On Friday, the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs linked up in an Emirates NBA Cup group play game that went down to the wire. Victor Wembanyama had 26 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and three blocks, and his put-back with 1:06 left in the fourth quarter gave the Spurs a 108-105 lead.
But Stephen Curry hit two free throws with six seconds remaining to give Golden State a 109-108 win. He finished with 49 points and hit on nine of his 17 3-point attempts to power his team to its eighth win of the season.
The most memorable moment of this game came when Wembanyama exchanged some trash talk with Warriors forward Draymond Green. On a recent episode of his eponymous podcast, Green described what was said during that trash-taking incident.
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He said that when he blocked a shot attempt by the star 7-foot-4 center, he said, “Yeah [expletive]” to Wembanyama, who responded by saying, “You too small.” Green then responded by saying, “You [expletive] scared of me,” to which Wembanyama replied, “What? I ain’t [expletive] scared… Watch this.”
The big man then backed up what he said by taking an inbound pass and dunking it on the catch right over Green.
The basket was waved off, as Green fouled Wembanyama beforehand, but it was seemingly a message to not only Green but also the rest of the NBA.
If Wembanyama isn’t one of the faces of the NBA yet, he’s well on his way, and he’s shown signs he isn’t a player one can intimidate. He has had numerous big fourth quarters, and in Friday’s game, he scored 10 points in the final period in order to get San Antonio to the brink of victory.
He’s currently tied for fifth in fourth-quarter points per game with nine, and overall, he’s averaging 26.2 points on 50.2% field-goal shooting, 12.9 rebounds, four assists and a league-high 3.6 blocks per game.
Thanks to him, the Spurs are ahead of schedule in their development. Despite not having De’Aaron Fox and rookie Dylan Harper for good chunks of the season so far, they have gotten off to a 9-4 start, which currently puts them in fifth place in the Western Conference. While they aren’t championship contenders (yet), it seems like a trip to the playoffs, or at least the play-in tournament, this spring is very likely for them.
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San Antonio will be tested now that Wembanyama is slated to miss a few weeks due to a left calf strain. But with the way Fox, who recently returned from a hamstring injury, has been playing, and with reigning Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle raising his game in his sophomore season, perhaps the team can win enough games without its franchise player to keep pace with the other likely playoff teams in the West.
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