Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs came up short in Game 5 (90-94) and lost the NBA Finals series against the New York Knicks tonight after Jalen Brunson, who eventually won the Finals MVP, dominated down the stretch to help his team come out of a 16-point hole they faced early in the first half.
The French star started the game strong, but eventually lost his rhythm despite being on home court. He ended the game with 19 points, 14 rebounds, and five blocks while shooting 7-19 from the field (36.8 FG%) and 1-6 from beyond the arc (16.7 3P%).
This was the fourth time in this series that the Spurs gave up a double-digit lead to the Knicks, reflecting a lot of holes in the young Spurs team. But we know that with the budding talent on this team, this is probably only the first of many future visits to the NBA Finals with a talented star player, the 22-year-old Wembanyama.
Despite these backbreaking losses, he did not hang his head in disappointment but rather took the loss like an athlete should, as a lesson for the next time. The French star spoke to the media at the postgame press conference.
“I think it doesn’t compare to anything before. This is the biggest lesson of my life. The biggest learning moment. I can’t tell exactly what the lesson is, but we’re learning from that for sure. I’m learning more than at any other time in my life before,” Wembanyama said.
“Who we are is what we’re made of, plus our experiences. And this has been a hell of a year in terms of experience. I don’t think we could have learned more and gained more experience in one playoff run and in one season, and personally in 18 months. It’s been hard and full of lessons,” he further added.
Going into the 19 weeks of summer, a reporter asked Wembanyama what would be going through his head while preparing for next season.
“What I’m pissed about is that there’s probably a 100 games before we can be back in finals. So, I don’t know how to say it in English, but I’m going to have to, you know, hold that inside of me and slow down and wait and execute for 100 games.”
So Wembanyama seems fairly confident that he will be back in the NBA Finals soon, if not next season. Subsequently, the French star made another bold statement when asked about his key takeaway on dealing with the pressure of the Finals.
“One of many things I learned is that the margin of error is very, very thin. Our domination stints are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of these series. But our errors, our mistakes, are punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this. The ups are okay, the downs are the reason we lost.”
So, despite accepting that the team made mistakes that they need to go back and work on, Wembanyama seemingly refused to give credit to the Knicks for having done anything different to stop him.
In his first-ever NBA Finals run, Victor Wembanyama averaged 26.0 points, 11.2 rebounds, and 3.6 blocks while going 42.3% from the field and 27.3% from beyond the arc.
Before this series, he was averaging 23.2 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 3.5 blocks while shooting 51.0% from the field and 37.0% from beyond the arc. Even though his numbers look solid, his efficiency percentages indicate that it was the Knicks who also made it harder for him to score.
This loss could place a major chip on the French star’s shoulder. We will likely see Wembanyama in the Finals for several years, so it will be interesting to see how he bounces back from his first defeat.
