Why Spurs’ Mitch Johnson isn’t putting much into Coach of the Month award

On the heels of a December to remember for the San Antonio Spurs, Mitch Johnson was named the Western Conference Coach of the Month. The Silver and Black went an NBA-best 11-3 during the final month of 2025, including a run to the Emirates NBA Cup Championship Game and a 6-1 road record in December. San Antonio’s slate featured road wins at the Orlando Magic and the Los Angeles Lakers, as well as three victories over the Oklahoma City Thunder, and a year-end win vs. the New York Knicks.

It’s the first career Coach of the Month for Johnson, who took over for the legendary Gregg Popovich in the spring.

Like the Hall of Famer, Johnson was quick to downplay an honor.

“It was or is, in my opinion, a reflection of the team’s success, and then obviously that’s a byproduct of the operation from the top to the bottom and the players bringing that to life,” Johnson said before a 123-113 victory vs. the Indiana Pacers that marked the team’s first game of 2026.

Congrats to Head Coach Mitch Johnson on being named Western Conference Coach of the Month for December pic.twitter.com/XK8p7UTGT5

— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) January 2, 2026

Mitch Johnson leads Spurs to banner December

From December 8 to Christmas Day, the Spurs enjoyed an eight-game winning streak. Their only loss during that stretch came to the Knicks in the NBA Cup Final, which the league doesn’t count as a game of record. In each of the first seven wins of that streak, a different player led them in scoring. It represented the second such instance in NBA history, with San Antonio owning both occurrences. Also during the month, eight different players averaged at least 10 points per contest as the Spurs went 5-1 in clutch games.

The Spurs averaged 121.4 points per game and held opponents to 115, posting a 118.9 offensive rating, which ranked fifth in the NBA, and a 112 defensive rating – good for sixth in the league – while leading all teams in defensive rebounding percentage at 74.3.

The aforementioned victories vs. the defending champion Thunder opened eyes throughout the basketball world, catapulting the Spurs from a team viewed as a playoff contender to a true championship threat. OKC finished 2025 with just five losses, though three of them came at the hands of their blossoming rivals from South Texas.

Johnson is joined by Boston Celtics Head Coach Joe Mazzulla, the Eastern Conference Coach of the Month.

Johnson taking baton from Gregg Popovich

This season actually marks Johnson’s second at the helm of the team. He took over five games into the 2024-2025 campaign after Popovich suffered a stroke at the Frost Bank Center hours before an early November contest. With the franchise allowing the winningest coach in NBA history to recover and make decisions on his own timeline, Johnson kept the interim head coaching label until early May, when Pop led a press conference to introduce Johnson as the head coach.

A Seattle, Washington native, Johnson played at Stanford before starting his coaching career in 2015. He joined the Spurs organization a year later, leading the G League’s Austin Spurs to the title in 2018. He moved up to San Antonio as an assistant in 2019.

“Acknowledgment is real, but I think, again, it’s more about the whole than the coach,” Johnson said.

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