Victor Wembanyama wasted no time setting the tone Tuesday night, scoring 25 points in the first quarter on his way to 40 in a 136-108 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.
From the opening tip, the San Antonio Spurs’ 7-foot-4 centerpiece played with purpose.
The Lakers were without Luka Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves, but Wembanyama made sure there would be no slip against a short-handed opponent.
San Antonio had stumbled in similar spots before, and their young star refused to let it happen again.
“What got me going was honestly proving myself a point, proving my team a point,” Wembanyama said after adding 12 rebounds to match his season high. “I’m not worried about us, I’m not worried about me, against good teams. But history has shown that I need to be worried about us against teams like this. So yeah, we don’t just talk about what we need to do. We need to actually act.”
Midway through the first quarter, Wembanyama spun into a turnaround fadeaway that gave him 25 points with four minutes left in the period. He finished the opening eight minutes 8 of 9 from the field, including three 3-pointers, and carried that surge to 37 points by halftime as the Spurs built a 30-point lead.
“He was very aggressive, as aggressive to start a game as I’ve seen him, both in attacking the basket and in shooting without hesitation from three,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “He just really put his imprint on the game in that first half.”
It was the highest-scoring first half in the NBA this season and the most by a Spurs player in a half in the 21st century.
Wembanyama needed only 26 minutes, the fewest in a 40-point game since Sleepy Floyd scored 40 in 24 minutes in February 1991.
“It feels right,” Wembanyama said with a grin when asked about his first-half rhythm.
He hunted his shot, and his teammates kept finding him. The approach was deliberate for the 20-year-old center, who will start his first All-Star Game this weekend at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood.
“These kind of games, you’ve got to have the greed,” Wembanyama said. “Every game you’ve got to have this greed to want more every time, because at all times, it doesn’t matter who’s on the court, somebody is going to want to stop you from what you’re doing out there. So you’ve got to be greedy.”
The Lakers adjusted defensively and increased their intensity after halftime, but fatigue and a packed schedule likely kept Wembanyama from pushing closer to his career high of 50. With another game at Golden State on Wednesday night, acting coach Mitch Johnson rested him after he hit a final 3-pointer and checked out with 4:13 left in the third quarter.
“Of course I’m ready to go back on the court,” Wembanyama said. “I was also pushing to go back. But they made the right choice by keeping me on the bench. We’ve got to think long term.”
The Spurs are 14-7 since New Year’s Eve, though they have losses to Charlotte, New Orleans, Memphis and Portland in that span. San Antonio has the NBA’s third-best record despite those lapses.
“Playing against quote-unquote ‘bad teams’ or teams missing players has been our problem. Or consistency,” Wembanyama said. “I think almost every time we’ve been ready against the top seeds. Our record against them shows it. But we’ve also been bad against below-.500 teams. Tonight, I think we had to make a statement and show progress.”
Wembanyama will be the Spurs’ only All-Star this weekend, something Johnson noted.
“I do think it’s very interesting that De’Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle have not been named All-Stars,” Johnson said. “Seven teams in this league have multiple All-Stars, and we’ve played pretty good against a lot of the top teams in this league. Nothing to take away from anybody who has been named an All-Star, because they have a lot of great players, but the only way I can think we are deserving of only one All-Star means there must be an awful lot of people that have Victor Wembanyama as one of the front-runners for MVP.”
The Spurs improved to 37-16, the best record among teams without multiple All-Stars.
