HOUSTON — With a wry smirk on his face, Victor Wembanyama wanted to show off his battle scars. He lowered his shorts and the layers of padded compression pants underneath to reveal a large gash on his upper leg, the kind that made some cry after wiping out skateboarding in third grade.
He tugged on his collar to reveal fresh scratches across his chest. His left arm is covered in ripe red slices, but his right arm is clean. The shooting sleeve he rocks keeps at least one part of his body safe from destruction.
“Eventually, I’m gonna run out of places on my body for scars,” Wembanyama told “Inside the NBA” after the game. “But the rest of my body, my joints, my muscles, they’re fine.”
This is the price for 15 free throws. This is the price for five blocks and a domineering fourth quarter. This is the price for stardom.
“I’m trying to do things on the court that nobody does, so I have to work in a way that nobody does,” Wembanyama said.
It’s also the price for making his coach happy. On Wednesday, Mitch Johnson spent the entirety of the first half of his San Antonio Spurs’ 111-99 win over the Houston Rockets yelling at his team to play harder. When he went back to the locker room at halftime, he was infuriated.
Before he came to the postgame podium, there was a mysterious white cup of water sitting at the podium. Johnson’s raspy voice goes from Alec Baldwin to Louis Armstrong most nights. His hoarseness could serve as a game clock, descending to pure gravel by crunch time.
An arena staffer asked if he should remove the cup before Johnson arrived. A Spurs staffer responded, “Nah, that cup’s for Coach.” After Johnson’s halftime speech, he was going to need all the hydration he could get.
“I did (yell at halftime), and they yelled at each other,” Johnson said. “We know how teams want to play us, and this (Rockets) team plays that way anyway. We knew this was going to be a game of physicality, and if we didn’t match it, we were going to get punked.”
Once Keldon Johnson got going in the third quarter and the coach switched Wembanyama’s matchup to Amen Thompson, Mitch got what he asked for. The team was diving for loose balls, dictating the physicality and funneling the game through Wembanyama on both ends.
There was one play by Wembanyama that epitomized the team’s response. In the second half, there was a loose ball that was quickly blown dead by the officials. As the nine other players on the floor relaxed, Wembanyama dove for it anyway. He later explained he wanted to make sure that if the play got challenged for whatever reason, the Spurs would have possession.
It’s the smallest of advantages, but an advantage he was willing to hit the deck for, once again.
“The goal is to have, every night, this level of dedication,” Wembanyama said.
Maybe that was when his fresh leg wound was born, a meaningless yet vital dead ball. When Wembanyama — who finished with 28 points, 16 rebounds and five blocks — is in this mode, he envelops the game. It’s why the second half was so jarring, when the Spurs doubled up the Rockets 46-23 over the final 19 minutes of the game.
This was Wembanyama’s sixth game with at least 25 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks this season. There are four of those games throughout the rest of the league. This was his 150th game, and the only player in NBA history to finish with as many points, rebounds and blocks as him is Spurs legend David Robinson, who is often sitting courtside watching the next Spurs protégé evolve.
Victor Wembanyama (1), a scar near his right shoulder, drives to the lane against Houston Rockets guard Amen Thompson during the fourth quarter at Toyota Center. (Troy Taormina / Imagn Images)
Mitch Johnson’s matchup adjustment, putting Wembanyama on Thompson, allowed the Spurs All-Star to play zone the entire second half. He was effectively parked in the paint in the fourth quarter, as the entire Spurs defense aggressively ignored Thompson. There were times when help defenders actually turned their backs to him when he was holding the ball, daring him to shoot with a hint of condescension.
Thompson, who was the Rockets’ leading scorer with 25 points, only had two of those in the fourth. He and Alperen Şengün played almost the entirety of the final period, combining to shoot 1-for-12 as Wembanyama erased everything near the paint.
It wouldn’t have worked for the Spurs without the defense from Stephon Castle, who had an important moment in his career development. He made waves early in the season when he would stonewall guards at half court and force turnovers. But that’s expected of a fellow guard. What’s not expected is to take on Şengün and Kevin Durant and make them miserable in the biggest moments of the game.
His defense on players twice his size allowed Wembanyama to park in the paint and take away everything else the Rockets could find.
“That’s his work. He can shut down guys, and he did (Wednesday),” Wembanyama said of Castle. “Every game, I’m so glad we got him in the draft. It’s amazing.”
His coach noted how Castle likely wasn’t guarding players like Şengün and Durant when he was coming up through the amateur ranks, so he is just now finally getting enough reps to understand the nuances of covering such technically advanced and physically imposing stars.
“He’s an All-NBA defender when he puts his energy and focus into the right areas,” Johnson said.
Wembanyama said it’s a compliment that teams don’t like playing against the Rockets, because their brand of basketball is so gritty. It challenged the Spurs to remind themselves who they want to be and seek it out through the bruises.
“(We) pretty much just stopped being soft,” Castle said. “I feel like at the beginning of the game, they were kind of punking us a little bit, and I feel like that’s not the identity of our team. It hasn’t been that all year.
“Nobody in our locker room takes anything personal. We were all trying to get better together. All the stuff that we were ‘yelling’ at each other, it was just to help.”
With a few days off before facing the resurging Charlotte Hornets, De’Aaron Fox invited his team to stay back and come practice at the court at his Houston home. But with all their fresh wounds, they decided to cancel the practice and simply enjoy hanging out at the Fox compound.
But assuredly, Wembanyama will find a way to put in some extra work. Even when nobody else is working, he has to keep going.