Stephon Castle and Donovan Clingan shared the biggest stage in college basketball two Aprils ago, when they helped lead UConn to its second consecutive national championship in front of 75,000 people in Glendale, Ariz.

The scene has shifted to San Antonio and to Portland, Ore., this time as Castle and Clingan are in the beginning stages of what they hope are separate championship runs.

Castle’s San Antonio Spurs defeated Clingan and the Portland Trail Blazers 111-98 on Sunday as the first round of the NBA playoffs opened this weekend. The Spurs took a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Clingan scored four points in 22 minutes and pulled down seven rebounds. Castle had 17 points, seven rebounds and seven assists in 33 minutes.

Game 2 is set for 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, again in San Antonio, before the series moves to the Pacific Northwest.

The two players entered the NBA draft after that 2024 UConn championship and were lottery picks a few months later. The Spurs chose Castle with the No. 4 overall pick. Clingan went to Portland at No. 7.

Castle is part of the Big Three that has emerged with the Spurs, an unbelievably young core that could deliver even more championships to a trophy-rich franchise.

Castle, the Rookie of the Year in 2025, played only one season at UConn and is just 21. Victor Wembanyama, a finalist for NBA Most Valuable Player, is 22. The "old man" of the group is De'Aaron Fox at 28.

The Spurs won five NBA titles between 1999 and 2013 under former head coach Gregg Popovich with players such as David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, all members of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

But as Duncan and the others aged out of the league, the Spurs entered a long rebuild that now seems destined to pay off. 

The team, which has been to the playoffs now 41 times in 50 seasons in the NBA, is making its first appearance in the postseason since 2019.

Castle was a force in getting them there, averaging 16.7 points, 4.4 rebounds and 5.6 assists in 68 games this season.

The Trail Blazers have one NBA championship in their 56 years of existence and that came in 1977 with the late Bill Walton at center. Clingan, now the 7-foot-2 center of the Portland franchise, was born 37 years later.

On the season, Clingan started all 77 of his games and averaged 12.1 points, 11.6 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game. His average of 4.5 offensive boards led the league, as did his 892 total rebounds. Karl-Anthony Towns of the New York Knicks was second with 889.

Clingan has the unenviable task in these playoffs of guarding the 7-4 Wembanyama, who scored 35 points in the series opener. That’s a matchup the 22-year-old Clingan can expect to face for years to come.

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