Jose Alvarado Calls Out Victor Wembanyama Over NBA Finals Handshake Snub: ‘Too Crazy for Me’
Victor Wembanyama walked off the floor in Game 5 of the NBA Finals without shaking a single Knicks hand. Two weeks later, another Knick is still bothered by it.
New York guard Jose Alvarado addressed the moment in a recent interview and made it clear he respects Wembanyama the competitor but not the exit.
“I got mixed emotions. I’m a competitor too, but I also stare my enemies down. I look forward to them and I shake their hand,” Alvarado said. “It’s a game. You don’t like the moment. You lost probably the biggest game of your career, but you’re going to have more moments. I feel like the way he did it was a little too crazy for me.”
That is a measured shot. Alvarado played hard against the Spurs all series. He took Wembanyama down on a hard close-out in Game 3. He chirped through every dead ball. He is not pretending the matchup was friendly. He is saying the handshake line is the handshake line.
The Bigger Wembanyama Question
Wembanyama is 22 years old and just lost the biggest game of his career. Some grace probably applies. The Spurs were also up double digits late in Game 4 before OG Anunoby tipped in the winner, then watched Jalen Brunson drop 45 to close them out in Game 5. That is a hard 48 hours.
The problem is that Wembanyama is the face of the next era of the NBA. Cameras are on him every second. When he leaves the court before Brunson can even reach midcourt to shake hands, that clip lives forever. Brunson, for his part, went out of his way to find every Spurs player after the buzzer.
Alvarado was not the first Knick to mention it. Karl-Anthony Towns brought it up days after the series. The vibe in the Knicks locker room is that Wembanyama is great but young, and that the handshake thing was a teachable moment more than a crime.
The Spurs are not going anywhere either. San Antonio is built around Wembanyama, De’Aaron Fox, and a deep group of young pieces. They will be back in this series soon. The next time these teams meet in the Finals, the handshake will be the first thing anyone watches for.
Wembanyama has not addressed the snub publicly. The Spurs are letting it go. The Knicks are still talking about it because they get to. They won the title. Talking about other people’s etiquette is one of the perks of winning a championship.
Alvarado played in 26 minutes of bench rotation during the Finals and was a connector on both ends. The fact that he is the one bringing this up, not Brunson or Anunoby or Towns, tells you the locker room remembers. The Knicks are not going to forget this between now and whenever the rematch happens.
Wembanyama is great. He will be great for a long time. He also has a bunch of small lessons to learn, and the league is going to keep teaching them publicly.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
