SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Victor Wembanyama had 32 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists and three blocks in his return from a one-game absence, leading the San Antonio Spurs to a 115-102 victory over the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Miles Bridges had 22 points and Kon Knueppel added 20 for Charlotte, which had won two straight and eight of 10.<\/p>\n
The Spurs have won 17 of 19 to tighten their grip on second in the Western Conference. San Antonio (49-18) is 7 1\/2 games ahead of No. 3 Houston (41-25) and three games behind Oklahoma City (52-15) for first.<\/p>\n
The Spurs closed their longest homestand 5-1, with their only loss coming as Wembanyama watched from the bench because of a sore right calf in a 136-131 loss to Denver on Thursday that snapped a five-game winning streak.<\/p>\n
Wembanyama had an immediate impact with 18 points, eight rebounds, two blocks and two steals in the first half.<\/p>\n
Wembanyama lost possession on an alley-oop pass and hit the rim on his dunk attempt but he regained control for a follow-up slam that put the Spurs up by nine points a minute into the second quarter.<\/p>\n
Wembanyama finished 13 for 24 from the field and 5 for 10 on 3-pointers. He is shooting 46.9% on 3-pointers in his last five games, going 23 for 49. <\/p>\n
LaMelo Ball was 4 for 10 on 3-pointers, including a 27-foot runner that gave Charlotte its only lead at 13-10 with 9:50 remaining in the first quarter. Julian Champagnie tied the game 15 seconds later with his only 3-pointer of the game and San Antonio never trailed again.<\/p>\n
Ball finished with 17 points.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Hornets: Host Miami on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Spurs: At Los Angeles Clippers on Monday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/p>\n
Raul Dominguez, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Victor Wembanyama had 32 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists and three blocks in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-536759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536759","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=536759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}