NBA Playoffs: Three Stats Explain Victor Wembanyama, Spurs’ Dominant Game 5 Win Over Timberwolves

San Antonio put together an impressive all-around performance, led by Wemby’s 27-point, 17-rebound game.

Victor Wembanyama went right back to dominating as he returned to the court in Game 5 following his Game 4 ejection in Spurs vs. Timberwolves. | Scott Wachter-Imagn Images

The Spurs are officially one win away from a Western Conference finals showdown with the Thunder after winning 126–97 against the Timberwolves in Game 5 Tuesday.

San Antonio ran out to a big lead early behind an explosive start for Victor Wembanyama, and while Minnesota fought back on multiple occasions, and even tied the game at 61 midway through the third quarter, they couldn’t keep the Spurs at bay for long.

Now, the Timberwolves face elimination in Game 6 on Friday. These three stats explain exactly how the Spurs dominated on Tuesday night and are now just a win away from punching their ticket to the Western Conference finals against the Thunder.

+24—Victor Wembanyama’s plus-minus

Victor Wembanyama was fired up to begin Game 5, after being ejected in the Spurs’ Game 4 loss to the Timberwolves. | Scott Wachter-Imagn Images

Victor Wembanyama got tossed in the first half of Game 4 and it resulted in a Spurs loss. He was clearly trying to make up for that today—and he did. 

Wemby had 18 points in the first quarter to set the tone for San Antonio and finished with 27 points, adding 17 rebounds, five assists and three blocks to round out his statline. The superstar center was an overwhelming force in the middle of the floor, an impassable obstacle for the Timberwolves in the paint and a smooth operator offensively. Wembanyama found his shooting stroke with two threes before finishing 9 for 16 from the field. 

It was a dominant showing against a fellow seven-footer in Rudy Gobert. The result? A team-high +24 on the night. Despite hitting the occasional rocky stretch, the Spurs lapped the Wolves in Wembanyama’s minutes. That’s exactly what needs to happen if San Antonio is to make a serious championship run. Most importantly, Wembanaya rose to the moment. After an ejection in Game 4 the pressure to deliver was exceptionally intense. But the 22-year-old didn’t shy away from the expectations. He embraced them. It’s what we’ve come to expect from Wemby but he’s in uncharted territory given it’s his first career playoff run; any sign he’s feeling the weight of that fact would be fair, but he hasn’t shown any so far. 

“Tonight, some of the stuff that Wemby was doing, you can't—you don't really have too much of an answer for. You just hope he misses,” Anthony Edwards said after the game. 

The roster’s superstar has to play like one to win playoff games. Wembanyama did that tonight with one of his best all-around performances of his young playoff career so far and the Spurs now have a 3–2 lead entering Game 6. 

13—Anthony Edwards’s shot attempts

Anthony Edwards led the Timberwolves in points in Game 5, but the Spurs defense kept him from the volume scoring he’s capable of. | Scott Wachter-Imagn Images

Edwards’s kryptonite right now is double-teams. Last year he admitted consistent doubles coming from unexpected directions could confuse him. During the regular season he worked on making the right pass in those situations and seemed to largely figure it out. But with his mobility limited this playoff run, Edwards is finding it more and more difficult to exploit those double-teams. During Game 5’s broadcast, NBC commentator Reggie Miller was begging Edwards to run into the open space created after he passed out of double-teams, but the Minnesota star just doesn’t have that level of explosiveness. 

As a result, when the Spurs play good team defense and manage to double Edwards without giving up a wide-open bucket immediately afterwards, they are essentially cutting him off from doing anything out there, which was never more evident than in Game 5. Edwards finished with only 13 shot attempts, the third time this series he’s topped out at that mark, for a grand total of 20 points despite playing 39 minutes. In the fourth quarter, with the Spurs on the verge of running away with it, Edwards couldn’t find a clean look if his life depended on it. San Antonio knows the Wolves are most dangerous when their superstar is taking and making shots, so they are selling out to prevent that—and it’s working. 

Edwards averaged 20 shots per game this year. There isn’t a direct correlation between the number of attempts and winning games but the basic formula of the best player needing to take a lot of shots (because they are more likely to make them than anyone else) persists as a foundational cornerstone of NBA playoff strategy. Edwards shouldn’t be forcing the issue but Minnesota just has to get him more opportunities. Otherwise the margin for error becomes miniscule and the Timberwolves face steep odds to win against a much more talented (and healthy) San Antonio squad. 

27%—Timberwolves’ three-point shooting percentage

Jaden Daniels was 3 of 7 from three-point range in Game 5, one of just two Timberwolves to knock down multiple threes. | Scott Wachter-Imagn Images

The NBA is a make-or-miss league at its heart, no matter the context surrounding each game. And Minnesota missed quite a few shots in Game 5, which makes for the biggest reason why the team is now down 3–2. 

The Wolves went 9 for 33 from three as a team. Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels were the only two players to hit more than one shot from downtown; everyone else finished with one or zero in that column. They entered the night ranked seventh in three-point shooting percentage this playoffs and ranked sixth during the regular season, so a 27% night from deep is a rough outlier at the worst possible time; it’s their worst single-game mark this series. 

It also reflects Minnesota’s poor offensive process from this game. As noted by the NBC broadcast, the Timberwolves win games when they are scoring points in the paint and then pinging the ball out for three-pointers, not the other way around. But Wembanyama was hanging around the paint all night and constantly deterring any drives into the restricted area. Instead of trying to finish through him anyway, which is what happened in Game 1 and why the roster collectively declared they weren't scared of Wemby, they kept passing the ball out onto the perimeter. Which, after a certain point, failed to lead to open threes because the Spurs knew they were going to do it. 

It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy—missing three-pointers makes scoring in the paint harder because defenses will load up, which then makes creating open three-pointers harder, which means it’s harder to sink them. But the Timberwolves seemed to understand the value in attacking the Spurs at the rim no matter who was guarding it earlier in the series. That wasn’t the case in Game 5 and it killed their offense, as well as any hopes they held about going back to Minnesota with a 3–2 lead.

Miss Tuesday’s game? Catch up on all of the live updates below.

Live NBA playoff updates, scores, stats from Spurs vs. Timberwolves Game 5

Timberwolves stars speak out after Victor Wembanyama avoided a Game 5 suspension

If the T’Wolves were bothered by the NBA opting against further discipline for Wembanyama, they didn’t show it in the run-up to Tuesday’s game.

“I don’t think we even thought about it much at all,” Mike Conley told reporters before the game on Tuesday. “I think once the ruling came down, it was like, we expected that. Just move forward. We don’t want guys to miss games. We want to play against the best.”

Plus, as star Wolves guard Anthony Edwards explained on Sunday, it might actually work in Minnesota’s favor to have Wembanyama out on the floor, just considering how the Spurs’ offense plays out in that case.

“Honestly, man, I think it was kind of harder?” Ant said of the game without Wemby. “Just because, of course, they're a really great team with him on the floor, but they play a lot slower when he's on the floor, because everything is involved around him. When he’s not on the floor, everybody’s [playing],” Edwards said. “It's just like, when every team is missing their best player, everybody plays free. They get more shots, more confident. So I think it was a lot harder.”

So, there you have it—the league might have actually done the Wolves a solid in letting Wemby play. That said, we’ll have to see how both sides feel when we get a final look at the box score later tonight.

How we got here in the Spurs-Timberwolves series

• Game 1: Timberwolves 104, Spurs 102 (San Antonio)
• Game 2: Spurs 133, Timberwolves 95 (San Antonio)
• Game 3: Spurs 115, Timberwolves 108 (Minnesota)
• Game 4: Timberwolves 114, Spurs 109 (Minnesota)

So far, this has probably been the best series of these NBA playoffs. Minnesota overcame a Wembanyama triple-double, including 12 blocks, in Game 1 to steal a win in San Antonio. The Spurs got their revenge in the rematch, scoring the only true blowout of the series so far.

Wembanyama came out on top in an incredible shootout with Anthony Edwards on the road in Game 3. The Alien dropped 39 points and 15 rebounds, while Edwards had 32 points and 14 boards for the losing side. Ant took advantage in Game 4 after Wembanyama’s ejection, taking over in the fourth quarter and finishing with 36 points as the Wolves evened the series.

Game 5 takes us back to San Antonio, setting up what should be a thrilling final few games of this Western Conference semifinal.

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