Why Did Victor Wembanyama Lower His Shoulder Into Alex Caruso? The Game 1 Hit That Confused Everyone
The Spurs won Game 1. Victor Wembanyama had the best game of his career. And the moment everyone was still talking about an hour later was the time he lowered his shoulder into Alex Caruso for absolutely no reason.
San Antonio had the ball with a 94-92 lead and under two minutes left in regulation. Wembanyama was in transition, no defender between him and the rim, and then he saw Caruso planted on the floor. Instead of going around him, Wemby dropped his shoulder, rammed it into Caruso, and rolled over the top.
The play was reviewed. It got called as a common offensive foul. Wemby skated.
The internet did not let it go.
What Was He Thinking
That’s the question. Caruso wasn’t trying to take a charge in any meaningful way. The Thunder weren’t in a position to capitalize on the foul. Wembanyama had every option available to him. He could have stepped around, drawn the foul cleanly, or just dribbled out the possession.
Instead, he chose violence.
It looked like frustration boiling over from a tough sequence earlier in the game. It looked like a guy who got tired of Caruso getting the better of small physical battles all night and decided to settle one with his size. Whatever the motivation, the optics were bad.
The bigger concern was the foul itself. If the review had escalated it to a flagrant, Wemby could have been ejected from Game 1 of the Conference Finals. The Spurs would have been finishing the game without their best player. The whole night might have ended differently.
Why It Didn’t Get Upgraded
The league’s review process gives officials some leeway. A flagrant foul typically requires unnecessary or excessive contact, and the bar to upgrade an offensive foul in the playoffs is high. Wemby got the benefit of the doubt because Caruso was up immediately, there was no retaliation, and the contact, while pointless, wasn’t viewed as malicious enough to warrant a tougher penalty.
That’s the official explanation. The unofficial one is that the league did not want to throw out the most marketable young star in basketball during Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals on national television.
Take that for whatever it’s worth. The call was the call.
Caruso Got the Last Laugh on Stats
For all the noise around the hit, Caruso did everything else right in Game 1. He went off for a career-high 31 points, hit 8 of 14 from three, and was the Thunder’s best perimeter creator on a night when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander struggled to find rhythm.
That made the hit even more confusing. Wembanyama was already winning the broader game. He was outplaying everyone in an Oklahoma City uniform. There was no reason to take a cheap shot at the one Thunder player who was matching the moment.
Caruso shrugged the contact off and got back to work. That’s what professionals do. But you can bet the Thunder will be filing the play in their motivation folder for Game 2.
Lessons for Wemby
This is the kind of moment a young superstar files away. Wembanyama is on the path to being the face of the league. Plays like that, taken in a vacuum, look like a guy who lost his composure. They feed the easy narrative that he’s emotional and undisciplined.
The truth is Wemby has been a model citizen on the floor since he came into the league. One bad decision in Game 1 doesn’t define him. But the league will be watching to see if it pops up again. Caruso may be itching to find out the same thing.
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.
