‘Victor & The Others’: How Wembanyama’s Third Return Revealed More ‘Scary’ Than Positive for Tottenham
Will Hardy, the Utah Jazz head coach, made it clear that his team’s game plan was not solely focused on Victor Wembanyama, and it worked. This is bad news for the San Antonio Spurs. Their rookie’s return did not meet their expectations.
The San Antonio Spurs’ roster isn’t constructed like a mid-2000s pop-rock group set to take the stage on a world tour.
It isn’t focused on one single player, nor a single aspect of basketball. It’s not uni-faceted, in any sense. It might feature Victor Wembanyama, who’s taken the NBA world by storm standing 7-4 with an 8-foot wingspan.
He’s been the front man of the Spurs since he was drafted. And more specifically, since he stepped foot on the San Antonio tarmac from his private flight to introduce him to the city for the first time. But he isn’t the only story surrounding the NBA’s youngest team — far from it, in fact.
That sentiment Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy made crystal clear.
Prior to facing his old team — serving as a Spurs assistant from 2015-2021 — the still-young head coach took questions about facing one of the game’s most generational prospects. But instead of focusing solely on him, he opted to paint a bigger picture.
“We know how talented he is,” Hardy said. “[But] keeping him at bay is only part of the plan. … In no way is tonight’s game about Victor Wembanyama.”
“We [didn’t] prep for [the Spurs] like it’s Victor and the others … they’ve got good players on their roster whop are all capable of going off in their own ways.”
The line of questioning made sense, especially considering Wembanyama would be playing against a completely new team after missing the game prior. But while the Spurs did have an array of weapons that night, a lot of attention was turned on Wembanyama — and it wasn’t the prettiest sight.
The Spurs were down one bucket less than 40 points and were looking for any remnants of hope or momentum, which ideally would be provided from Wembanyama, Devin Vassell, Tre Jones or anybody else. Anybody.
But it wasn’t Wembanyama. A missed cut that later went viral after Wembanyama air-dunked a pass he wished he had made sure of that, and later led to fan backlash calling for their rookie to get the ball in the paint. Missed reads happen, and don’t typically in as exaggerated fashion as the one against the Pelicans, but it was a cause for concern.
And Jeremy Sochan was the first to comment on it.
“We’ve got to find stuff like that,” Sochan said of missing Wembanyama down low. “We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to get the ball to him and let him work there. … It’s not like we don’t want to pass it to him.”
The latter point had been heavily debated. Some errant fans were accusing the non-Wembanyama Spurs of jealousy. Purposefully “missing” the rookie in an attempt to give themselves more time in the spotlight. That simply wasn’t true.
Any time spent around the players makes that abundantly clear.
“We have a very healthy locker room, healthy [relationships] with each other,” Wembanyama noted of San Antonio’s team chemistry — and not on just one occasion. “This is not an issue at all.”
Sochan also emphasized how close-knit the Spurs were to each other, but any chance he had to show it on the court was taken away just a few minutes prior to tipoff of the next game against the Dallas Mavericks.
Wembanyama was going through his typical practice routines. Post-ups, 3-pointers and fast-break simulations. As he layed a ball into the net on one of many reps, however, he landed wrong. On the foot of an onlooking Mavericks employee — a ball boy.
And he was out for the game.
“He probably could have played” Popovich said following the game. “If it was a playoff game, I probably would have played him. He’s not happy about it, but I would rather err on the conservative side since it’s the same ankle that he just got a time limitation on. Just a freak accident before the game.”
The somber tune of the 28th-year coach turned into a sing-song one the next game.
“If you’re going to be a ball boy, be more nimble,” Popovich said with a laugh.
Wembanyama later revealed he had no ill will toward the employee, nor Popovich. He was just competitive, and wanted to play with his teammates. But he understood.
“We think about the long run,” Wembanyama said. “Coach told me after I was going to sit out that my career is bigger … than just a game against Dallas. We had to be smart.”
Safe to say, Wembanyama’s teammates agreed.
“It’s tough,” Sochan said. “It’s a weird one. You never really see that. We were just hoping that he was good. … There’s no need to risk something that he’d hurt before. I’m just happy that he was good. In the end, it’s important that everyone stays healthy.”
Wembanyama was healthy the day of the incident, and throughout the entire game he watched from the sidelines. He was just being “cautious.”
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