Victor Wembanyama suffered a rib injury during the Spurs’ 115-102 win over the 76ers tonight. He left the game in the first half and did not return for the rest of the night.
The French All-Star ended up with 17 points, five rebounds, and three blocks in just 16 minutes of action. He shot 7-11 from the floor (63.6 FG%) and 1-3 from beyond the arc (33.3 3P%).
Following the game, the famous sports doctor, Jesse Morse, from The Injury Expertz, gave his opinion on Wembanyama’s injury on the basis of what he saw on social media.
“Victor Wembanyama suffered a rib contusion on the left side on this play. Rib injuries are painful!
There are basically 5 options:
1. Rib contusion/bruise.
2. Rib cartilage injury.
3. Rib fracture.
4. Rib fracture + rib cartilage injury.
5. Rib fracture + organ injury (lung).
Best case scenario, his X-rays, MRI, and CT scan are negative, and he has a rib contusion. The Spurs have three games left, and I believe he needs to play in one of the three in order to qualify for the 65-game rule (20+ minutes). If this is anything more than that, he’s likely to miss all three games and potentially more depending on the diagnosis and severity,” wrote Dr Morse on X.
Hence, out of the five possible outcomes, only one favors a situation for the French star to be able to play in one of the three upcoming games (20% favorable outcome). In four out of the five cases that the doctor suggested, Wembanyama would possibly miss all three games and even more, depending on the severity (80% undesired result).
Following the game, the Spurs’ head coach also spoke about Wembanyama, but had no update on his status at the press conference.
“I’m not sure,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “I know he came back, and he just didn’t finish. And so at halftime, I was told he wasn’t coming back, and I honestly got, I haven’t heard anything else up to this point.”
“I think it would be a positive that he felt like he could come back, and he played the last four or five minutes of the half. So that’s a positive from my perspective, but I have nothing.”
“I have no other answer,” Johnson further added. “I haven’t even talked to anybody, so I’m sure we’ll do our due diligence to make sure he’s okay. But I have no idea.”
Wembanyama has so far averaged 24.8 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 3.1 blocks per game this season in the 63 regular season games he has played so far. Since he also played in the NBA Cup Final, it is officially counted as 64 games played for him. He shot 51.0% from the field and 35.0% from beyond the arc.
Taking into account that the Thunder are currently 2.5 games ahead of the Spurs with just three games left in the season, they will likely finish the regular season in the first seed from the West. Thus, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will, arguably, have a better claim to the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award than Wembanyama.
But unfortunately, in addition to the MVP award, which was the most important to Wembanyama among all the postseason awards, the 65-game rule also covers the Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) award and the selection to All-NBA teams, which were basically guaranteed for him if not for this rule.
Thus, this may end up costing Wembanyama a lot more than the MVP award. Consequently, the Spurs’ fans will hope that Wembanyama only has a rib contusion/bruise; if not, his season-long effort and campaigning for himself will go to waste.
