025 NBA Finals. Now the San Antonio Spurs and Orlando Magic hope to follow that template.
Spurs’ late-tournament push
San Antonio strung together four consecutive elimination victories after the group stage, the first three without rookie sensation Victor Wembanyama, to earn a spot in Tuesday’s championship in Las Vegas. Although the Spurs fell 124-113 to the New York Knicks, the experience marked the club’s most meaningful basketball since its last postseason appearance in 2019.
Wembanyama, 21, returned from a calf strain for Saturday’s semifinal and produced 22 points in 21 minutes of an upset over the reigning champion Thunder. His performance, combined with breakouts from 19-year-old No. 2 pick Dylan Harper and 21-year-old guard Stephon Castle, gave the Spurs a glimpse of high-stakes competition rarely available to such a young core.
Magic end long playoff drought—or try to
Orlando has not advanced in the postseason since Dwight Howard led the franchise to the 2010 Eastern Conference finals. The Magic’s unexpected Cup run—highlighted by a 37-point, six-three-pointer performance from newly acquired guard Desmond Bane in the quarterfinals against Miami—has raised expectations that the drought could end this spring.
Limited postseason résumés
The Cup offered needed repetition for rosters short on playoff mileage. Orlando’s players have combined for just 139 postseason games, second fewest in the league behind Toronto’s 106. The Spurs own 225 postseason appearances, with most belonging to veterans Harrison Barnes (71), Kelly Olynyk (48), Luke Kornet (43) and Bismack Biyombo (40). Guard De’Aaron Fox, acquired at the 2025 trade deadline, is the only other rotation member with playoff experience.
Roster tweaks mirror Indiana’s blueprint
The Pacers fortified their roster two months after losing the inaugural Cup final by trading for forward Pascal Siakam, a move that helped propel them to the 2024 conference finals and the 2025 Finals. Orlando and San Antonio have already made comparable bets.
- Magic: Bane, obtained in June, shook off a slow start and has become a primary perimeter threat.
- Spurs: Fox has averaged 24 points on a career-best .608 true-shooting rate since returning from a November hamstring strain. His late three-pointer stopped an 11-0 Lakers run in the Cup quarterfinals and preserved a double-digit lead.
Unlike Indiana’s situation two years ago, San Antonio still controls at least one first-round pick in every future draft and holds multiple swap rights—ammunition for another major trade if management deems one necessary.
Projection favors Orlando
ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI) expects both teams to remain in the playoff race, but the numbers lean toward the Magic:
- BPI projects Orlando to finish just one game behind San Antonio despite the Spurs’ stronger start.
- San Antonio faces the league’s fifth-toughest remaining schedule; Orlando’s is rated the easiest.
- The Magic secure a top-four Eastern Conference seed in more than two-thirds of simulations, compared with 47 percent for the Spurs in the West.
- Orlando reaches the conference finals in 31 percent of BPI runs; San Antonio does so 9.5 percent of the time.
Whether the breakthrough arrives this season or further down the road, both franchises see their 2025-26 NBA Cup campaigns as critical rehearsal time—just as Indiana did before its own rise.
Source: ESPN
