Victor Wembanyama watched Shai Gilgeous-Alexander accept his second consecutive MVP trophy before tipoff, then went out and put up the greatest playoff performance of his young career.
The Frenchman finished with 41 points, 24 rebounds, and 3 blocks across 49 minutes as the San Antonio Spurs stunned the Oklahoma City Thunder 122-115 in double overtime on the road in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals.
Victor Wembanyama’s 40-20 Night Puts Him in Rare Company
The postgame exchange told the whole story. A reporter pressed Wembanyama directly, noting his facial expressions throughout the game and asking whether losing the MVP to Gilgeous-Alexander had been on his mind.
Wembanyama didn’t dodge it.
“I still got a lot to learn, and I want to get that trophy many times in my career,” he said.
When a reporter asked postgame whether any part of the night felt personal, Wembanyama’s answer left little room for interpretation: “Yeah, for sure. Everything you just said.”
The performance landed him alongside Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to post a 40-20 game in the conference finals or later.
He’s also the youngest player ever to reach that mark in postseason play. He made a 3-pointer in the final minute of the first overtime to force a second OT, then finished the game with a dunk.
San Antonio did all of this without De’Aaron Fox, which made the performance even harder to wave away.
Wembanyama kept the team framing front and center when the cameras gathered around him after the final buzzer.
“The message would be that we as a team are ready to go in any environment, in any place, against anybody,” he said. “Even though we still got a lot to learn, our effort should be over anybody else’s, and tonight we were relentless.”
Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson wasn’t surprised by any of it. “He has a rare desire to step into every moment that’s in front of him,” Johnson said. “He’s showed in his three years in a lot of different situations and a lot of different circumstances that he is going to attack those moments.”
Dylan Harper backed Wembanyama with 24 points, 11 rebounds, and 7 steals. Stephon Castle added 17 points and 11 assists.
For Oklahoma City, Alex Caruso poured in 31 points off the bench, and Jalen Williams added 26, but Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 24 points, well below what the Thunder needed from their franchise player against San Antonio’s length and defensive attention.
The Spurs lead the series 1-0. Wembanyama is talking about winning MVP trophies, plural, at 22 years old, with a 40-point conference finals game now on his résumé to back it up.
