Victor Wembanyama avoided a suspension over his flagrant-2 foul in San Antonio’s Game 4 loss to Minnesota over the weekend, leading to a return in Game 5 that FS1’s Nick Wright feels went overboard painting the young star as the “hero” in his “valiant return.”
Wembanyama was ejected in the second quarter of Sunday’s Game 4 after elbowing Timberwolves forward Naz Reid in the face. The NBA opted not to suspend him for Game 5, and the Spurs took a 3-2 lead in the series.
But in the aftermath of the game, Wright took multiple jabs at NBC’s broadcast and the broader NBA media for what he sees as an overly deferential perspective toward Wembanyama. The positive coverage, Wright said, has followed Wembanyama throughout his young career but came to a head this week following what Wright called “the first major mistake of his career.”
“It was never more apparent than last night in the broadcast where they framed a game that Wemby was fortunate to be playing because he had avoided what would have been a totally reasonable if not a little punitive suspension, as if he was the one who get elbowed in the neck,” Wright said Wednesday on The Right Time podcast.
“The entire conceit of the broadcast was Wemby’s hero return, as if he had been the one who was wronged.”
Wright pointed out that the game was also officiated as if Wembanyama deserved to get even, with an early technical foul against Reid for “delay of game after he shoved Wembanyama while boxing out for a free throw.
“I felt like I was a crazy person,” Wright added.”I was like, ‘Everything about this is as if Naz had elbowed Wemby, and Wemby valiantly fought through it.’”
Later on his show First Things First, Wright noted a graphic during NBC’s intro to the game referencing Wembanyama’s “redemption,” rather than what Wright said should have been the focus: how Wembanyama would respond mentally to a mistake that cost his team a big postseason game.
Wright compared media coverage of Wembanyama to that of Luka Dončić, who he noted was shredded for poor defense during his NBA Finals appearance in 2024 and is constantly mocked for complaining to officials.
“The just, snap, double standard for certain guys bothers me,” he explained on The Right Time. “If Luka got thrown out of a playoff game for yelling at a ref, people wouldn’t frame the next game as his valiant return to work. So I just didn’t like it.”
Host Bomani Jones agreed, noting that coverage of Wembanyama’s ejection focused too much on whether he would be suspended and not enough on the fact that he cost his team a game.
While Wright admitted he sounds anti-Wembanyama because of his strong takes on the ejection, he believes his position is more about the media than Wembanyama himself.
“A lot of what has been taken by the audience as Wemby criticism is really, very often, media criticism. Because I’ve been doing the TV show for nine years, (and) I think Wemby is the first superstar to be thrown out of a game, in a playoff game, with the game in the balance,” he said. “And so it’s so rare to have the discourse immediately be from the Wemby perspective as opposed to … from the ‘victim’s’ perspective.”
