The Athletic: Victor Wembanyama and the ‘ethical’ Spurs have earned the right to raise the bar
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LAS VEGAS — How do you define ethics? A subjective measurement of what’s right and what’s wrong, it’s entered the NBA lexicon over the last year as opponents and fans have lobbed complaints of foul baiting and overtly scrappy defense at the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder.
Winning a title requires grit, determination and a willingness to push core principles to their limits. Whatever you may think of the Thunder’s approach to winning, it’s working to historic proportions.
Whether inadvertently or intentionally, Victor Wembanyama is positioning himself and his San Antonio Spurs to be the challenger, the champion of basketball justice.
After leading the Spurs to victory over the Thunder in Saturday’s NBA Cup semifinal, Wembanyama was asked how it felt to close out the game with a win against rival big man Chet Holmgren and the team everyone has been chasing. He said it was incredible, and that he was glad he could slot into the emerging style his team developed with him on the sidelines.
Then, for the second time in three days, Wembanyama used the magical word that sets off the beef alarms.
“I’m just glad to be a part of something that’s growing to be so beautiful,” he said. “So pure and ethical basketball.”
The Spurs are not yet in a position to decide what qualifies as “ethical basketball.” That’s reserved for the teams that have gone the distance, or at least have gotten close. Teams like the Thunder.
But even before Saturday’s win, the Spurs were outpacing expectations. Now that they are one victory away from winning the NBA Cup, they are starting to think about the bigger picture. They have quickly skipped through the “Are we good?” stage and have gone straight to the “Can we beat the best?” phase.
That transition doesn’t come easily, so the Spurs have to choose their standards and fight to uphold them. Wembanyama has an ideal for what he wants them to look like.
“In modern basketball, we see a lot of brands of basketball that don’t offer much variety in the dangers they pose to the opponents. Lots of isolation ball. Sometimes kind of forced basketball,” Wembanyama said. “We try to propose a brand of basketball that can be described as more old school sometimes, the Spurs’ way, as well. It’s tactically more correct basketball, in my opinion.”
The surface-level data and the narrative may not align perfectly. There’s a difference in isolations among these teams, but the Thunder are not an outlier; they rank seventh in the NBA with 16.0 isolations per game, according to Synergy Sports, while the Spurs rank 15th with 12.1. The Celtics and Clippers, who are tied for the league lead with 18.5 a night, are having polar-opposite seasons. The Thunder lead the league in scoring efficiency in those actions, while the Spurs rank 10th.
Still, the Thunder’s play style has ruffled feathers along the way. It’s bound to happen when the MVP is willing to fall to the ground to get something out of a drive to the rim that otherwise wouldn’t exist. That persistence is the foundation of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s greatness. He squeezes every last drop of juice out of a possession and is willing to go further than anyone else to get those last drops. That pisses off opponents. It’s also what pretty much every MVP has to do, on some level, to finish on top.
It’s understandable for Wembanyama and the Spurs to define themselves in relation to what has become an established Thunder brand. Now that they have proven themselves against the best and sit firmly in the race for a high West playoff seed, the Spurs are developing a real brand identity of their own. It looks a lot more serious now than even they expected entering the season.
In training camp, many Spurs players were asked for their season goal. Almost everyone said some version of just making the playoffs. Wembanyama stood out when he specifically said “sixth,” claiming the Spurs were better than a Play-In tournament team. In the crowded Western Conference, that looked like a stretch, but two things have gone their way so far. First, the Warriors, Grizzlies, Mavericks and Clippers have all ranged from messy to maleficent. Second, the Timberwolves, Spurs, Lakers, Rockets and Nuggets have all been separated in the standings by a minimal margin entering Tuesday. They are all essentially playing on the same tier this season.
With their distance from the Play-In mix increasingly secure, the Spurs are no longer taking on the mindset of being good enough. They have to start thinking about what they look like in a do-or-die game come April, May and even June.
Maybe that’s a novel question for outside observers. But Spurs veteran wing Harrison Barnes, one of the few players in the building with a ring, pushed them to ponder it early on.
“Whenever we talked about it, everyone was saying Playoffs. And HB actually came in, and he’s like, ‘What does that mean?’” De’Aaron Fox said Monday. “‘Does that mean get the eighth seed and lose in the first round? Is that a successful season? Does that mean going to the Conference finals and losing? What does that mean?’”
Fox has played a big role in answering that question. Wembanyama’s month-long shelving due to a calf strain forced the Spurs to discover their identity beyond him. Someday soon, Wembanyama might be able to singlehandedly carry the whole team to contention and have a consistently outsized impact at the highest levels. The 21-year-old isn’t quite there yet. Whether “someday soon” is in a few months or a few years, the Spurs need to build an identity that is bigger than him but also becomes bigger with him.
That process accelerated in the 9-3 stretch the Spurs put together leading into Saturday’s win. When Wembanyama said he was glad to be a part of something beautiful, he was referring to what his teammates built in the month while he watched from the sidelines.
Once their big man went down and Fox returned, they finally got out and ran.
Along with Fox, the “Slash Bros” of Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper showed how a team can win with three downhill point guards who aren’t proficient shooters. It certainly helps that Fox is shooting a career-high 39.2 percent from deep on 6.5 attempts per game. This team’s ability to force its way into the paint, circle around and find open shooters has taken a big step forward. Castle and Harper have shown enough promise that Giannis Antetokounmpo’s appearance on the NBA trade radar has been a much smaller blip than expected in San Antonio.
Wembanyama’s return gives the Spurs the option to play through him over the top of the defense in addition to having him finish off whatever paint touches they can create. Spurs coach Mitch Johnson’s challenge is to figure out the balance that keeps their momentum at full speed.
They did it well enough Saturday to end the Thunder’s 16-game winning streak and make it to the NBA Cup final. Even if the Spurs fall to the New York Knicks in Tuesday’s NBA Cup championship, San Antonio’s semifinal victory over the Thunder was the clearest sign the bar has been raised.
On Monday, Fox explained the Spurs are still figuring out what the playoffs actually mean to them. That’s as subjective as basketball ethics, but they can start using their imagination.
“We want to play in the playoffs. We want to put ourselves in a position to win a championship,” he said. “Obviously, that’s always a goal. How many teams are true contenders? Most would say three, maybe a fourth team. But for us, we’re just, like I said, going day by day. We know with the talent that we have in our locker room that we are a playoff team, yes. But we have to continue to do the little things that help us become a contender.”
The little things don’t just make contenders — they break them as well. Once the competition gets fierce in the postseason, the morass of minuscule advantages makes the difference. The Thunder have been on a generational run the past 18 months because they are built with tremendous variety and depth. The Spurs are made in a similar image, albeit with a different composition.
There is only one way to measure it. However you can, just win.
“Some people are built for these moments, some aren’t. But we definitely are, and it shows, because it’s not against anybody that we won that game,” Wembanyama said. “I feel lucky. I’m glad we have this group because everybody buys into this and everybody is built for these moments.”
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Jared Weiss is a staff writer covering the San Antonio Spurs and Victor Wembanyama for The Athletic. He has covered the Celtics since 2011, co-founding CLNS Media Network while in college before covering the team for SB Nation’s CelticsBlog and USA Today. Before coming to The Athletic, Weiss spent a decade working for the government, primarily as a compliance bank regulator. Follow Jared on Twitter @JaredWeissNBA
