Victor Wembanyama had at least one teammate who hoped the San Antonio Spurs superstar would return angry. His coach expected a mature approach from Wembanyama after his first career ejection a game earlier.<\/p>\n
The Spurs got both, much to the dismay of the Timberwolves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey ain\u2019t mutually exclusive,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cI\u2019m looking for both.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wembanyama had 27 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and three blocks as San Antonio beat Minnesota 126-97 on Tuesday night to take a 3-2 lead in their second-round series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like we got the Vic that you’ve seen all year,\u201d Spurs guard Stephon Castle said. \u201cI think his maturity level was off the charts. I mean, he played smart, didn\u2019t really foul much, took the shots that were there for him. So, I mean, when he\u2019s playing like that, playing aggressive with everything that he brings for us defensively, I feel like we\u2019re pretty hard to beat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wembanyama was ejected from Game 4 on Sunday night because of an elbow he threw early in the second quarter after getting tangled with Minnesota\u2019s Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels while grabbing a rebound. Wembanyama swung his arms and his elbow struck Reid in the face.<\/p>\n
Officials looked at the play and upgraded the foul to a Flagrant 2, which comes with an automatic ejection. The NBA, as it always does in those situations, further reviewed the play after the game and decided Monday that the ejection was sufficient. It could have fined or even suspended Wembanyama for Game 5 and beyond if it felt that was warranted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we even thought about it much at all,\u201d Timberwolves guard Mike Conley Jr. told reporters at Minnesota\u2019s shootaround Tuesday. \u201cI think once the ruling came down, it was just like, we expected that and just moved forward. It\u2019s one of those things. We don\u2019t want guys to miss games. We want to play against the best. We don\u2019t want to have guys missing games like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even before it was determined Wembanyama would play in Game 5, the 7-foot-4 star from France went through his normal off-day routines in preparation to play. He quickly put the incident behind him, to the point he misspoke on the timeline between Games 4 and 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it was two games ago,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cIt\u2019s the playoffs. I\u2019m focused. I was focused on the game today and now I\u2019m focusing on the game in three days. It\u2019s the playoff. We got to move on and I got to care about my team.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Antonio has a chance to reach the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2017 and Wembanyama’s historic postseason has been key.<\/p>\n
Wembanyama (22 years, 128 days) is the third-youngest player in league history with 25 points, 15 rebounds and five assists in a postseason game behind Magic Johnson (20 years, 276 days) and Luka Doncic (21 years, 177 days).<\/p>\n
Wembanyama set an early tone, becoming the first Spurs player since Tim Duncan in 2002 with 20 points and 10 rebounds in the first half of a playoff game.<\/p>\n
While the series continued to be extremely physical, Wembanyama remained calm.<\/p>\n
After being approached by Minnesota\u2019s Ayo Dosunmu after getting tangled up with McDaniels in the first quarter, Wembanyama would run untouched to the rim for an emphatic windmill dunk.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I feel like the rage baiting would\u2019ve been maybe one of the strategies,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cI feel like I need to stay composed as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wembanyama finished with just one personal foul. He was 9 for 16 from the field, including 2 for 5 on 3-pointers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama had at least one teammate who hoped the San Antonio Spurs superstar would return angry. His…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":793263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-793262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-san-antonio","10":"tag-sanantonio","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116566917777257050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}