The Atlanta Hawks erased a fast start by the San Antonio Spurs and won their preseason meeting 123-116 on Thursday night at Frost Bank Center, handing San Antonio a loss in its first exhibition game of the fall.
San Antonio opened the game the way a home crowd hopes a preseason opener will open, outscoring Atlanta 39-20 in the first quarter behind an energized start that had star center Victor Wembanyama celebrating early baskets with his teammates. But the Hawks methodically took the game back, winning the second quarter 42-30 to cut the deficit to seven by halftime, then edging the third quarter 31-26 and closing with a 30-21 fourth.
The swing quarters told the story. Atlanta’s bench and transition game wore down a Spurs rotation that, like every team in the first week of the preseason, was experimenting with combinations. San Antonio’s early offense — crisp, confident, and built around its young core — gave way to the disjointed stretches that October basketball reliably produces once the starters sit.
Wembanyama’s presence shaped the night even in limited preseason minutes. The French center, now the unquestioned centerpiece of San Antonio’s rebuild, drew the loudest reactions of the evening and remains the player around whom every Spurs possession, and every opposing scouting report, is organized. How San Antonio manages his workload through the exhibition schedule will be a running theme of the month.
For Atlanta, a comeback win on the road — even a preseason one — checks the boxes coaches actually care about in early October: conditioning held up across four quarters, the second unit produced, and the team responded to a 19-point first-quarter deficit without its rotations unraveling. The Hawks outscored San Antonio by 26 points over the final three quarters.
Preseason results come with the standard disclaimers. Neither team played anything resembling a regular-season rotation, fourth-quarter minutes went to players fighting for roster spots, and both coaching staffs valued evaluation over outcome. San Antonio will take its first-quarter film as evidence of what its preferred lineups can do; Atlanta will take the comeback as evidence of depth.
Both teams continue their exhibition schedules in the coming days, with rotations expected to lengthen for starters as opening night approaches. San Antonio’s next look will come with Wembanyama’s minutes under the microscope, while Atlanta tries to turn one strong October night into a pattern. The regular season will judge both soon enough; for one night in San Antonio, the Hawks’ reserves simply had the better of it.
The first quarter deserves a footnote of its own. San Antonio’s 39 points in twelve minutes represented the kind of offensive burst its fan base has been imagining since Wembanyama arrived — pace, spacing, and a defense scrambling to account for a 7-foot-4 center who bends game plans out of shape. That Atlanta absorbed the punch and answered with a 42-point second quarter says something about the Hawks’ depth, and something about how quickly preseason games turn when the first substitutions arrive.
October basketball ultimately sorts players more than teams. Somewhere in Atlanta’s comeback were minutes that will decide final roster spots, and somewhere in San Antonio’s collapse were combinations the coaching staff will not try again. Both staffs got what the preseason actually sells: information. The Hawks got a win to go with theirs.
Final score: Atlanta 123, San Antonio 116.
