Don’t look yet, but are the San Antonio Spurs back? Once the class of the NBA, winning five championships under legendary head coach Gregg Popovich while forming a dynasty in the process, recent seasons have not been kind to the Spurs. In rebuild mode since the latter part of the 2010s, the Spurs have not made the playoffs since the 2018-19 season.
And while the rise of superstar Victor Wembanyama has certainly created more buzz around the Spurs, the recent promotion of longtime assistant coach, Mitch Johnson, to the head coach role has the Spurs looking like a team ready to return to the playoffs.
In fact, in his first season as the full-time head coach, Johnson has the Spurs sitting at 8-3 and third in the Western Conference, after the team started 5-0, their best start in franchise history.
Johnson, who served as the Spurs’ interim head coach for most of last season while Popovich dealt with a medical emergency, had been on staff since 2019. After Popovich stepped down following last season, the Spurs wasted no time in promoting Johnson to the head role after he won the players over with his excellent performance as the interim in 2024-25 as they went 32-45.
Now that Johnson is in charge, a new era of Spurs basketball is officially here, and this era is one that could soon take the NBA by storm.
One of the youngest teams in the league, most of the Spurs marquee players are not even in their prime yet, with guys like Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell still having plenty of room to grow despite showing that they have what it takes to be superstars.
Add them next to more established players such as De’Aaron Fox and Harrison Barnes, and you have a team that has the potential to run the Western Conference for multiple seasons in the near future, even with teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder in the midst of dominance.
Before taking over as the head coach/interim head coach, Johnson was one of Popovich’s top assistants from 2019-24, joining San Antonio after serving as an assistant for its G-League team, the Austin Spurs, from 2016-19, which included winning a G-League championship in 2018.
Johnson got his coaching start back in 2011 after his playing career ended, serving as a coaching intern at Seattle University in 2011 and an AAU basketball coach around the same time, before joining his first official coaching staff in 2015-16, when he served as an assistant for the Portland Pilots in the WCC.
As a player, Johnson played at Stanford from 2005-09, and was a member of two NCAA tournament teams, including the Stanford team that made it to the Sweet Sixteen in 2007-08. Coming off the bench his first two seasons, Johnson became a starter as a junior.
As a senior, he averaged 6.6 points, 4.5 assists and 2.5 rebounds while starting all 32 of Stanford’s games. In total, Johnson left Stanford averaging 5.3 points, 3.0 rebounds and 4.1 assists for his career.
Going undrafted in the 2009 NBA Draft, Johnson joined the Tulsa 66ers. After playing professionally for three years across the G-League and Europe, he decided to retire from playing so he could pursue coaching instead. Now, Johnson is the face of the Spurs, a team that he hopes he can lead to become a dynasty once again.
