The Spurs have remained calm since losing Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday, viewing it as one more bit of adversity that needs to be overcome on their way to a title, according to Michael C. Wright of ESPN. Victor Wembanyama said he isn’t “worried in the slightest” about how the team will respond when the series resumes tonight.
“We know we’re not here by chance,” Wembanyama said. “We’ve been through some weird, weird, situations [or] whatever. It’s reassuring to know that these guys, the 18 guys we’ve got, are built this way. [They] are resilient.”
Wright notes that the Spurs weren’t viewed as ready to be championship contenders when the season began, and there were worrisome injuries hanging over the team as it gathered for training camp. Wembanyama was returning from deep vein thrombosis that forced him to miss the final 36 games of last season, Dylan Harper just a few weeks removed from surgery to fix a partially torn ligament in his left thumb and De’Aaron Fox was uncertain for camp due to a lingering hamstring strain.
Even with the health questions and concerns over having so many young players in the rotation, general manager Brian Wright was a firm believer in the roster he assembled.
“When we were whole last year you saw flashes of it,” he said. “And the bulk of our group is incredibly young. The one thing you could bank on was improvement, whether that be Vic, Steph (Castle), as well as Keldon (Johnson) and Devin (Vassell). There’s Julian (Champagnie), too. They’re still growing. Just with the evolution of the guys we have and then someone of Fox’s caliber being here in the offseason, there’s a real chance we could match up and play with all the teams at the top of the league. Obviously, you’ve got to do the work. But we believe in the group we have.”
There’s more from San Antonio:
- As the veteran in the Spurs’ backcourt, Fox needs to have a better showing in Game 2, states Kelly Iko of The Athletic. Fox only had seven points in 38 minutes in the opener while shooting 3-of-13 from the field and missing his all attempts from outside the paint. “I’ve got to make shots,” he said. “Obviously I’m not shooting the ball as much. But coming here, I knew that was the way it was going to be. As a player, you sacrifice for the betterment of the team. There are times where I need to take shots or times where I don’t take as many shots, but at the end of the day, you need to make the shots that you take.”
- Game 1 was also a disappointment for Keldon Johnson, who scored just three points in eight minutes, Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express-News writes in a subscriber-only story. Johnson promises that it won’t affect him for the rest of the series. “When you get in a series like this, once the game is over, you process it that night and then we come back and we break it down today,” he said. “And then you got to let it go. You can’t let it linger on to other games. You can’t get too high, you can’t get too low. You got to try and stay as even-keeled as possible. I’ll correct those mistakes and be back at it tomorrow.”
- Jared Weiss of The Athletic examines the marketing strategy to make Wembanyama the most popular athlete in the world, including his statement to Nike executives last year that “I’m not gonna give basketball a choice of who the face is going to be.”