Spurs radio voice Dan Weiss on a ‘dream come true’ first season

The 2025-26 NBA season has been special for the San Antonio Spurs.

This is Mitch Johnson’s first season as the full-time coach, following an interim role last year after Gregg Popovich’s stroke. It is also Dan Weiss’s first season as the Spurs’ radio voice. The former pregame and postgame host took over for the retired Bill Schoening.

Weiss is broadcasting this San Antonio revival. The Spurs will be the No. 2 seed in the NBA playoffs, which begin on April 18. It will mark the franchise’s first postseason appearance this decade for a team that won five NBA championships under Popovich.

We recently caught up with Weiss to discuss his career and the Spurs’ resurgence led by Victor Wembanyama.

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Awful Announcing: How would you describe this season?

Dan Weiss: “It’s been pretty amazing, kind of a dream come true. I replaced Bill Schoening, who did this job for over 20 years. He got a chance to call several championship teams, and to kind of follow that path, and to see the success of this Spurs team in my first year has been a lot of fun and certainly a little bit unexpected, given how meteoric the rise has been. It has been a fun ride so far.”

Did you feel any pressure taking over for Bill Schoening?

“Not really. I mean, I’ve been with the organization for about 17 years now. When I started, we had an American Hockey League franchise, and I was the play-by-play voice for 9 years. Then I transitioned to Spurs TV. So I’ve been part of the group for the last 7 years, doing pre- and post-. When Bill Land was dealing with some health issues a couple of years ago, I probably did about half the season in terms of play-by-play games. So I wasn’t really nervous. It was more about the fact that it was the first time in about nine years, or I guess eight years, that I was going back to doing full-time radio.”

Do you have a favorite broadcasting moment so far this season?

“It’s got to be the Victor game-winner that put him into the playoffs. For an organization that had a two-decade run of success, with 50-plus wins every year, you kind of remind yourself it’s not something you take for granted when you get back to the postseason. He hit that game-winner against Phoenix, locking up the playoff spot. That was the first game-winner of his career.”

How would you make the argument that Victor Wembanyama should be the MVP?

“He not only makes his teammates around him better, but he also makes plays that leave you without words. There are things he does on the floor that someone his size should not be able to do. When people look at the MVP, they’re looking at certain stats or team success. But I think you really have to watch Victor consistently to understand his impact on the floor every single night. And in that case, I haven’t watched a more impactful player in the league this year.”

As a 7-foot-4 superstar, what is it like for Wembanyama in San Antonio?

“I’m not going to speak for him because I don’t know his daily routine. All I know is that Spurs fans are unbelievably respectful of the players. It’s not uncommon to see Tim Duncan at H-E-B, even now. People just let him be, even though he’s a Hall of Fame player and the greatest power forward of all time.

“I think Victor’s stature will probably draw eyeballs wherever he goes. But from my time here, Spurs fans are pretty respectful. Yeah, they’re superstars, they’re athletes, they’re professional basketball players, but at the same time, they’re also normal people, just like us.”

What’s it like to work with Mitch Johnson?

“He’s awesome. Mitch has been around for several years with Coach Pop and the organization. Having been on the television side, I built relationships with the coaches. Mitch has always been great to me. He’s unbelievably smart. I’m happy for the success he’s having. I don’t think there’s anybody else who deserves Coach of the Year as much as he does, given the circumstances he inherited last season.”

What are reasonable playoff expectations for the Spurs?

“I think it’s really undetermined, frankly, because it’s the first time this group as a whole has been in the postseason. It’s funny. Mitch was asked about even handling, like the last week of the season. He said, ‘I don’t know, because I’ve never been in this situation before. Ignorance is bliss. It’s foreign territory. I will say, though, that the Spurs are right up there when it comes to team depth with just about anybody in the NBA. Yeah, the experience, they don’t have that, that’s a fact. Everybody talks about experience, that you have to go through a loss before you can taste championship success down the line. We will always say that until it happens the first time. So, I’m really excited to watch this team in the playoffs.”

Did you always want to become a broadcaster?

“That’s what I got into business for. I graduated from Northeastern in 2002. I was doing play-by-play there. I was actually doing play-by-play for our high school basketball team my senior year. So it was something I knew I wanted to get into. I was fortunate in college to have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of that. When I graduated from college, I was fortunate to land a job doing play-by-play right out of school, doing minor league hockey in Corpus Christi. So it was quite a journey to get from there to the Spurs.”

Do you have a wild minor-league hockey story?

“We’ve had some crazy situations. Travel is what sticks out to me. We were driving from Phoenix to Bakersfield. To get through L.A. County and into Kern County, where Bakersfield is, you’ve got to go through the mountains outside of L.A. We were going in the middle of winter, and we got stuck at the top of the mountain. We had a sleeper bus, so it wasn’t a big deal. But I remember we were basically stuck on the top of that mountain for about 10 hours in the middle of a blizzard. The driver of the bus we were on said it did not have enough brake pressure to get down the mountain pass and into Bakersfield.”

That sounds terrible. What happened next?

“We were playing the next day, so we had to get off the bus. I remember, like six, seven o’clock in the morning, we had to unload all the gear in the middle of the blizzard. Another bus came to get us. We rolled right into Bakersfield just in time for a morning skate at about 11 o’clock, and then we played the game that night. If I remember, I think we actually won the game, believe it or not.”