LOS ANGELES (AP) — Victor Wembanyama began his 40-point performance against the Lakers on Tuesday night with a 25-point first quarter. That relentless start was a direct message from both the San Antonio Spurs and their young superstar.
Wembanyama is tired of the Spurs playing poorly against lesser opponents, and he took it on himself personally to make spectacularly quick work of a Lakers lineup missing nearly all of Los Angeles' best players in San Antonio's 136-108 victory.
“What got me going was honestly proving myself a point, proving my team a point,” said Wembanyama, who also had 12 rebounds while matching his highest-scoring performance of the season. “I’m not worried about us, I’m not worried about me, against good teams. But history has showed that I need to be worried about us against teams like this. So yeah, we don’t just talk about what we need to do. We need to actually act.”
When Wembanyama coolly dropped in a turnaround fadeaway jumper that gave him 25 points with four minutes still left in the first quarter, it was clear he was in a profound groove.
The French big man went 8 of 9 from the field with three 3-pointers in those first eight minutes. He went on to a 37-point first half while leading San Antonio to a 30-point lead over the Lakers, who were without Luka Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves.
“He was very aggressive, as aggressive to start a game as I’ve seen him, both in attacking the basket and in shooting without hesitation from three,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “He just really put his imprint on the game in that first half.”
Wembanyama had the highest-scoring first half performance by anybody in the NBA this season, and the highest-scoring half by a Spurs player in the 21st century.
And he played only 26 minutes — the fewest by any player in a 40-point game since Sleepy Floyd did it in 24 minutes in February 1991.
“It feels right,” Wembanyama said with a grin when asked to describe his first-half flow.
He was looking for his shot at every opportunity, and his teammates fed him relentlessly. It was all by design for the center, who will start his first All-Star Game this weekend several miles down the freeway at Intuit Dome.
“These kind of games, you’ve got to have the greed,” Wembanyama said. “I mean, every game you’ve got to have this greed to want more every time, because, you know, at all times, it doesn’t matter who’s on the court, somebody is going to want to stop you from what you’re doing out there. So you’ve got to be greedy.”
Although the Lakers altered their defensive game plan and upped their intensity in the third quarter after that first-half embarrassment, only the grind of the NBA season likely held Wembanyama to a mere 40 points, 10 shy of his career high.
The Spurs have another game at Golden State on Wednesday night, so coach Mitch Johnson gave an early night to Wembanyama after he hit one last 3-pointer and checked out with 4:13 left in the third.
“Of course I’m ready to go back on the court,” Wembanyama said. “I was also pushing to go back. But I mean, they made the right choice by keeping me on the bench. We’ve got to think long-term."
The Spurs are 14-7 since New Year’s Eve, but they’ve lost to Charlotte, New Orleans, Memphis and Portland in that stretch. San Antonio has the NBA’s third-best record despite those lapses.
“Playing against quote-unquote ‘bad teams’ or teams missing players has been our problem,” Wembanyama said. “Or consistency. I think almost every time we’ve been ready against the top seeds. Our record against them shows it. But we’ve also been bad against below-.500 teams. Tonight, I think we had to make a statement and show progress.”
Wembanyama will be the Spurs' only All-Star in Inglewood this weekend, and Johnson is surprised by that development — although he also has a guess about why it happened.
“I do think it's very interesting that De'Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle have not been named an All-Star,” Johnson said. “Seven teams in this league have multiple All-Stars, and we’ve played pretty good against a lot of the top teams in this league. ... Nothing to take away from anybody who has been named an All-Star, because they have a lot of great players, but the only way I can think we are deserving of (only) one All-Star means there must be an awful lot of people that have Victor Wembanyama as one of the front-runners for MVP.”
The Spurs (37-16) have the best record among teams without multiple All-Stars.
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