Forged by Dan Hurley’s intense coaching at UConn, San Antonio’s new physical enforcer brings a relentless, apex-predator mentality to the frontcourt alongside superstar Victor Wembanyama.
After falling to the New York Knicks in five games during their first trip to the NBA Finals since 2014 ... the San Antonio Spurs wanted to get more physical.
Superstar center Victor Wembanyama needed a frontcourt mate who excels at doing the dirty work — so San Antonio worked the phones and ultimately traded up in the 2026 NBA Draft with the Denver Nuggets to select Tarris Reed Jr. out of UConn.
Reed played under two-time national champion head coach Danny Hurley, whose unorthodox method of firing his team up resulted in the newest Spur receiving a fitting nickname:
"The Bear."
And no, there's no relation to Jeremy Allen White and his hit FX show about a restaurant in Chicago.
In his first interview following draft night, posted on the Spurs' official YouTube channel, Reed details the background behind the nickname — and why he believes it perfectly represents the type of player he wants to be in San Antonio.
"During film sessions, Coach [Dan Hurley] would always ask me, 'T, what type of bear do you want to be?'" Reed said. "I remember one film session, he pulled up a picture of all the Care Bears — the nice Care Bear, the kind Care Bear, the funny Care Bear, the sweet Care Bear."
The exercise quickly took a turn.
"The next video was a clip from The Revenant. It was a bear eating a man alive. He asked me, 'Which bear do you want to be?'"
Reed didn't need long to decide.
"So of course I said the bear from The Revenant."
Hurley later referenced the story in a postgame press conference and encouraged UConn fans to flood Reed's DMs with photos of bears ... and they obliged.
"I opened Instagram, and my DMs are flooded with just pictures and videos of bears," Reed continued.
But the nickname fit — largely because Reed's playstyle matched the nature of a bear, as he describes himself.
"People don't expect the bear to really move like that," he said. "Bears are one of the fastest animals that can climb, chase you down, just relentless apex predators."
If Reed can become a chase-down, relentless apex predator alongside Wembanyama, then San Antonio will have found exactly what they were looking for when they swung the trade with Denver.
That kind of physical, bruising playstyle was absent from the 2025-26 Spurs, but now that "The Bear" is in town, they won't be pushed around any longer.
