The Spurs Game that starts San Antonio’s 2026 NBA Playoffs arrives Sunday night with real stakes and familiar faces. The Spurs host the Portland Trail Blazers in Game 1 at 8:00 PM CT, with NBC carrying the television broadcast and WOAI 1200 AM on radio.
San Antonio, a 10.5-point favorite, finished 62-20 and won the season series 2-1. That record matters because Victor Wembanyama missed all three regular-season meetings, even though the Spurs won both games at the Frost Bank Center and are now back in the postseason for the first time in seven years.
For Portland, this is the payoff after a messy but successful push into the bracket. The Trail Blazers earned their spot by winning on the road in Phoenix in the Western Conference 7/8 seed game, then arrived in San Antonio with a season that improved by six games and delivered the franchise’s first playoff berth since 2021.
The path here was not straightforward. Portland’s season changed in the second game, when Chauncey Billups was put on indefinite suspension by the NBA after his arrest in a federal gambling investigation, and Tiago Splitter took over as head coach. Splitter had joined Billups’s staff in June 2025, and his promotion kept the Blazers moving through a stretch that could have sent the season off course.
That is the friction inside this matchup: San Antonio owns the homecourt edge and the better record, but Portland arrives with a playoff win already in hand and a coach who inherited the job in the middle of the turmoil. The Spurs have not had to solve this version of the Blazers before, and they have not done it yet this season with Wembanyama on the floor against them.
Sunday’s opener is the kind of game that can tell the truth quickly. If the Spurs protect home court again, they will justify the number and the long wait that ended with this home playoff stage in the Victor Wembanyama era. If Portland steals it, the series changes shape before San Antonio has a chance to settle in.
For a team that waited seven years to get back here, that is the part that matters most.
