The Good, Bad and Ugly Of Week 19 Of The 2025-26 NBA Season

Week 19 of the 2025-26 NBA season saw the San Antonio Spurs continue to show why they are a dark horse to win the NBA title, the LA Lakers struggle to find an identity, and the Chicago Bulls end the month of February without any success. 

THE GOOD: 

Spurs fans, please feel welcome to blame me for Sunday’s game against the Knicks. At the time I was planning this article, the Spurs were the hottest team in the league, going undefeated in the month of February. On Monday, February 23, the Spurs rolled into Detroit and had their way with the top team in the Eastern Conference. Victor Wembanyama finished with 21 points, 17 rebounds, and six blocks, and San Antonio won 114-103 to snap the Pistons' five-game win streak. Wembanyama joined David Robinson and Tim Duncan as the only players in Spurs franchise history to record at least 20 points, 15 rebounds, and five blocks in a single game.  The Spurs then headed north to Toronto and pulled out a three-point victory over the Raptors thanks to their backcourt. Then, San Antonio went to New York for a feel-good victory over the hapless Brooklyn Nets, helping to inch closer to the West-leading OKC Thunder.  For a team that last lost on January 31, Sunday’s brain-fart against the New York Knicks shouldn’t be seen as anything more than a blip on the radar. 

THE BAD: 

A pair of twenty-plus point victories over the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings, two teams struggling to put out NBA-quality lineups don’t erase the fact that the Lakers were on a three-game slide as of last Sunday. On Tuesday, they let the Orlando Magic, a team they led for most of three quarters, escape Crypto.com Arena with a 110-109 win on a Wendell Carter Jr. putback with 6.7 seconds left. It was the first time all season the Lakers lost a game in which they led after three quarters, and their fourth consecutive loss to Orlando.  Then two nights later in Phoenix against a Suns team without Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks, the Lakers did not win a single quarter and needed a LeBron James putback with 22.7 seconds left to tie the game at 110. Yet the Suns, led by little-known Collin Gillespie's 21 points,  still won on a Royce O'Neale three with 0.9 seconds on the clock. While they may have some members of Laker Nation excited with their last two victories, a look at the rest of March’s schedule proves to be a daunting task if the team doesn’t figure out how to win against playoff-worthy teams. 

THE UGLY: 

While the Spurs went undefeated in February, the exact opposite took place with the Chicago Bulls. Yes, they may have defeated the Milwaukee Bucks last night (again, at the time of preparing this piece, Chicago was in the driver’s seat on the struggle bus), but before that, the last time they celebrated a victory was on January 31. Having not won a single game in the entire month of February, including a 32-point blowout to Charlotte on Tuesday, the Bulls, who were once on the verge of a play-in berth, now sit five games back of the Hornets. Over their last 10 games, the Bulls have produced a worse record than the Brooklyn Nets, Indiana Pacers, Dallas Mavericks, and Sacramento Kings. The one thing that all five of these teams have in common is that they are all in contention for a top draft pick in a loaded class.