Spurs' Victor Wembanyama makes LeBron James look old with huge throwdown
11/27/2024 11:35 PM
The San Antonio Spurs dropped Wednesday’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers in a double-digit loss, as Gregg Popovich remains out while recovering from a mild stroke, but at least French phenom Victor Wembanyama turned in a highlight-reel dunk on Lakers star LeBron James. Early in the second quarter, Wemby received an entry pass in the low post, with LeBron defending him. While James is normally immovable in the low block, Wembanyama used his speed and agility to spin past the King to throw down a tip-toe dunk.
Check out the replay of this nifty move in this clip from ClutchPoints on X, formerly Twitter.
Wemby spins and BLOWS right past LeBron James for the SLAM pic.twitter.com/6pxd8Vq6VX
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) November 28, 2024
Spurs show improvement despite loss
On the other hand, the Spurs have shown great improvement over last season, as Victor Wembanyama has continued his development thanks to playing with one of the NBA’s last floor general in Chris Paul.
Despite the absences of Popovich and Jeremy Sochan (broken thumb), the Spurs are slowly and steadily figuring out how to win, having powered through to a 10-9 record.
They’ve even beaten the surging Golden State Warriors on Saturday, behind another strong effort from Wemby.
However, the Lakers simply posed a matchup problem: the Spurs simply didn’t have enough consistent offensive options on the wings to attack LA’s porous perimeter defense to get consistent points.
While Harrison Barnes scored 22 points, for instance, he’s not exactly on the top of the list of the Spurs’ go-to players when they need points on the board.
Lakers bounce back
Victor Wembanyama’s dunk on LeBron James aside, the Lakers led pretty much the whole game, despite threatening to let go of the rope in certain spots, allowing the Spurs to cut the lead to ten late in the game.
Likewise, LeBron had another triple-double, with 16 points, ten rebounds, and 11 assists, while Anthony Davis only scored 19 points but grabbed 14 boards.
Before the game, JJ Redick also decided to start Dalton Knecht over Cam Reddish, leaning on his team’s high-powered offense over defense on the perimeter.
This decision paid dividends, as Knecht scored 20 points on 8-15 shooting, hopefully giving him his rhythm back after Redick reinserted Rui Hachimura back into the starting five after his injury return. In their last two losses, the rookie shooter only went 5-14, after dropping 37 points on the Utah Jazz.
Moreover, this game was a nice bounce-back effort from the Lakers, losers of blowouts to the Nuggets and Suns, prompting Redick to make adjustments.
Both games also followed the same script: the Purple and Gold keeping it competitive in the first half, only to inexplicably melt down in the third quarter, showing zero defensive effort and focus en route to giving up 37 and 36 points to contending teams.
This time, though, the Lakers still gave up 30 points to their opponents in the third, but they did also score 34 points, unlike their last two losses where they only put up 15 and 18 points.
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