Mitch Johnson led the Spurs to 62 wins in the 2025-26 campaign, the franchise's most since 2014, and turned a team that had spent much of the last two years searching for direction into one of the league's best on both ends. San Antonio climbed from the 13th spot at the end of the 2025-25 campaign to the second seed out West in 2026, a leap that put Johnson squarely in the Coach of the Year conversation.
The rise mattered because it came after a difficult stretch that left the Spurs missing the playoffs last year and sitting at 21-25 before Victor Wembanyama's season-ending blood clot scare. Johnson was not supposed to be carrying that weight this way. He had been tasked with building the culture and system needed to move San Antonio out of a rebuild, but Greg Popovich's stroke in November 2024 and his later move into the front office as president of basketball operations changed the timeline and handed Johnson the job sooner than expected.
That is the weight behind Johnson's case: the record, the climb and the way the Spurs did it. San Antonio did not just pile up wins against a soft schedule. It produced elite results on offense and defense, the kind of balance that usually belongs to teams already established as contenders.
The comparison for the award is strong. Joe Mazzulla had an impressive season with the Celtics, and JB Bickerstaff led the Pistons to the East's top seed and their first 60-win season since 2006. But Johnson's work stands out because it came in the middle of a transformation, not after one. The Spurs were still being described as a team in rebuild mode when he took over the biggest coaching responsibilities, and he delivered the season that took them out of that frame.
What happens next is whether this becomes a one-year surge or the start of a sustained run. For now, Johnson has done the hardest part: he made the Spurs look finished rebuilding, and he did it while the coach he replaced in practice was still part of the organization.
