“Where the hell was Wemby?” Spurs star under fire after collapse

Watch the highlights. The media criticized him, and Perkins blasted him sharply: “He did not exist in the second half.”

The New York Knicks will not forget this day. The team from the Big Apple pulled off the greatest comeback in an NBA Finals series this morning (Thursday), erasing a 29-point deficit against the San Antonio Spurs and, thanks to a game-winning basket by OG Anunoby, earned a 107-106 victory and a 3-1 series lead.

“This was a game that will go down as one of the greatest games in history,” said Brian Windhorst. “We saw one of the biggest events in the 80-year history of the NBA here. It could be the greatest game ever played at Madison Square Garden, and one of the greatest Finals games we have ever seen. This is a game where every late sequence could have its own documentary film.”

At the same time, ESPN’s broadcast discussed Victor Wembanyama’s performance. He finished with 24 points and 13 rebounds, but had another inefficient Finals game, shooting 9-for-25 from the field. “He started playing basketball against big, physical guys, and it looked like his shoes were slipping,” they said. “He was struggling to keep his balance because he is so tall, he is flailing around out there on the court. It looks like he is tired. He is done because he is playing too much.”

“I don’t know what happened during the crucial sequence,” Wembanyama admitted afterward. “I tried to contest the first shot, I turned around and saw him, Anunoby, up there. That’s all I can say. I can’t explain what happened in that collapse, there is no doubt we were not hungry enough in the second half. Now we have two paths, a good one and a bad one. The bad one is to give up, the good one is to grow from it and become more connected, that is what we will do.”

Wembanyama continued, “We need to keep helping each other, communicating, not blaming each other, and then either we’ll have it or we won’t. We proved that we can rise above adversity, even though we have not been in this position before. I am convinced we are built for this. It will make us stronger.”

One of those who attacked Wembanyama was Kendrick Perkins, who said: “Where the hell was Wemby?! You’re talking about the Defensive Player of the Year? He was not there in the second half and he did not contribute much on offense. I’m not going to attack Mitch Johnson, I’m going to attack the guys who were on the court.”

On Locked On Spurs, of course, they were disappointed, and it was said there: “This was the biggest choke we have ever seen in our lives, the collapse of collapses, something never done before in NBA history happened tonight in New York on our watch. It is a collapse that cannot be explained, embarrassing, horrifying, hard to talk about in moments like this. We are hallucinating, we are speechless, we are devastated.”