Wembanyama's 30 Not Enough as Spurs Fall to Grizzlies 106-105

Victor Wembanyama scored 30 points in his return, but it wasn’t enough for the Spurs as they fell to the Grizzlies 106-105.

San Antonio hasn’t had much trouble shooting the ball or beating subpar teams this season, but those trends have popped up as they’ve dropped four of their last six games. In Memphis they managed just 37% from the floor and 30% from deep, making it their third loss to a losing team.

Wembanyama had missed the previous two games after hyperextending his left knee, and looked locked in from the start of this one. A few moments after he checked in off the bench he forced a steal and got to the free throw line, and his intensity continued for all of his 21 minutes.

The big man showed off his feathery touch from all areas of the floor. He hit circus shots through contact and some tough mid-range looks to go with 3-6 from deep. His last triple gave San Antonio a 98-97 lead with 3:45 to go, and he didn’t see the floor for the rest of the game.

Despite the loss, Wemby shined tonight ‼️

30 PTS (19 in 2H)
10-20 FGM pic.twitter.com/vjrvJW9BOE
— NBA (@NBA) January 7, 2026

Wembanyama had worked hard to get back on the floor as soon as possible after his scary-looking knee injury. A few days later he was in the layup line, kicking the balls that had gotten stuck in the net some ten feet above the floor.

Wait. Wemby did what? pic.twitter.com/HFlftVZI6O
— Don Harris (@DonHarris4) January 7, 2026

While Wemby did all he could to prove that he’s all the way healthy, the Spurs made it clear that they wouldn’t risk his long-term health to chase a January win.

"He's put in a lot of work. We have seen enough, and felt enough to give it a go." Mitch Johnson said before the game. “We're keeping the kid from himself. We want him to be healthy for years, not for trying to win the next couple of games."

As rational an explanation as that is, it can’t have sat well with a competitor of Wembanyama’s caliber to watch the game slip away from the bench. Wasting Wemby’s tremendous performance against a group as banged up as Memphis will sting for a Spurs team that would have been expected to handle business without him.

“He wants to be out there, we all know he wants to be out there, but we have to figure it out, when he’s there and when he’s not there, we have to be better” said Julian Champagnie, who scored 23 and seems to be one of the only Spurs who can shoot from outside since Devin Vassell went down.

“We have to step up, there’s no one guy that’s gonna beat a team… as a unit we have to be better,” Champagnie said.

Mitch Johnson would be the first to tell you that his team isn’t playing up to their standards in the last few contests.

“I thought that we were probably in control for most of the game, and that that was misleading, because our process of what we were trying to execute was not sharp,” Johnson said.

“I thought that our body language and reactions and focus on the game plan execution, what needed to be done, was not sharp,” Johnson said. “That's frustrating, and that's on myself, and something that we're going to have to continue to be better at, or we're going to continue to find ourselves in situations like this.”

“We have to be a little more mindful of the effort that we’re putting out on the court, I think that’s the biggest thing for us, putting our energy into the right things,” he said. “It feels like about since Christmas, we haven’t been putting our energy in the right places.”

As far as energy goes both Johnson and Champagnie praised Jeremy Sochan, who provided a spark off the bench in the second half after largely falling out of the rotation in the last month.

The Spurs won’t get much time to regroup before their next chance to get it right, a late game in San Antonio on Wednesday night against the Lakers. Johnson seems to feel pretty confident in Wembanyama’s health ahead of that marquee matchup.

“As far as I know he came out pretty good,” Johnson said after the game. “Again, it's tough on that kid. He's got a lot of yo-yoing and back and forth, and trying to support him the best we can. I think he did a phenomenal job, and hopefully he can just keep building on it.”