Wembanyama: ‘I need to be more of a team player’ after Spurs fall behind in West finals | NBA
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 26 points and 12 assists, and the Oklahoma City Thunder came back from a 15-point deficit minutes into the game to beat the host San Antonio Spurs 123-108 Friday night and take a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference finals.
The Oklahoma City bench dominated that of San Antonio 76-23, including 15 points from Alex Caruso. Victor Wembanyama had 26 points for San Antonio. Devin Vassell added 20 and De’Aaron Fox had 15 in his series debut.
For the first time since Wembanyama arrived in San Antonio, he and the Spurs are down in a playoff series. Friday was San Antonio’s second straight loss after winning Game 1 in a double-overtime classic.
“It’s my first playoffs. It was the first playoffs for a lot of us,” said the 22-year-old French phenom. “Of course there were going to be tough challenges. That was to be expected. But now we’re going to see what we’re made of.”
Wembanyama’s 26 points came in 39 minutes, during which the Spurs outscored the Thunder by four points. The problem was the other nine minutes, in which the Thunder outscored the Spurs by 19.
But Wembanyama – as he tends to do – found plenty of fault in his own game, having finished with just four rebounds and three assists.
“I’m having a hard time making my teammates better right now,” Wembanyama said. “I should do better. My shooting times aren’t great. I need to be more of a team player.”
He was asked what that meant.
“Facilitate better, rebound the ball better,” Wembanyama said. “Push their defense a little more, to fight further and see how willing they are to help my teammates and feed them.”
Jared McCain had 24 points and Jaylin Williams added 18 for Oklahoma City. The Thunder were without Jalen Williams, who sat out with left hamstring soreness.
“We just went out there and competed,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “They obviously jumped on us early. First game in their building, their crowd behind them, they were excited to play. We just wanted to make sure we were competitive from that point on. We obviously didn’t do our best to start this game, but there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s behind us. All we can do is focus on the next possession, and we did that.”
The Spurs took a 15-0 lead, the longest streak to open a conference finals game since the play-by-play era began in 1997. They were then outscored by 30 points for the rest of the game.
The series continued to be lively with overflowing emotions at the start of the second half. Stephon Castle hit the court on back-to-back dunk attempts. The second resulted in a flagrant 1 foul against Ajay Mitchell and technical fouls on Mitchell and Vassell after the two exchanged words following the foul.
