Twenty-one points better than the other team when he was on the court; 19 points worse when he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Think Victor Wembanyama makes a difference?<\/p>\n
Wemby\u2019s return to the court after a month away due to a calf strain certainly didn\u2019t disappoint. Coming off the bench for the first time in his career (130 games), Wembanyama\u2019s 22 points, nine rebounds and two blocks in 21 minutes only begin to tell the tale of his impact. <\/p>\n
He sat out the entire first quarter so coach Mitch Johnson could manage Wemby\u2019s minutes restriction and keep him available for the end of a tight game without playing him in irregular patterns. Once he hit the court, not only did the Thunder have to avoid him in the paint and try to shoot 3s over him, but the rest of the Spurs cranked up their defensive pressure on the perimeter and really bothered the defending champs.<\/p>\n
The Spurs had four 20-point scorers in the game, led by Devin Vassell\u2019s 23 points. Stephon Castle and De\u2019Aaron Fox joined Victor with 22 points.<\/p>\n
If the Spurs need to continue to manage Wembanyama\u2019s minutes, and have him ready for the end of a potentially close championship game tonight, they would do well to bring him off the bench again. Overall, the size and speed the Spurs have with Wemby in the fold bothered the Thunder more so than at any point this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-one points better than the other team when he was on the court; 19 points worse when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-349870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}