The Athletic: Spurs’ winning formula is more than Victor Wembanyama. Their undefeated month showed it

The Spurs have won 11 in a row and are just 1.5 games behind the Thunder.

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NEW YORK — Victor Wembanyama claimed he hadn’t heard, but it was inevitably coming for him. The San Antonio Spurs had just beaten the Brooklyn Nets 126-110 to complete a perfect 11-0 month of February when he was asked how his team has managed to block out the “noise” that they are proving to be among the title favorites.

“I mean, you’re the first one to tell me about it,” Wembanyama said with a wry smile. “So to block out that noise, I guess, can you take away his mic?”

When the intrepid young reporter gleefully passed the mic off to the next inquisitor, Wembanyama mumbled “Thank you,” only to be soon asked about his place as the next face of the league and the potential MVP. It was in that moment that he simultaneously made his case for the award while proving why he probably can’t get it.

It’s the same reason the Spurs closed their third undefeated month in franchise history and are quickly climbing to the top of the NBA’s standings at 43-16, just 1.5 games behind the Oklahoma City Thunder.

“I know I’m in MVP conversations. Of course, it’s one of my goals,” Wembanyama said. “The main argument for that is team success, but I’m also conscious that I need to press the gas a little bit in the last games of the season.”

The biggest argument against Wembanyama’s MVP candidacy is this Spurs run of success, during which a different teammate carries the scoring load on a nightly basis as he finds way to make a holistic impact on games. The Spurs kept winning without him early in the season. They keep winning with him now that the team is fully healthy.

Wembanyama and the Spurs find themselves in this peculiar, unexpected place as they enter the penultimate month of the season. They started this campaign in October simply hoping to make the postseason. Wembanyama made waves when he had the audacity to say their goal was the No. 6 seed when most of his teammates were saying winning the Play-In Tournament would be quite fine.

Now, ahead of the homestretch of the regular season, the Spurs regrouped and discussed the whole championship thing head-on.

“After the All-Star break, we had the conversation with the team of just, every game from now on, it means something. We’re fighting for something. We’re building something,” Julian Champagnie said last week.

The result was a continuation of what is now an 11-game winning streak, which is possible only because the Spurs saw a bottom-of-the-standings team like the Nets start to close the gap in the second half and quickly blew the game wide open. Champagnie, in his hometown of Brooklyn, dropped a game-high 26 points in just 24 minutes, showing the kind of performance the Spurs keep getting from a deep supporting cast that has proven to be the ideal fit around their enormous star.

This level of success is a novel experience for most of this locker room. It’s why these games all matter. They are learning how to be winners in real time, preparing for a playoff run less than two months away against a field loaded with the playoff experience they largely lack.

“No, I have not experienced this much winning in my life,” Champagnie said. “I think that most teams I’ve been on, we’ve just been OK, mediocre, kind of teetering between winning, not winning, figuring it out.”

Champagnie thought back to the Spurs’ run to the NBA Cup final in Las Vegas in December, which strengthened an already close-knit group and put it on track toward winning consistently once players got healthy.

“I feel like that’s just what we’re doing, and we’re seeing the benefits of it,” Champagnie said. “And I think we all love it.”

Does that mean the Spurs’ success this month — and the variety of ways they have achieved it — shows they are ready for the playoffs, in spite of Wembanyama and Stephon Castle being new to the whole high-level winning thing?

“Honestly, the coach hasn’t been there either, so we’ll have to see,” coach Mitch Johnson said. “The reasoning why people get excited about us is very logical. The reasoning for people to have concerns about whatever their concerns are about, I’m sure typically have some logic behind it. And honestly, it has not moved us.”

The formula the Spurs’ coach has refined over the past month has proven to work against a variety of teams. The Spurs’ guard play has taken pressure off Wembanyama to be the main on-ball creator. Johnson noted after the game that when Wembanyama is in a stance, he is the most influential defender in the league — and even in the conversation as “something very unique from what we’ve seen.”

Johnson took most pride in the fact none of his players went on any historic stretch during this period. It was just consistently good play from a lot of different types of players.

“I think that’s a sign of growth for a team that at a certain point, we were probably a bit of a momentum team earlier in the season,” Johnson said. “Our highs were really high, but we were continuing to grasp that consistency, and I think it’s been fun this month to have some struggle.”

The Spurs have been through some ebbs and flows this season, but they aren’t just winning now. They look like the team they were early in the season, before the scouting report made its way around the league and the Spurs had to respond. Now they have a blend of health, consistency and adaptability that has them winning on a regular basis against good and bad teams.

They aren’t a great team yet, but they are a team that keeps winning as the biggest tests get closer.

“Does (the undefeated month) mean it was perfect? Not at all,” Wembanyama said. “But looking back, it’s never really perfect. So it’s pretty satisfying.”

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