The San Antonio Spurs got some early All-Star Game practice against the Los Angeles Lakers. There wasn\u2019t a lot of defense being played by the Lakers, which meant the Spurs were able to get up whatever shots they wanted. They leaped out to a 47-30 lead in the first quarter and never looked back on their way to a 136-108 victory.<\/p>\n
Victor Wembanyama set the tone in the first quarter, scoring 25 points in under eight minutes of play. He could get to the basket whenever he wanted and was red hot from three.<\/p>\n
Above is Wemby\u2019s first quarter in all its glory. I jokingly sent a message to some other Pounding the Rock writers that Wembanyama was on pace for a 100-point game. In a normal game where he was able to play a full-minute load and maintain his rhythm, he may have gotten close. Wemby had 40 points and 12 rebounds in just 26 minutes.<\/p>\n
It looked like the Spurs were intentionally trying to force-feed Wembanyama the ball to pad his stats. It couldn\u2019t have been clearer than when De\u2019Aaron Fox passed up an open layup on the break to throw the ball off the backboard to Wemby for a dunk. The defender literally stops to guard Wemby when Fox is in front of him, going up for a layup! With any other big trailing the break, this would be a turnover, but the Alien turns it into a highlight play.<\/p>\n
Carter Bryant built on his good performance against the Dallas Mavericks with another solid game on Tuesday. The rookie had 16 points on 6-12 shooting, cashing in a trio of three-pointers. Bryant looks more comfortable doing less. He\u2019s making timely cuts, hitting open spot-up jumpers, and playing hard defensively. The more opportunities he gets, the better he plays. That\u2019s an exciting development for San Antonio, which needs big defensive wings who can space the floor. Bryant is turning heads and looking more and more like a key piece moving forward.<\/p>\n
Keldon Johnson got in on the fun on Tuesday as well. In the fourth quarter, with the game completely out of reach for the Lakers, the Spurs gave up a 12-0 run as Los Angeles\u2019s bench tried to claw back. KJ silenced it immediately with this impactful slam.<\/p>\n
Even with Wembanyama out of the game, the Spurs were still able to get highlight dunks. This time it comes on the lob from Johnson to Luke Kornet for the easy bucket.<\/p>\n
Devin Vassell went most of the first half without registering a single statistic, but turned it on in the third quarter on his way to 9 points on 4-5 shooting. This steal and slam was his best play of the night, showing off his improved defensive instincts, especially when he\u2019s playing in the passing lanes.<\/p>\n
The Spurs will travel to Golden State to take on a Curry- and Butler-less Warriors team on Wednesday night. It\u2019s their last game before the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
Check out the link below to see full highlights from the win over the Lakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Antonio Spurs got some early All-Star Game practice against the Los Angeles Lakers. There wasn\u2019t a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534,53862],"class_list":{"0":"post-597508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-spurs","15":"tag-spurs-highlights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116054156198654339","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}