2 trades Spurs must make to help Victor Wembanyama get his first NBA championship

The San Antonio Spurs weren’t too far away from going all the way this past season, as they gave away four very winnable games en route to losing the 2026 NBA Finals to the New York Knicks in a hard-fought five-game series. While the Spurs have become the laughingstock of the NBA world after routinely collapsing in the fourth quarter of close games, this is a team that, with some seasoning, is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

But time and time again, the NBA has shown that teams cannot take open title windows for granted. The biggest cautionary tale in this regard is the 2010s Oklahoma City Thunder; many believed that they’d be back in the NBA Finals after losing in five games to the Miami Heat in 2012, but they never made it back under the Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook core.

The big mistake that the Thunder made, of course, is that they traded away James Harden. The Spurs are not going to be making a mistake of that sort. No one is ever going to touch one of Victor Wembanyama, Dylan Harper, and Stephon Castle in trade talks.

While the 2025-26 Spurs roster was good enough to win a title, there were clear points of improvement that the front office must have taken note of as they lost one heartbreaker after another to the Knicks.

Adding another multi-positional wing who stands at around 6’7″ to 6’10”, a la Aaron Gordon, would go a long way towards making the Spurs more matchup-proof. Moreover, acquiring an upgrade at backup center to avoid getting toast in the non-Wembanyama minutes could be huge as well.

The Spurs do have avenues to reshuffle the roster around — especially if they’re receptive to the idea of a De’Aaron Fox trade.

Are the Spurs ready for a Kawhi Leonard reunion?

Spurs acquire: Kawhi Leonard

Clippers acquire: Jalen Suggs, Jonathan Isaac, 2027 ATL first-round pick, 2030 SAS first-round pick, three second-round picks (2026 UTA, 2028 NOP, 2029 LAC)

Magic acquire: De’Aaron Fox

It was in 2018 when the Spurs truly began the course that led them to Wembanyama. Kawhi Leonard and his camp announced that they wanted out, and the Spurs obliged — sending him to the Toronto Raptors, where he proceeded to win his second championship and Finals MVP award.

How unbelievable of a storybook ending would it be for Leonard to be the man who pushes this new Spurs contending team over the top?

The odds are Leonard is not going to move away from LA; he basically engineered a move to the Clippers from the moment he decided that he was done with the Spurs, and he has considerable influence within the team.

But the Clippers front office knows that the team is going nowhere fast. Even with Leonard playing at an unbelievable level throughout the 2025-26 season (27.9 points per game on 51/39/89 shooting splits), the Clippers finished outside of the 2026 NBA playoffs.

That team is not yet built to contend, and the Clippers have the fifth overall pick of this year’s draft. Perhaps they would be inclined to kick off a rebuild, and it’s not quite clear how big Leonard’s appetite is for such an undertaking.

Maybe time has healed all wounds between Leonard and the Spurs. Gregg Popovich is no longer the head coach, and the team around him has changed completely. He’ll be the veteran superstar of this team instead of being a part of the ensemble which he once was.

Imagine just how differently the Spurs would have performed in the clutch if they had Leonard instead of De’Aaron Fox in their series against the Knicks. Leonard is unmistakably one of the greatest playoff performers of this generation, and it’s not too hard to imagine that it’d be San Antonio who’s hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy if he was Wembanyama’s co-star.

The problem, of course, is that Leonard is already 34 years of age. He’s always going to be an injury risk. But the Spurs have a wide-open title window, and Leonard, as a stout perimeter defender who stands at 6’7″ all while possessing incredible shot-creation skill even against elite defenses, could be the missing piece.

As for the Clippers, getting two first-round picks as well as two very valuable second-round picks for a 34-year-old Leonard in the final year of his deal could be sweet.

They have no use for De’Aaron Fox, but if they’re able to re-route him to a team that needs more scoring, say the Orlando Magic, then they’d be wise to do so, especially if it would net Jalen Suggs, someone who can partner up with Darius Garland in the backcourt, and Jonathan Isaac, a good team defender.

Thanks for the memories, Luke Kornet, but it’s time to go

Spurs acquire: Daniel Gafford

Mavericks acquire: Luke Kornet, 2026 ATL first-round pick [20th overall] (draft night) 

Luke Kornet will forever live in Spurs lore for his Game 7 block on Isaiah Hartenstein that kept the momentum solely in San Antonio’s favor. He was a regular season trooper, providing excellent minutes as the primary cover for Wembanyama.

But it became evident the deeper the Spurs went into the playoffs that they needed an upgrade over Kornet. Kornet is a big body who can take up so much space in the paint, but he’s not nearly good enough to keep the team afloat with Wembanyama on the bench.

By the end of the 2026 NBA Finals, it was clear that Wembanyama was becoming extremely fatigued towards the end of games. He was barely getting any rest, with head coach Mitch Johnson not being comfortable with sitting him out for more than a few minutes at a time.

The Spurs need a much more reliable and defensively versatile center to give Wembanyana more space to breathe. The Knicks’ center depth, with Mitchell Robinson spelling Karl-Anthony Towns, has to be the blueprint for San Antonio.

Thankfully for them, Daniel Gafford is a backup big who’s readily available on the trade market. The Mavericks will find it difficult to decline an offer with a first-round pick, and he could be the man for the backup job moving forward if the Spurs feel inclined to move on from Kornet after just one season.

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