Wembanyama Leads Hot-Shooting Spurs Past Jazz 123-110

The Spurs’ superstar big man just kept letting it fly from long range.

"He was a pick-and-pop, 3-point launching big… his offensive identity was polar opposite to what you guys saw,” said Jazz head coach Will Hardy.

“He just would run three-point line to three-point line, shoot trail 3s and talk trash,” said Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson.

They were reminiscing about their fellow former Spurs assistant Tim Duncan’s style in pickup games. They could have just as easily been talking about Victor Wembanyama, who drilled seven triples and finished with 33 points and 10 rebounds as San Antonio defeated the Jazz 123-110.

The Spurs had suffered a sustained shooting slump since Christmas, but as defenses sag off Wembanyama continues to fire over them. The freshly-minted All-Star starter is now 27-58 (47%) in his last 10 games after starting the season with a much lower volume of long-range attempts.

"He has so many tools or weapons that we talk about... everybody always wants to see them all all the time. And so when he shoots too many threes, they want him around the rim. He's around the rim, why doesn't he shoot threes?" Johnson said.

"It's just a balance, and he's going to continue to find that balance, and he's a great shooter, and sometimes it's going to be predicated on how the defense is guarding him, who's guarding him, what's the game calling upon," Johnson said. "And obviously tonight he got it going, and we're not surprised when he makes threes."

Wembanyama is figuring that balance out game by game.

"I keep seeing trends over the season, periods of time where teams will guard a certain team a different way. And maybe, just maybe, teams have been willing to put me more on the three point line, but like today, I can see that on my pick and rolls they were going under," Wembanyama said.

"So I can still do it, but I'm lucky to have the ability to impact the game in different areas," Wembanyama said. "And I'm ready to get any role, you know, but it's gonna be periods of times... I might not try a three for the next three games. It might just happen. I don't think I will, but anything can happen."

San Antonio shot 108-380 from 3 during a 4-6 skid, just 28%. They went that entire stretch without a single game where they hit 15 triples or managed better than 37%.

Then Wembanyama and Keldon Johnson shaved their heads.

In each of the three consecutive wins since, the Spurs have hit 15 or more from deep at a 40% clip or better. Wembanyama's willingness and ability to knock it down from outside does more than just put three points on the board.

"I think he's finally finding his groove just in terms of being healthy, the minutes, the shots, everything coming together," said Harrison Barnes. "The more dynamic he is the more dynamic our offense is, and just creates even more mismatches."

"Anytime he's on the court, he's gonna have a gravity to him defensively, that team they're gonna tilt toward him," Barnes said. "So I think for him, it's just a matter of whether he's shooting the basketball or whether he's on the block. Us figuring out, how do we play around and how do we maximize that, right? How do we continue to keep the ball moving so it's not stagnant. But at the same time if he wants to, you know, make seven threes, right? What do we do there?"

The offense is healing after a 10-game stretch where San Antonio sported the third-worst scoring efficiency in the league. The shots weren't falling, but the guys kept shooting them and stayed faithful to their process. Mitch Johnson has spoken all year about controlling what can be controlled, and defense is the reason the Spurs managed to win half of those games.

“Defense has been since camp, what we have wanted our identity to be,” Johnson said. “We felt like it was also what would be most ready to be our most consistent skill… It would take time to get a feel for each other, chemistry, that innate understanding of how I'm expecting what you're going to do and you're expecting what I'm going to do.”

“Defense has been something that we have wanted to be a constant,” Johnson said. “And in the totality of a really long season, you're going to have to win games in different ways and fashions if you're going to win games. And so during that stretch, that definitely was a part of the ingredients.”

The Spurs now head to Houston to face a big, physical Rockets team that will look to pack the paint against Wembanyama and San Antonio's assorted slashers. Expect Wemby to keep letting it fly like Tim Duncan in a pickup game.