“Where the Hell Was Wemby?” Spurs Star Faces Heavy Criticism

New York Knicks fans will not forget this day. The team from the Big Apple staged the biggest 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, winning 107:106 to take a 3:1 lead in the series.

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

At the same time, ESPN’s broadcast focused on Victor Wembanyama’s performance. Although he finished with 24 points and 13 rebounds, he ended another inefficient Finals game, shooting 9 of 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’s swaying around out there on the court. It looks like he’s tired. He’s done because he’s playing too much.”

“I don’t know what happened on the decisive play,” Wembanyama admitted afterward. “I tried to contest the first shot, I turned and saw him, Anunoby, up there. That’s all I can say. I don’t know how to explain what happened in that collapse, there’s 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 get stronger from this and become more connected, that’s what we’ll do.”

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

One of Wembanyama’s harshest critics was Kendrick Perkins, who said: “Where the hell was Wemby?! You’re talking about the Defensive Player of the Year? He was nonexistent in the second half and he didn’t give 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, the reaction was also one of deep disappointment: “This was the biggest choking job we have ever seen in our lives, the collapse of collapses, something that has never been done in NBA history happened tonight in New York at our expense. This is a collapse that cannot be explained, embarrassing, horrifying, it’s hard to speak in moments like these. We are hallucinating, we are speechless, we are devastated.”