SAN ANTONIO — In no particular order, the San Antonio Spurs are dealing with incidents of possible assault, of getting over the biggest meltdown in NBA Finals history and of being on the brink of elimination.
It’s a lot to unpack. Victor Wembanyama had eggs thrown at him outside the team hotel in New York after he and the Spurs blew a 29-point lead in Game 4 and lost in the most stunning of ways, 107-106. They fell behind 3-1 in the finals to the New York Knicks.
The season, and the Spurs’ championship hopes, will end with one more loss. They have held leads in the fourth quarter of all four games in this series. Game 5 is 8:30 p.m. ET Saturday. At least it is in the friendly confines of San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center, so Wembanyama shouldn’t have to worry about anything else being thrown at him.
Then again, there are wide reports of Knicks fans buying up tickets for Saturday’s game, which is exactly what they did for Game 4 of the conference finals in Cleveland.
As the Spurs try to sort through this litany of issues, the one anecdote for all that ails them is to win, which is what they’re expecting.
“Everybody (on the Spurs) thinks, everybody knows, we’re going to do it,” Wembanyama said Friday. “I feel like we need to isolate that one game and take it one game at a time. I think it would be a mistake to waste our energy on multiple games.
“It’s one game at a time.”
Wembanyama, 22, is having a great series statistically. Through four games, the 7-foot-4 French sensation is averaging 27.8 points, 10.5 rebounds and 3.3 blocks. However, he had two substantial mistakes at the end of Game 2, which led directly to a loss. And he was just 2-of-8 shooting in the fourth quarter of Game 4 — a game in which he logged 44 minutes.
It’s too late in the season to complain about it, and the games are too important for Wembanyama to entertain the thought, but he is exhausted. He’s never played even close to this much basketball in a span of nine months. On Friday, coach Mitch Johnson said he needs to “make sure that I help (Wembanyama) have the energy required to finish the game as strong as he needs to finish the game.”
He didn’t mean a minutes restriction, given what’s at stake, but if the Spurs have a massive lead again in the third quarter, Johnson could give his best player a normal rest session so he’s fresher when he returns in the fourth quarter.
“Definitely a factor,” Wembanyama conceded. “But it’s the playoffs. Everybody’s just as tired. I mean, it shouldn’t even be a factor in the game. … Now we’ve got two days between games. It’s not going to be a factor.”
As for the egg-throwing incident, which was both captured on video posted to social media and confirmed by media reports, Wembanyama said, “I don’t dislike it. Obviously, it’s not good at all. But it doesn’t bother me.”
He could have gone the other way with it. He’s tried to endear himself to New York with subway rides, chess games and drawing pictures in the park, only to have the crowd chant “f— you Wemby” and throw things at him. Still, he has more pressing concerns, like staying alive in the finals.
To that end, Johnson said a film review and deeper consideration of what happened in Game 4 led him to believe that the real problem came in the third quarter, when the Spurs slowly lost their lead. San Antonio was still ahead by 15 at the end of the quarter, but the urgency waned. Substitution patterns slipped. Good habits on offense receded, and the Knicks found their rhythm.
“I think that’s what gives someone a lot of clarity on what went well and what didn’t, what led to it,” Johnson said. “There’s a lot of times (when) themes of the game that may not necessarily show themselves in a box score on the surface level, that when you start peeling back the layers, you start to understand the ripple effect, good and bad, of what you do or what you did.”
In the aftermath of the Game 4 loss, Johnson has been criticized for his in-game management, including a defensive alignment on the Knicks’ final possession in which Wemby ended up on Jalen Brunson and no one guarded the inbounder. De’Aaron Fox has received blowback for trying a layup in the waning seconds of the game instead of forcing the Knicks to foul him, only for OG Anunoby to block the shot. And then there was the lack of a box-out on Anunoby, the unguarded inbounder, who delivered arguably the “most iconic shot in New York history.”
“It’s not like people have my phone number and can call me,” Fox said. “I don’t watch those shows. It doesn’t matter.”
Johnson said he doesn’t watch either. “I think I’ve been fired 212 times and we’ve traded Fox 72 times. We still have to show up and play tomorrow, and I’ve got to coach.
“The people that matter, we bond together, we stick together through the highs and lows,” Johnson said. “De’Aaron Fox will have the basketball in his hands at the end of the game tomorrow, and I have the utmost confidence he’s going to deliver like he’s done countless times for us.”
The Knicks are 3-0 this postseason in closeout games and have obliterated their opponents each time.
Attempting to become the first Knicks team to win a finals since 1973, coach Mike Brown said he expects the task at hand to be difficult.
“San Antonio is a great team, (and) they’re desperate,” Brown said. “I still think they believe.”
It will take a fair amount of belief for the Spurs to recover from here.
Only one team in league history has won an NBA title after going down 3-1 in the finals. It happened 10 years ago, when LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers upset Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors by winning the last three games.
The Spurs are aware of the history, and they’re holding on to the fact that this series, statistically, was much closer than that Warriors-Cavs series through four games. Something switched in that one 10 years ago — the Warriors wore out and James (and Kyrie Irving) kicked it into hyperdrive. Over the entire finals, the Spurs have only been outscored by seven points. They’re right there and need to clean up their late-game mistakes to flip the results.
“We still have this belief because we’ve seen it,” Fox said. “We’ve seen it be done, that teams have come back from 3-1. I think even with those series, the games that they lost, they were losing by double digits. The games that we’re losing have all been close games.
“We still have that belief that we have a chance to win,” Fox continued. “But we’re taking this one game at a time. We’re not looking at it as we need to win three games. We need to win tomorrow, and then we give ourselves a chance to play another game. Then you look at that next game.”
And another trip to New York, where the eggs probably await.
