Editor’s note: Jeje Gomez here. This is a candid conversation between PtR’s Editor in Chief, J.R. Wilco, and me after the impressive win over the Pistons. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Enjoy!
J.R. Wilco: You said this was a great Wemby game, and even though the broadcast kept saying it was an off night for him, I agree with you.
Detroit was exactly the kind of game that San Antonio used to lose because a frustrated Wemby would force himself on the action, demand the ball (or worse, get a block and steal and try to do everything himself), and, while completely out of rhythm, attempt to impose his will on the game.
But instead, he let the game be, trusted his team and moved the ball, enabling his guys to play with an advantage. With his gravity creating gaps in Detroit’s defense, he didn’t have to score. Just a massive step forward in maturity that’s exactly what we need to see from him if the Spurs are going to make a deep run this postseason.
Jesus Gomez: It was one of my favorite Wembanyama games, even before he got a few buckets that made his stat line look nicer. It was the type of performance that can alter the Spurs’ trajectory as a team. And it didn’t seem like it was going to happen, at least early on.
I thought the Spurs were in trouble when Wemby turned the ball over late in the first, the team got it back and passed to him, and he immediately pulled up for a three-pointer, which he airballed. It seemed like he would react to adversity like most guys who have been the best player on every team they played would. But instead of trying to take over, which, as you mentioned, he has in the past, he understood exactly what the team needed from him.
The question is, will he do it every time he’s asked to? By the fourth quarter, the Spurs were trying to get him touches, so he might have simply picked his spots. And what happens if the next time they do it, they lose? Will he still trust his teammates when they don’t hit shots? Is this really a turning point?
Wilco: That’s way more than just one question, but they’re all important ones for sure. The problem is, these are things that can only be seen, not predicted. You’re asking questions that no one but Wemby can answer, and the way these issues resolve will dictate how this season progresses — which will in turn be determined by how mature this team’s superstar is in his third year in the league with just 160 games under his belt.
This takes me back to one of my earliest memories of Wemby. The day before he was drafted, he appeared on J.J. Reddick’s podcast and I was stunned by how settled, prepared and mature he was. This first impression has been largely supported by his play on the court, with some notable exceptions.
One of the main exceptions has been the difficulties Wemby has had with teams that sell out to stop him. Think of the game against Phoenix early in the season that ended the good guys’ winning streak and ostensibly gave the league a pattern for how to keep Victor from detonating nightly. The team kept feeding Wemby against the Suns and he kept trying to slice his way through a gauntlet of arms to no avail. When it was obvious that wasn’t working, the team largely ran offense around him, which Phoenix was happy to take, and the rest of the league has followed suit to the best of their ability.
But now we have a new paradigm: the team plays through Wemby instead of around him. With the win over Detroit as a high-profile success in the data banks, you’d hope it would be difficult to forget how well it can work. Wemby anchors the defense while the offense benefits from the attention he demands until the opposing defense stumbles over itself trying to defend both the three-point line and a seven-and-a-half-foot alien. By the end of the fourth quarter on Monday night, Detroit had multiple possessions where multiple defenders were leaving Wemby to follow passes to Champagnie at the arc, even though Vic was in the paint.
That the big guy was able to stick with the game plan once was encouraging. That it could become the norm eventually has me downright giddy.
Gomez: It does just give the Spurs a higher floor, which is what they have been missing. The ceiling was already high. And it’s good that the tweak seemed not to be a big deal for the Spurs or most observers. Wembanyama didn’t say he was making some huge sacrifice, and the broadcast only really mentioned it once, late in the third, if I remember correctly. The coaching staff recognized what the Pistons were doing, adjusted, and Wemby and the team were ready to execute. Those possessions in the fourth when they tried to feed him were a little worrisome at the time, but in the end, they didn’t force things. It really was incredibly encouraging.
The opponents will make adjustments, but as you said, they can only do so much. If they sell out trying to stop Wemby, we now know that the Spurs can simply play through Wemby by using his gravity instead of giving him the ball, which makes a lot of counters simply obsolete. The bigger question is whether the supporting cast can consistently deliver as they did against the Pistons. The ball handlers should be fine. The room to drive was always there, and all three see it. We are well past the stage when only Tre Jones realized that the entire defense was geared toward stopping Wemby. The shooters are the potential issue, but the fact that they were all ready to fire away or move the ball is a good sign.
This team is coming together at an insane speed. There’s a lot of room for growth, which is crazy to say of a group that might end up with the best record in the West, but it’s so fun to watch it happen in real time. The Pistons game really seemed like a breakthrough moment, and even if Victor occasionally goes back to forcing things at times, I do believe he understands that he can have a massive positive effect without having to drop 30 by driving into traffic and hitting off-balance shots. I’m excited to see if they can continue to have these mini leaps before the playoffs, because if they do, we might enjoy a deep playoff run sooner than expected.
Wilco: I agree that there is still a question about whether the supporting cast can deliver on a game-to-game basis at the level that they did on Monday night. But even if they can’t, it’s still a win for me, and here’s why. I would rather see the team miss open threes and fail to convert from the mid-range or see contested layups rim out than have the team force-feed Wemby to the point where they are turning the ball over and allowing fast break and transition baskets on the other end. It’s those lost possessions where the team doesn’t even get a shot up that frustrates me, and the degree to which the team can replace offensive turnovers with even medium-percentage shots will raise the floor, as you talked about.
And the higher this team’s floor is, the more they look like a title contender.