Victor Wembanyama said the focus has already shifted to Game 3 of the NBA Finals, but the final three possessions of Game 2’s one-point loss to the Knicks will long linger in the Spurs star’s mind as San Antonio missed an opportunity to complete a 14-point fourth-quarter comeback and New York grabbed a 2-0 series lead.
Twice, he missed pull-up jumpers over Mitchell Robinson, the second just before the buzzer to seal a 105-104 Knicks win, sandwiched around a terrible turnover as he threw the ball off teammate Stephon Castle‘s back in the backcourt setting up Jalen Brunson’s game-deciding free throw.
“I’m still very blurry, and that’s the whole problem,” Wembanyama said about the game’s final moments. “I need to have more poise, more control over the game.”
Wembanyama called the turnover “the most frustrating thing.”
“To throw it away after putting in all this work,” he said, adding the urgency of the moment, getting the rebound and pushing the ball up the court led to the mistake. “The body reacts quicker than the mind.”
Coming off the floor, he said he had “lots of emotions of every type,” before correcting himself, “not of every type, only the negative type.”
“I threw that one away, I messed up,” he said. “We didn’t play great as a team. We needed to win that game. This game was ours. But at this point it’s done.
“Am I gonna regret it? Yes, of course. Am I gonna use that to fuel me and to fuel us next game? Absolutely.”
On the final possession, Wembanyama got a good look off a pick-and-pop for a 20-foot jumper to steal the game, but the jumper with two seconds left hit back iron.
“I liked the shot, but I feel like in this moment you need to shoot to score,” he said. “And in moments like this, results matter more than process. We just need to score, I need to score.”
The Spurs had done the hard part. After the Knicks’ lead hit 97-83 with 6:04 to play, San Antonio would score 12 straight in the next 129 seconds, a run interrupted but not halted by two Mike Brown timeouts.
After Brunson missed a pair of shots, the latter a wide-open three-pointer, pushing the Knicks’ cold streak to six straight off the mark, the game was tied with three minutes remaining as Dillon Harper laid it in at the other end with 3:00 to play. The Spurs would then score on four of their next five possessions and held a two-point lead with under a minute remaining.
“I think we need to put ourselves in better conditions,” Wembanyama said. “We’re digging ourselves a hole, that’s been a theme so far.”
The hole came from the Knicks dominating the middle quarters, outscoring their hosts 59-41.
Wembanyama was a bit of a non-factor in the first half, attempting just four shots in his first 18 minutes.
“I have to make sure that there are environments that the ball finds him,” Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson said of the low shot total. “He’s gotta make sure that he can’t rely on that to get shots, as well. And I think there are times, when he was open on rolls around the paint and his teammates gotta get him the ball.
“… But, yeah, four shots in a half, on this stage, is not acceptable.”
The Spurs’ star was an even plus-minus and had just seven points, five rebounds, two blocks, one assist, one steal, and two turnovers. (He turned it around, scoring 22 points in 22 second-half minutes on 9-for-17 shooting.)
Karl-Anthony Towns took full advantage, scoring 17 points on 6-for-8 shooting (3-for-5 from deep) with seven rebounds, three assists, a steal, a block, and was a plus-13 in 18 first-half minutes.
Wembanyama called Towns a “very different” big man from the ones the Spurs faced in earlier rounds.
“It’s bringing us into difficult areas because they’re good players and he’s a good player,” Wembanyama said of Towns. “We just need to figure it out, we need to keep working at it… We can do a little bit better; we can do better defensively.”
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