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\u00a0Loading …<\/p>\nRob\u2019s Brew ha-ha: Spurs mismanagement of young star Wemby<\/p>\n
Published 5:15 am Thursday, December 25, 2025<\/p>\n
I hate to be a Grinch this time of year, but I think the NBA\u2019s San Antonio Spurs front office and coaching staff should get a lump of coal in their stockings this holiday season.<\/p>\n
Heading into their Christmas Day game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Spurs had a 22-7 record and occupied second place in the Western Conference. All seems to be going great for the Spurs, so what is my gripe with the team?<\/p>\n
It has to do with their usage of their young third-year superstar Victor Wembanyama. Dubbed the best basketball prospect of the past 20 years, the Spurs have inexplicably decided to use him as a sixth man recently.<\/p>\n
Since returning to the lineup on Dec. 13, Wembanyama has appeared in five games prior to the Christmas Day game against Oklahoma City. In that span, Wembanyama has averaged a puny 20.8 minutes per game. Before that, the Spurs held him out of 12 consecutive games just because of a calf strain.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a doctor, but a calf strain isn\u2019t the most devastating injury a professional athlete has ever had to deal with. There is a difference between being cautious and downright babying the young man. The Spurs obviously are choosing the babying route.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is not the first time San Antonio has put arbitrary limits on Wembanyama\u2019s playing time. In Wemby\u2019s rookie season of 2023-\u201924, then Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich put a minute restriction on the young superstar for the entire year. Wembanyama still managed to win Rookie of the Year and placed second in Defensive Player of the Year voting despite playing under 30 minutes per contest that season. I guess coach Popovich believed Wemby\u2019s legs might fall off during a game if he dared to cross the 30 minute per night threshold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Last year, Wembanyama had a strange medical condition that required surgery. A deep vein thrombosis, or a blood clot, was removed from his shoulder. After the procedure, the Spurs deactivated him for the rest of the 2024-\u201925 campaign. I think that was a complete overreaction on the part of the organization. A fluke medical condition does not rise to the level of a season ending injury in my opinion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many fans believe today\u2019s NBA players are soft, pampered, and don\u2019t care enough about competition. While I tend to agree with that sentiment, I would not lump Wemby into that category with other players from this era. He strikes me as a young man that is striving to be an all-time legend every time he steps on the floor. However, Wemby\u2019s organization insists on putting plenty of speed bumps in his way. I\u2019m sure the 29 other teams in the NBA fully support San Antonio\u2019s decision to \u201cload manage\u201d one of the game\u2019s brightest talents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Robert Brewer is a sports reporter for the Victoria Advocate. You can reach him at robert.brewer@vicad.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rob\u2019s Brew ha-ha: Spurs mismanagement of young star Wemby Published 5:15 am Thursday, December 25, 2025 I hate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-369227","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\/369227","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=369227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}