I played in my normal Wednesday night basketball game, so I had to record the Spurs-Mavericks game, which started at 6:30 p.m. Los Angeles time. Because the game was on ESPN, my recording missed the first several minutes of the Spurs game while the Pistons-76ers game was finishing. When ESPN finally left Detroit to cut to San Antonio, Mike Breen was saying that Victor Wembanyama already had 10 points. It turns out that he had his first blocked shot 38 seconds into the game, and scored his tenth point 3 minutes and 48
seconds in. While I missed seeing all of that, this was clearly the start of something special.
And so it continued throughout the first half, leading to this screenshot as the first half ended:
Look at that line again: 29 points, 15 boards and 5 blocks. If a friend who didn’t see the game asked you how Victor played, you could have told them, “Great! He had 29 points, 15 boards and 5 blocks!”
It would give you great joy to follow that up with “and that was only the first half”.
Put another way, that half was better than anyone else in the game did for the entire 48 minutes. For the Mavs, Kyrie Irving had 29 points for the game with 7 boards and 5 assists, but shot 9 for 27 from the floor. Naji Marshall had 22 points with 5 boards, 3 assists and 1 block. Neither as good as Victor’s first half. The Spurs’ second leading scorer, Dylan Harper had 21 points (8 less than Victor’s first half), 5 boards (10 less than Victor had at halftime) and zero assists (althought no one on the Spurs other than Victor could make a shot – as discussed later).
Of course, Victor kept playing after that remarkable first half, and the Spurs are very happy he did. When I was coaching, we had an expression when one player was playing well while his teammates were not – “I am sure glad we brought that guy”. In the second half, Victor scored 23 points, grabbed 9 rebounds, and blocked 3 more shots. While not as unworldly as his first half, those second half stats were still better that any other Spur had for entire game. And Victor’s final line – 52 points, 24 boards (9 offensive) and 8 blocks — was truly historic.
The one thing Victor did not do well Wednesday night was shoot three-pointers – he went 1 for 8. But even that awful number was still better than most of his teammates. Including Victor’s 1 for 8, the Spurs shot an incredible (in a very bad way), 5 for 36 from three. Yuck. The Spurs best two shooters, Devin Vassell and Julian Champagnie, went 0 for 6 and 0 for 5, respectively. De’Aaron Fox was 0 for 2 and Keldon Johnson 0 for 3. And while Stephon Castle was a bit better than Victor from three (but still only 2 for 9), he was still 6 for 20 overall. And with all that Victor was doing offensively, he only had one turnover – less than Fox, Castle, Harper, and Johnson.
Not surprisingly, Victor’s eight blocks were more than the rest of the Spurs combined. In fact, he had more blocks than the rest of both teams combined. And he had more steals than every other Spur other than Vassell – they both had two. “I am sure glad we brought that guy,” indeed.
One other thought that came to me during the game. We all know that Victor’s already abundant competitive juices flow even more when he goes up against Chet Holmgren – see, for instance, the 2026 Western Conference Finals. After last night’s game, there’s at least a possibility that Victor has been reading about how he and the Mavs’ young star Cooper Flagg will be competing over the next decade to be the best player in the NBA and the so-called “face of the league”. Based on last night’s performance, Victor certainly has the lead in that race – and those articles “spurred” him on during Wednesday’s game.
I am glad the game was nationally televised for all hoops fans to see – and I am doubly glad that I remembered to record the game so that I could see it, even if on tape delay.
