No one is expecting the San Antonio Spurs to go on a championship run without Victor Wembanyama. But if they’re the NBA Finals contender everyone believes them to be, they should be able to beat the Portland Trail Blazers without him.
That’s if Wembanyama has to miss an extended period of time.
We don’t know how long the newly-minted Defensive Player of the Year will be out. If he misses time at all. Wembanyama suffered a concussion in the second quarter of Tuesday’s game after taking a hard fall and hitting his head on the ground. Now, he’s in the concussion protocol and his status is in the air.
With Wemby out, Portland went on to win Game 2 and tie the series at 1-1. Now, the pressure is on the Spurs to bounce back on the road… whether he’s available or not.
If Wembanyama is the cheat code we all believe him to be, his absence only levels the playing field between the 2-seed Spurs and 7-seed Blazers. But it doesn’t mean San Antonio is suddenly at a disadvantage. It just means we have a real series now.
It’s true no team functions the same without their best player — especially when that player is an MVP finalist — but when you win 62 games and have the second-best odds to win a championship, you’re assumed to be greater than one player.
Those things are the result of a collective. And now is potentially the San Antonio collective’s time to prove they’re worthy of the hype.
The common knock on the Spurs is their inexperience. If they want us to believe that’s overstated, winning a first-round series without their best player is a good place to start. If they can’t, the team probably wasn’t good enough to win a championship anyway — even with Wembanyama in the lineup.
Shootaround
- The Nuggets are taking the high road after Jaden McDaniels called out individual players by name as being bad defenders.
- The NBA should do us all on the East Coast a favor and get rid of the 10:30 p.m. games in the playoffs.
- Billy Donovan is out in Chicago… but who’s in? These coaching candidates make a lot of sense for the Bulls.
- Natasha Cloud is still strangely a WNBA free agent, as Cory Woodroof examines why that might be the case.
This was Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Victor Wembanyama concussion could test how title-ready Spurs are