MINNEAPOLIS — Victor Wembanyama will never forget this moment. He can’t. It’s carved into him.
Wembanyama cherishes his scars. After a vengeful win over the Houston Rockets in January — one of the first true tests of perseverance he’s faced in the NBA — he proudly showed them off. It was like a taste of the playoffs, the fresh blood an indicator that the basketball truly mattered.
Following one of the greatest performances of his career, a 115-108 Spurs win over the Wolves to take a 2-1 second-round playoff series lead, he looked down at his arms once again. He opened his hand to examine the fresh wounds telling his story, ready to scab their way into history.
“It’s going to happen. They’re wolves after all,” Wembanyama said of his new trophies with a grin.
Ever since he got to the league, he has been pining for this moment. A chance to own the biggest games in every capacity, to be backed into a corner and fight his way out with everything he has.
The moment came just before crunch time, when he picked up his fifth foul. It was his first visit to the brink of disqualification in more than two months. He spent the season learning how to go from reckless abandon to meticulous aggression, fine-tuning his physical prowess to a remarkable level for a gigantic 22-year-old.
For all the good that it did him, it also left him with five fouls with 6 minutes, 19 seconds remaining in the game. That’s usually when Luke Kornet would check in for a while, and Wembanyama would be saved for the end.
However, Spurs coach Mitch Johnson chose to keep Wembanyama on the floor despite the risks.
“If he fouled out, we deal with that when we (get) to it,” Johnson said.
This was the ultimate gamble, seeing how much the Wolves were feasting when Wembanyama was out. It was also the ultimate trust in a player who entered the season still struggling to control the game and who fouled out twice in the first two weeks.
Entering Friday night, it had been two months since Wembanyama had even been in foul trouble. He was so used to playing free that it felt like a complete unknown whether he could survive playing every possession with his game on the line.
But he wasn’t alone in that battle. When Wembanyama picked up his fifth foul and Johnson kept him on the floor, Devin Vassell went to all of his teammates with a simple demand.
“Obviously, we know, really, he can’t foul out. Like, he can’t foul out,” Spurs wing Devin Vassell said. “If somebody does get a foul close to him, just raise your hand, because the impact that he has on both ends of the floor, nobody else can do that. If anybody’s close, just raise your hand. It don’t matter who it is.”
Wembanyama typically is a vessel for the system, a conduit for the creation of his teammates. On defense, they funnel the ball to places where he can affect it, and on offense, they orbit his gravity to create looks for everybody.
“It’s the feeling I get before games, I dunno, this excitement, this heat in my heart,” he told “NBA on Prime Video” after the Spurs’ win. “It just gets stronger and stronger as the game goes on. I’m built for this. I love this more than anything else.”
Greatness requires calm in chaos. Wembanyama said the team just needed to be consistent and avoid mistakes, rather than doing incredible things. Yet, as incredible as it was to watch him operate in this game, it was Wembanyama showing the breadth of his skill set. This was not a remarkable achievement, but rather him living up to everyone’s lofty standards.
The idea with Wemby is that he is the biggest and most versatile player in the game. But as great as he has been, it has only been relative to everyone else. This was a rare example of him living up to the goals he set for himself and by his coach. The idea that this won’t be rare — at least for him — much longer, is what makes this feel so groundbreaking.
“There’s nobody in the world who can stop him,” Vassell said. “And when he’s clicking like that, it’s nothing he can do.”
However, to put this game into historic context, Wembanyama joined Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain (unofficially) as the only players in NBA playoff history to record at least 39 points, 15 rebounds and five blocks, per Stathead.
“It’s good to be along with the big fellas,” Wembanyama said. “I had to resort to some things that Hakeem taught me in this fourth quarter.”
The spinning fadeaway over Gobert was a Dream special. Driving right through Gobert to draw the double and drop it off to a wide-open Dylan Harper, well, that was just a dream in itself. That spot-up 3 off the flare screen was the icing on the cake.
“I think there’s only one Vic. And I think he’s going to continue to put up numbers and stats that we haven’t seen before or is very limited,” Vassell said. “Because there’s only one Vic.”
That was most apparent in the moments on defense when the Wolves would love, more than anything, to bait him into that sixth foul. The game could be theirs if they could send him to the bench permanently. He would get a stop or two, then Julius Randle would eventually put back a block of his or Jaden McDaniels would sneak around a back screen that Wembanyama couldn’t see coming. But he was always there.
“Just the defensive ability to have five fouls, still go for the block, still be aggressive, still try to impose your will in the game,” Spurs veteran Harrison Barnes told The Athletic. “I think it just speaks to everything that he’s brought to this team, but especially in that moment.”
Ayo Dosunmu and McDaniels would attack the lane, but then pass right out of it. You have to catch Wembanyama completely off guard to get past him.
“He’s a world-class defender. You’re always aware of him,” Dosunmu said. “Yeah, he’s a gift at that end of the court.”
Now that Wembanyama has shown what it looks like when he completely takes over, like an Olajuwon or O’Neal, the path forward for this series has become clear. The Wolves have to keep clawing away at him, but Wembanyama has shown he can deliver in every way.
He was asked in French if this was the best game of his career but declined to weigh in, saying it’s not the question he wants to ask himself right now. He’d rather go back over the film and make more corrections.
He did have five fouls, after all. He doesn’t need that feeling that he did something great. The job is far from finished and greatness comes at the end. He needs to keep finding the heat in his heart and claw away until everything falls into place.
“We got what it takes. We got the talent. We got the depth,” Wembanyama told “NBA on Prime Video.” “We don’t got the experience but we don’t care. We need to apply. We can go to the top, the very top, if we play like tonight consistently.”