SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 De\u2019Aaron Fox scored 26 points, Keldon Johnson had 25 and the San Antonio Spurs won their third straight without Victor Wembanyama, toppling the Atlanta Hawks 135-126 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Nickeil Alexander-Walker had a career-high 38 points on 13-for-17 shooting for Atlanta. Jalen Johnson added 26 for the Hawks, who have lost two straight after winning five in a row.<\/p>\n
San Antonio was without Wembanyama (left calf strain), Stephon Castle (strained left hip flexor) and Dylan Harper (strained left calf). Trae Young (right MCL sprain) sat out for Atlanta.<\/p>\n
San Antonio (11-4) is off to its best start after 15 games since 2016-17, when it opened 12-3.<\/p>\n
With several stars missing, Spurs guard David Jones Garcia put up a stellar performance.<\/p>\n
Jones Garcia had 12 points, six assists, five rebounds, three steals and a blocked shot. All were season highs for the rookie from the Dominican Republic on a two-way contract.<\/p>\n
Jones Garcia sparked a 34-12 run to open the second quarter, giving the Spurs a 62-46 lead with 4:19 remaining in the first half. He had eight points, three assists, two rebounds and a blocked shot in 8 minutes, 14 seconds. That stretch alone was greater than his playing time in any of his four previous appearances.<\/p>\n
Jones Garcia had another impactful run after the Hawks rallied for a 101-100 lead on Alexander-Walker\u2019s layup.<\/p>\n
Jones Garcia captured a rebound over several taller players in the paint and immediately fired a halfcourt pass to a sprinting Julian Champagnie for a layup and a 105-101 lead with 8:38 remaining. A minute later, Jones Garcia stripped Jalen Johnson of his dribble for what would lead to Jeremy Sochan\u2019s dunk and a 110-101 lead.<\/p>\n
Champagnie finished with 20 for San Antonio, which had six players in double figures.<\/p>\n
Spurs forward Harrison Barnes had 14 points in surpassing 14,000 for his career.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Hawks: At New Orleans on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Spurs: At Phoenix on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 De\u2019Aaron Fox scored 26 points, Keldon Johnson had 25 and the San Antonio Spurs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-304584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}