Can Wembanyama Turn His Biggest Blunder Into His Greatest Triumph?

SAN ANTONIO -- Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs spent all season and postseason disproving the notion that this team is too inexperienced to win a title.

But in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, needing a win to secure a split on their home floor, they experienced the single-most inexperienced play of their season. With a chance to beat the Knicks, or at least go to overtime, a series of errors in quick succession made this one of the most gut-wrenching losses in Spurs history, and certainly in Wembanyama's professional career.

Wembanyama was hard on himself after a series of missed shots and a brutal turnover swung the game in the final moments. He clapped in frustration as he walked into the tunnel. He talked through what he felt in that moment.

"Lots of emotions of every type," he said, before a dry chuckle and a slight correction. "I mean, not every type, only the negative type."

He paused for nearly ten seconds, then took full blame for the loss in his most memorable answer of the night.

"I threw that one away. I messed up," Wembanyama said. "We didn't play great as a team. We needed to win that game. This game was ours, but at this point it's done. Am I going to regret it? Yes, of course. Am I going to use that to fuel me and to fuel us this game? Absolutely.”

Asked Wemby about his emotions leaving the court:

“I threw that one away. I messed up. We didn't play great as a team. We needed to win that game. This game was ours, but at this point it's done. Am I going to regret it? Yes, of course. Am I going to use that to fuel me and to… pic.twitter.com/rKxYe2oYnh
— Tom Petrini (@RealTomPetrini) June 6, 2026

The Spurs went on a 14-0 run to erase a big fourth-quarter deficit, but Wembanyama had a few tough plays in the last minute. He almost lost the ball and wound up stepping back into a corner 3 that seemed a bit panicked, and missed. He trailed Dylan Harper on a transition break and finished an and-1 that put the Spurs up 2 with a minute left as the arena erupted with emotion from the crowd to the players.

After Brunson tied it, Wemby tried a mid-range jumper in isolation and missed. It wasn’t an awful look considering his shot is basically unblockable and the Knicks have spent all series whacking him on the way to the basket, but he didn't really make the defense work.

The score was knotted at 104 after that miss, and Wembanyama stepped up to stop Brunson. He grabbed the miss off the glass with 10 seconds left and a golden opportunity to win one of the craziest NBA Finals games in recent memory. Instead, it slipped away faster than you can say 'What just happened?'

The first mistake was made by rookie head coach Mitch Johnson, who didn’t call timeout and instead instructed his team to push the ball up the floor. A Coach of the Year Candidate, Johnson has impressed in his first full year at the helm. A big part of the identity that he’s helped establish for this team is a fast pace that gets the ball up quickly to take advantage of mismatches and numbers advantages in transition.

That principle drove his decision to not call timeout at the end of Game 2 against the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round. While that decision was criticised at the time, the Spurs got an open shot from one of their best shooters to win the game, but it rimmed out. A team with this level of playmaking talent can thrive and find good looks when the opposing defense doesn’t have time to talk it over, set themselves up, or find their preferred matchups. There are many valid reasons to play this way.

It must be said, however, that in this particular case it would have been a better idea to form the letter T with his hands instead of windmilling his arm like a third base coach with his fastest player rounding second and his worst hitter on deck. If Johnson calls time there, the absolute worst-case scenario is that the Spurs hold for the last shot, brick it, and head to overtime with all the momentum. Instead he trusted his young team to make the right play in the open court in the most high-pressure environment any of them had ever faced. It backfired within a fraction of a second.

The Spurs didn't have numbers, but they did have one advantage in transition: Karl-Anthony Towns was behind Victor Wembanyama and Wemby had nobody directly in front of him. He dribbled it once and Steph Castle looked back at him as he ran to the sideline to fill the lane. Conventional wisdom in this situation is for the big man to pass the ball up to a guard, but Wembanyama is anything but conventional and in this particular situation it would have been a bad decision to pass Castle the ball even if he was looking for it. But he wasn't, and it became an awful turnover at the worst possible time.

Game 2 was tied and then this happened…#NBAFinals pic.twitter.com/OlawVJWzu2
— Mary Rominger (@KSATMaryRom) June 6, 2026

Castle was running toward the sideline, and the league leader in charges drawn this season was waiting at halfcourt in the person of Jalen Brunson. Wembanyama had room to roam, and decided to pass to a guy who had a defender close to him in a bad spot on the floor. The guy who he decided to pass it to had struggled with decision-making all night, from turnovers and shot selection to defensive gambles that didn’t pay off.

Even though Castle has been one of the Spurs’ best players all season, and a fantastic defender on Brunson, Johnson pulled him off the court for most of the last seven minutes of the game. He put him back in with 30 seconds left, ostensibly as a defensive substitution, which is one more reason he should have called timeout when Wembanyama got the board.

Before the game, Johnson used the word 'clarity' several times to describe his own job.

"There needs to be clarity for the players, and I think that word is really important," Johnson said before the game. "That's a large responsibility on the staff and myself, to be able to give the players feedback on, 'this worked, this didn't, we need to do this better, this may have not felt good at the time, but we actually think we can continue to invest and commit into whatever that is.'"

"There's so much to be made at times of the outcome of a play or a game or a situation," Johnson said. "I think to continue to give the guys clarity... can really give guys confidence into what they're walking into, and to continue to try to improve on whatever they're walking out of."

Unfortunately and ironically for Johnson and the Spurs, the most crucial error of the game came on a play where the rookie head coach allowed his young players to experience a moment of confusion.

In the rush to assign blame after the loss, many pointed the finger at the 21-year-old Castle who played one of the worst games of his professional career to this point. Upon further review, he may be the person least at fault. It can’t have helped that he was at best out of rhythm and at worst in his own head about being pulled from the most important game of the year as his team made a run. As he explained afterward in the locker room, he was filling the lane and not expecting to receive the pass in that spot and that situation.

Steph Castle on Wemby’s pass that hit his back: “I was looking at him when he first got the rebound and I just started to take off, trying to give him some space to dribble up the court. I didn't see him throw it to me.”
— Tom Orsborn (@tom_orsborn) June 6, 2026

When Wembanyama decided to throw the pass, Castle was looking at him. As soon as he started to throw it, Castle turned his head to look up court and turn away from the sideline. Wembanyama had reached the point of no return and understood immediately what was about to happen. He may have even altered the pass, and he definitely charged after it to attempt to recover the ball off of Castle’s back. Instead, Brunson read it perfectly and got there first. Wemby arrived a split second late and crashed into him, sending him to the line.

Wemby called the last few possessions blurry, and hindsight has a way of unblurring things. Now that the dust has settled, a few truths seem clear. Johnson should've called timeout, for multiple reasons. When he didn't, Wembanyama should have dribbled the ball up the floor himself. For all the mistakes Castle made in this game, this wasn't really one of them.

This play will go down in history as a memorable and catastrophic blunder, but the Spurs still had a chance to win it. Many have criticized Wembanyama's shot from the elbow at the buzzer, but it was his best look in the last minute and a half.

Why didn't he roll and try to get something at the rim? Because the Knicks have used extreme physicality and rough tags to prevent him from rolling, and because the refs typically swallow the whistle on anything less than an egregious foul in a moment like that. He simply missed it, and he was gutted afterward.

KNICKS IN 4 pic.twitter.com/xoJjimzbo7
— Ben Stiller (@BenStiller) June 6, 2026

Even the best chess player blunders the queen every now and then. Is it an ideal situation? Of course not. But you can still work your way back into the game and win it if you lock in.

Wembanyama's improbable, ahead-of-schedule run to the NBA Finals in just his third season hasn't been all roses. He's taken his lumps along the way, and shown his youth at times. He shot poorly in a couple of losses. He swung a frustrated elbow in Minnesota. He played a rough Game 5 in Oklahoma City, and facing elimination for the first time he declined to speak to the press and got accused of avoiding accountability and letting his teammates answer for him.

On Friday night, in the immediate aftermath of the new worst moment of his professional career, he took the podium and did the exact opposite. In a situation with blame to share, he put his gigantic hand up and took it all on his own broad shoulders. The third-year player put his huge body in front of his second-year guard and his first-year coach, taking full credit for the loss.

He admitted that he could have done a better job of coming down from the emotional high of knocking off the defending champions in a grueling seven-game series, and he shifted the focus to Game 3.

His decisions late in the game were questionable, but his leadership afterward is undeniable.

San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) speaks with the media after the game between the Spurs and the Knicks. — Jun 5, 2026; San Antonio, Texas, USA; San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama (1) speaks with the media after the game between the Spurs and the Knicks in game two of the 2026 NBA Finals at Frost Bank Center. Mandatory Credit: Daniel Dunn-Imagn Images | Daniel Dunn-Imagn Images

As Wembanyama's detractors and hot-take artists take a victory lap in the wake of these two crushing losses, basketball historians and empathetic humans note that basically every legend of the game has experienced a low moment like this early in their careers.

They were calling Magic Tragic Johnson after costly miscues in the 1984 Finals. He had two titles under his belt already, and would go on to win three more. LeBron got swept in his first Finals, and Michael Jordan lost each of his first three playoff series.

At the beginning of the season, not a single sane person expected Wembanyama and the Spurs to still be playing in June. It would have been ludicrous to suggest it. And yet here they are.

As impressive as this run is regardless of how it ends, nobody in that locker room takes comfort in the idea that they're playing with house money. They believe in themselves, both individually and as a team, and they're going to take it one game at a time as they work to dig out of this hole.

The margins are slimmer than a souvenir penny, and while the Spurs know they're up against it, they also know how close this series has been through the first two games, and how quickly things can change.

Sure, the Knicks are a great team, and they've won an astounding 13 playoff games in a row, and the entire New York tri-state area is engulfed in blue and orange flames. And yeah, only five teams have ever come back from a 2-0 deficit in the Finals, and none of those teams dropped the first two at home.

But isn't Wembanyama's whole deal that we've never seen anything like him? Hasn't this Spurs team spent the entire season and postseason winning at a level that defies all conventional wisdom and historical precedent? Didn't they just go on the road and win two games against the defending champions in their own deafening building?

If the Knicks close this out in four or five, that wouldn't preclude Wembanyama from becoming the greatest player in basketball history. It would be a valuable learning experience for him as he pursues that goal, the latest example of a time-honored tradition of all-time greats falling short before they reach their full potential. It would probably also piss him off a great deal.

Last summer he trained with Kevin Garnett and Hakeem Olajuwon and the Shaolin monks. Maybe in the coming offseason he'll train with Kareem or John Wick or a pod of killer whales. Whatever he does, we can expect him to come back even stronger and more motivated at age 23.

Wembanyama hasn't played up to his lofty standard in this series. That isn't evidence that he's bad or overrated; that's evidence that even though he's far from his final form, he's already carrying the expectations that come with being the best player in the world.

If Wemby is able to flip the script and lead the Spurs to four wins in the next five games against a spectacular team that hasn't lost in a month, it would likely be remembered as the most impressive first championship in the history of the sport given his age and the circumstances. That outcome is not outside the realm of possibility. If we've learned about Wembanyama and the Spurs this postseason, it's that they are resilient and talented and ready for war.

By the end of his third year, we can already expect Victor Wembanyama to do the unbelievable. Nobody expects that more than Victor Wembanyama himself.

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