Jose Alvarado Calls Out Victor Wembanyama for Skipping the Handshake Line After NBA Finals Loss
The Victor Wembanyama handshake situation is not going away, and now another Knicks player has gone on the record about it.
Jose Alvarado told reporters this weekend that he respects how Wembanyama competed in the NBA Finals but found the lack of postgame handshakes from the Spurs star a bit much. The criticism is the latest in a growing line of takes on Wembanyama’s decision to leave the floor without acknowledging any of his opponents after San Antonio lost Game 5 to New York.
“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.”
Alvarado was careful to praise Wembanyama’s competitiveness during the series. He noted that he loved how Wembanyama played and understood the aggression. The issue was the moment after, when the buzzer sounded on the biggest game of Wembanyama’s life and the 21-year-old walked off the court without a word to anyone wearing a Knicks jersey.
That is the part fans noticed too. Jalen Brunson made a point of finding every Spurs player on the floor and shaking their hand after the title-clinching win. He was praised across the basketball world for it. Wembanyama did the opposite, and the criticism started immediately.
This is a learning moment for the Spurs star, whether he wants it to be or not. The reality of being a generational talent in this league is that the cameras catch everything. The fans remember everything. The handshake line is one of the oldest traditions in professional sports for a reason, and skipping it in the most public moment of your career is going to follow you.
Alvarado is not the first opponent to bring this up. He probably will not be the last. Wembanyama is 21, and 21-year-olds are allowed to react badly to losing championships. The problem is that he is also the face of his franchise and one of the most marketable young players in the league. The standards are different at that level whether you like it or not.
The on-court product was not the issue. Wembanyama averaged a strong line across the Finals and put together moments of brilliance that confirmed his ceiling is higher than anyone in the league not named Cooper Flagg. The Spurs lost in five because the Knicks were the better team, not because Wembanyama did not show up.
But the off-court moments are where reputations get built. Brunson built his with that handshake line. Wembanyama is now spending an entire summer answering for the choice he made in the opposite direction.
Alvarado put it pretty cleanly. Compete between the lines. Shake hands outside the lines. That is the deal everyone signs up for when they put on an NBA jersey.
Wembanyama has a chance to fix this. The next time the Spurs and Knicks play, he can find Brunson and Alvarado in pregame warmups, give them their respect, and the conversation ends. If he refuses, this becomes a defining storyline of his career until he wins his own title and is the one in the position to extend grace.
The Knicks are not letting this go. The Spurs star will have to live with that for a while.
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.
