LAS VEGAS (AP) — Victor Wembanyama is finally ready to play again. It just so happens that his return coincides with his San Antonio Spurs being in the NBA Cup semifinals against the defending league champion Oklahoma City Thunder.
Wembanyama will be on a minutes restriction Saturday night when he and the Spurs take on the Thunder in the Cup semifinals. It’ll be Wembanyama’s first game back after he missed 12 contests with a strained left calf; the Spurs went 9-3 in those games, including a Cup quarterfinal win in Los Angeles against the Lakers earlier this week.
He wanted to come back earlier. And he also acknowledges that wouldn’t have been wise.
“When you’re part of a team like this, now we’re starting to be even more successful, we’re starting to win,” Wembanyama said. “Every single game is important, and I have a responsibility towards my team to come back as quick as I can — but also to be healthy, to not come back too early, It would have been a mistake to come back earlier. So, it just happens that I’m coming back on this game in Vegas here. But every single game I was pushing.”
It could have been argued — and surely was discussed at Spurs headquarters — that there’s some logic around sitting Wembanyama on Saturday, not playing him in the Cup final if San Antonio got there because the game won’t count in the standings anyway, and essentially getting him another week off before regular-season play resumes on Dec. 18 against Washington.
But Wembanyama lobbied to play. The Spurs’ medical team deemed him ready to play. As such, he’s playing.
“The added visibility and conversation around this game, around the game in LA, around any potential games after this, I totally understand,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “But in all reality, we would strip all that back when we had those real honest conversations about, ‘where are we at what are we walking out of, what are we walking into’ — understanding visibility, understanding it’s a long season, understanding all the things that go with it.”
Wembanyama is averaging 26.2 points and 12.9 rebounds this season for the Spurs, who are off to a 17-7 start — having gone 8-4 with Wembanyama and 9-3 without him.
“They have had a great start,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “We haven’t seen them yet. So, it’s a first pass at them, and we’ll see where we are at against them. We’re not going to overprepare or overdo anything. First time we’ve seen them, go out there and play and see where that leaves us. We’ll see them a few times here in the next couple weeks.”
The Thunder are 24-1, tying the best record through 25 games in NBA history. Orlando and New York are playing in the other NBA Cup semifinal at Las Vegas on Saturday.
Wembanyama expects some level of fatigue Saturday. He was winded Friday after a cardio workout in Vegas, and Johnson said Wembanyama was getting tired playing against the Spurs’ video staffers a few days ago as part of his ramping-up process toward this return.
“I would suspect an early sub and not his normal minutes,” Johnson said.
Saturday would be the first time that Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, De’Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper all play together for the Spurs this season. It might be more than a bit surprising that the Spurs entered Friday tied for the fifth-best record in the NBA despite constant injuries over the first few weeks of the season.
“Of course, it’s been hard to watch from my couch, but almost every night they’ve proven to me that I have nothing to worry about,” Wembanyama said. “But yeah, no, really the brand of basketball we’re playing, that they’ve been playing just makes me proud because it’s getting closer to the ideal basketball in my opinion.”
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