Victor Wembanyama Spurs NBA Finals

Victor Wembanyama sends the Spurs to the NBA Finals in Year 3 and the league just might be cooked for the next 15 years

Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 111-103 in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals on Saturday night. The Spurs are in the NBA Finals for the first time since 2014.

Victor Wembanyama is 22 years old. He averaged 27.3 points, 10.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 2.7 blocks, and 1.4 steals for the series. He shot 48 percent from the field, 40 percent from three, and 89.5 percent from the line.

He won the Western Conference Finals MVP and became the first player in NBA history to have 15 made threes and 15 blocks in a single playoff series.

The man has been in the league for three seasons and he’s already in the Finals. He’s 7-foot-4 with a jumper, a handle, and a defensive presence that makes opposing players physically afraid to go near the paint.

Nike just dropped an ad that says “He has arrived.” He arrived a long time ago. The rest of the league just didn’t want to admit how bad it was going to get.

Victor Wembanyama Year 3:

The Spurs Did This With a Team Full of Kids

The majority of San Antonio’s key contributors are 25 or younger. Wembanyama is 22. Champagnie is 22 and hit six threes for 20 points in Game 7. Castle is 21 with 16 points, six boards, and six assists.

I’m Tired: Julian Champagnie is NBA Finals-bound and the 76ers waived him for a dunk-contest guy >>

Dylan Harper is 20 years old and dropped 12 points and seven rebounds in a Game 7 on the road against the defending champions. These kids played like they’d been doing this for a decade. No nerves. No stage fright. No crumbling under the pressure of a road Game 7 against a 64-win team.

De’Aaron Fox at 28 was the elder statesman. He had 15 points, five assists, and three steals and was the one guy in the locker room who had actually been in a Game 7 before. Keldon Johnson hit consecutive threes early in the fourth quarter to push the

Thunder away when OKC was trying to make a run. Seven players in double figures. Five with at least six rebounds. The Spurs won this series as a team, which makes them even more terrifying because it means you can’t just game-plan for Wembanyama and hope to survive.

The play of the game wasn’t even from Victor Wembanyama. Luke Kornet, the backup center, chased down Isaiah Hartenstein on a dunk attempt with six and a half minutes left and blocked it.

Had Hartenstein finished, it’s a four-point game with the crowd going insane. Instead, Kornet’s block led to a Castle bucket and a Champagnie three that pushed the lead to 11 and ripped the soul out of the building.

Champagnie said he’d never seen Kornet run that fast. “That was the biggest play of the game honestly. It took all the life out of the building.”

SGA Was Incredible and It Didn’t Matter

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 35 points, nine assists, four rebounds, and three steals in Game 7 and it wasn’t enough. The two-time reigning MVP was essentially the only Thunder player who showed up offensively for most of the game.

No other starter was in double figures until the fourth quarter. Holmgren had four points on two shot attempts. Four points from an All-NBA player. Wembanyama’s presence in the paint was so overwhelming that Holmgren barely attempted anything. Hartenstein and Holmgren combined for 11 points and nine rebounds. The Thunder’s frontcourt was neutralized by one player.

SGA shot 40.9 percent from the field and 28.6 percent from three for the series. Both significantly below his season averages. The Spurs’ defensive game plan was simple. Throw size, length, and physicality at SGA, make him work for everything, and force the other Thunder players to beat you. The other Thunder players couldn’t.

The Injuries Matter for OKC

Jalen Williams missed 10 of the Thunder’s 15 playoff games including four of five in the Conference Finals with a left hamstring injury. Ajay Mitchell missed the final four games with a strained right calf.

Those are two of OKC’s top offensive creators. Daigneault said the Thunder aren’t an excuse team and won’t start now, which is the right thing to say publicly. But privately, everyone in that organization knows a healthy Williams changes the math on this series dramatically. A healthy Mitchell gives SGA another creator to share the burden with.

The Thunder won 64 games. They’re going to be good again next year. They’ll reload. They’ll come back. But the problem for Oklahoma City, and for every other team in the Western Conference, is that Wembanyama is 22 and getting better every month. The Spurs just made the Finals in his third season with a roster full of players under 25. This isn’t a one-year window. This is the beginning of a dynasty.

Wembanyama’s Quote Says Everything

“Winning the Larry O’Brien Trophy is a childhood dream. Having a real shot at it, having a chance, a tangible chance at winning it, I’m realizing a dream. It’s a lifetime chance. You never know when it’s going to happen again. The day we win it, speaking for myself, it’s going to be an amazing day of the realization of a dream. It’s hard to bring to words. It’s almost like the meaning of my life.”

Then he added: “I want to do that 15, 20 more times. Let’s hope it doesn’t become an addiction. Maybe it is already.”

15-20 more times eh? The man wants 15 to 20 championships. He’s 22 years old, 7-foot-4, shooting 40 percent from three in the Conference Finals, blocking everything at the rim, and telling the world he wants to do this 15 more times.

The league is in serious trouble. Every team in the NBA is going to spend the next decade trying to figure out how to stop a player who doesn’t have a historical comparison. There is no blueprint for guarding Wembanyama because there has never been a player like him.

Spurs vs. Knicks in the Finals

San Antonio plays New York in the Finals starting Wednesday. A 1999 Finals rematch. The Spurs without Popovich and Duncan for the first time. The Knicks trying to win their first championship since 1973. Wembanyama against the Madison Square Garden crowd. That’s appointment television regardless of which teams you root for.

The Sixers lost to the Knicks in the second round. The Knicks are now in the Finals. Wembanyama just eliminated the Thunder, the team that has Jared McCain.

The NBA playoffs continue to be a reminder that the Sixers’ organizational failures are unique to the Sixers and that other franchises are building championship-caliber teams with young talent while Philadelphia argues about who the next president of basketball operations should be.

Victor Wembanyama has arrived. The rest of the league should be terrified. Wednesday can’t come fast enough.

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