Victor Wembanyama Called Himself “Bad” After NBA Finals Game 1. The Spurs Should Be Worried
Victor Wembanyama did not have a good Finals debut. He did not try to hide it.
The Spurs star went 6-of-21 from the field, 2-of-9 from three, and committed six turnovers in San Antonio’s 105-95 loss to the Knicks in Game 1. Both the shot total missed and the turnover number were postseason career highs for him. He still finished with 26 points and 12 rebounds because he’s Victor Wembanyama, but the box score does not tell the story of how this game went.
“I was bad tonight. It’s not more complicated than that,” Wembanyama said after the loss. That is a 22-year-old superstar owning a bad performance on the biggest stage of his career, and that is a good sign for the Spurs going forward. The bad sign is everything else.
Wembanyama looked gassed in the fourth quarter. Yahoo Sports reported that NBA analyst Nick Wright pointed out he wasn’t getting good looks late, not because the moment was too big, but because his legs were gone. That is the more concerning version of this story.
The Spurs needed seven games to beat the Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. They had three days off before Game 1. Wemby has played heavy minutes in every series, and the league has not yet seen what happens when he runs out of gas at the wrong time. Wednesday night might have been the first preview.
Shaquille O’Neal piled on after the game. “The way he played, not good at all. 6-21 is not going to get it done shooting,” Shaq said on the TNT postgame show. The Hall of Famer rarely gives in to easy criticism of young stars, so when he calls a Finals performance “not good at all,” that is a real assessment.
The Knicks deserve credit for the game plan. They switched everything, double-teamed Wemby on the catch, and forced the Spurs to win with role players who could not make shots. Devin Vassell and Chris Paul combined for 17 points on 19 shots. That is not the Spurs offense the West feared all season.
What this means for Game 2 is the Spurs need Wembanyama to be the best player on the floor, and they need him to be that without redlining his minutes. Mike Brown is going to keep throwing bodies at him, and that’s not changing for the rest of the series.
The good news for San Antonio is Wembanyama did not look broken by the moment. His response to the criticism was straightforward and accountable. The Spurs are still home for Game 2, still favored in the series at most books, and still hold the most uncontainable player in basketball.
The bad news is the Knicks just figured out exactly how to make him uncomfortable. That formula travels.
Game 2 tips Friday at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC. If Wembanyama bounces back the way he says he will, this series goes the distance. If he looks exhausted again, the Knicks are walking out of San Antonio with a 2-0 lead and a parade on the calendar.
The Spurs are betting on his answer. So is most of the league.
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.
