Stephon Castle of the San Antonio Spurs was recently named the 2024-25 NBA Rookie of the Year, becoming the second straight Spur to take home the award after his teammate Victor Wembanyama unanimously won it last year. Castle and Wemby took incredibly different paths to the NBA, but both have already established themselves as franchise players. They now form the foundation of a Spurs team, alongside trade acquisition DeAaron Fox, that hopes to contend for a playoff spot next year.
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Castle sat down with his enormous French teammate for an interview about what it felt like to win the award, and although some of the questions and answers were pretty vanilla, there was one part of the interview that stood out.
Wemby brought up the fact that Castle won a national title in his only collegiate season at UConn, and asked how he thinks that experience helps him in the NBA.
“Those environments are so different,” Castle said. “To win a college championship, people don’t understand how hard it is… It makes it easy to be fearless, not to shy away from anything. When you play in those kind of environments, you can play anywhere.”
Castle had the added pressure in his one year with the Huskies of having to defend a national title that occurred before he even arrived. That did nothing to slow him down though, as he scored more than 11 points a game while playing some of the best perimeter defense in the country as he helped Dan Hurley cut the nets down for the second year in a row.
Castle even upped his game when it mattered most, scoring 21 against Alabama in the Final Four and 15 against Purdue in the national championship game. This helped him become the fourth overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.
The Spurs are going to be a problem for the NBA very soon
Wemby had a much different basketball journey, as he grew up in France and began playing professionally at the age of 15 before being taken with the No. 1 overall pick in 2023. That made him the third Spur to be taken with the top pick, following in the footsteps of David Robinson and Tim Duncan.
Wemby and Castle are cornerstone players that could be the foundation of an NBA champion one day. The Spurs hope that day comes soon, and they’re making moves to make that happen. They added Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes this past year, not only for their abilities as players, but to serve as veteran mentors to the team’s young core.
They also traded for De’Aaron Fox in February and will undoubtedly have more moves in store this summer, with some people even speculating that they could somehow get involved in a potential Giannis Antetokounmpo deal, which is just downright terrifying to contemplate for the rest of the league.
The Spurs will also have two lottery picks — their own and the Atlanta Hawks’, which they’re owed from the 2022 Dejounte Murray trade. The placement of those picks will be determined when the lottery numbers are drawn on May 12th, then the draft will take place on June 25th.
With all these questions of trades, it’s uncertain if Castle will stick around or not, but if they do, NBA fans are going to want to keep an eye on the Spurs. Between Wemby, Castle, and so many other assets, this is a team that’s going to be a serious contender sooner rather than later.
