Just two undefeated teams remain in the Western Conference after the first week-plus of the NBA season. The 5-0 Oklahoma City Thunder, who have a chance to move to 6-0 with a matchup against the pitiful Washington Wizards, aren’t a major surprise. The 4-0 San Antonio Spurs are.
San Antonio will face its first 2025 playoff team of the season tonight when it welcomes to the Miami Heat to Frost Bank Center for an 8:30 p.m. ET matchup. Both teams are missing key players: the Spurs will continue to be without De’Aaron Fox and Jeremy Sochan, while Norman Powell and Tyler Herro won’t suit up for the Heat.
San Antonio is a 6.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-258 on the Moneyline), and the point total is set to 229.5. Miami, meanwhile, is +210 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down what is effectively a litmus test for the Spurs and offer a prediction.
Miami Heat at San Antonio Spurs preview, prediction
San Antonio probably won’t retain the league’s best net rating for the rest of the season, and its schedule — the Dallas Mavericks, New Orleans Pelicans, Brooklyn Nets, and Toronto Raptors — hasn’t been impressive. But there are reasons to think that the Spurs’ general improvement is real, given that they have arguably the league’s best player in Victor Wembanyama, a capable back-up big in Luke Kornet, and a pair of promising young guards in Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper. San Antonio’s strong start is making waves in the betting markets: Wembanyama has the shortest odds to win DPOY (-225) and the second-shortest to win MVP (+275), Harper (+1500) has the fourth-best odds to win Rookie of the Year, and Mitch Johnson (+500) leads the early Coach of the Year race.
The Heat have been pretty promising too, even after Herro underwent offseason foot surgery. After a season-opening defeat to the Orlando Magic, Miami has won games against the Memphis Grizzlies, the New York Knicks, and the Charlotte Hornets, scoring more than 140 points in regulation twice. The Heat actually have the league’s third-best net rating, with top 10 marks on both offense (seventh) and defense (fourth). Jaime Jaquez Jr. has established himself as one of the league’s best sixth men, averaging 18.8 points per game and leading the league in on-off net rating, and Davion Mitchell ranks sixth in assists. Miami didn’t miss a beat without its leading scorer, Powell, in throttling Charlotte, 144-117.
Heat at Spurs pick, best bet
The Spurs’ aim this season has been to dominate with Wembanyama off the floor and survive without him. So far this season, they’ve done just that, posting a plus-24.4 net rating in his 129 minutes and a plus-2.0 mark in the 63 minutes that they’ve played without him. That plan fell apart in their win over the Raptors on Tuesday, though, as they outscored Toronto by 35 points in Wembanyama’s 31 minutes and lost by 17 in the 17 minutes he didn’t play. Without backup center Luke Kornet, who’s sidelined with an ankle injury, San Antonio might struggle, given Bismack Biyombo’s negative-37.4 on-off net rating in his 31 minutes.
In theory, the Heat also have one of the league’s best “Wembanyama stoppers” in second-year center Kel’el Ware, as well as former Defensive Player of the Year finalist Bam Adebayo. Last season, Ware had a 25-point, eight-rebound performance against the Spurs, his second-best game of the season by game score. Although although he only scored six points on two-for-seven shooting in the 26.3 partial possessions that Wembanyama guarded him last season, he did hold the Frenchman to five points on two-for-10 shooting, Wembanyama’s least efficient performance against any player who guarded him for at least 30 possessions. Wemby went two-for-three last season when guarded by Adebayo and seven-for-12 as a rookie, and he’s also held Adebayo to combined five-for-11 shooting across their three matchups. It’s possible, then, that Ware just has an innate sense of Wembanyama’s game, but the sample size is tiny.
Overall, Miami will probably miss Powell against a better defense than the Hornets’. The offseason trade acquisition built on his breakout 2024-25 season by averaging 24.0 points, 7.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 2.0 steals per game on 48-50-91 shooting splits, and posting a positive defensive box plus-minus figure for the first time since 2019-20. Obviously, sample sizes are minuscule, so I’m not expecting Powell to maintain his career-best rebounding and defense for the rest of the season, but by the same token, his negative-17.4 on-off net rating is almost certainly a fluke. The win over Charlotte saw each of the Heat’s players besides Mitchell and Ware make at least half of their field goal attempts and threes, which is completely unsustainable. Backup shooting guard Pelle Larsson won’t continue to be a perfect Powell impersonator, and Jaquez won’t score 28 points off the bench in every game.
The Heat have allowed the 12th-most rebounds per game in both 2024-25 and so far in 2025-26, and Wembanyama trails only Steven Adams in rebounding percentage and only Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokić are averaging more boards overall. San Antonio has also attempted the fifth-most shots within five feet and converted at the ninth-highest clip, while Miami has conceded the second-highest shooting percentage in that zone. Offensively, the Heat have settled for a lot of non-restricted paint shots, and they’ve only managed to convert the seventh-most restricted area tries because they’ve shot the third-best percentage around the rim, which is likely to change against Wembanyama. They’ve also canned triples at the fourth-highest rate, in part because they’ve had the third-best accuracy on wide-open tries, which the Spurs have allowed at the league’s seventh-lowest rate so far.
Miami has a chance if it can limit Wembanyama’s minutes, but the clearest way to do that is to draw fouls, and the Heat have done that the fourth-fewest times this season after ranking second-to-last in that category in 2024-25. Without Powell, who leads the team in free throw attempts per game, I can’t see Miami getting it done. San Antonio will start 5-0 for the first time in its franchise history, and it’ll do it comfortably.
