Wemby Watch: Spurs, Steph Castle Get Statement Win Against Warriors

The Spurs played fairly poorly, but then Steph Castle closed the third quarter on a personal 5–0 run and the Spurs ran the Warriors out of the Frost Bank Center with a crushing 33–13 fourth quarter onslaught.

The Warriors are legitimately good. Even after the loss, their record shines at 12–4. I’m sure there are already fingers ready to point to the Warriors being on the second night of a road back-to-back, but the back-to-back excuse is weak so I’m not discounting any win (or excusing any loss) because of it.

However, I think the Warriors are a fraud check team. Along with OKC, they sit atop the West, but I don’t think their elite status will hold. To be sure, Steve Kerr has maximized what they have, but the Warriors aren’t a top team and they’ll inevitably ebb closer to a lower seed (likely 7 or 8) in the West.

Nevertheless, the Warriors are a smart, experienced team with solid depth who are playing well to start the season. Golden State had the Spurs by 17 in the third quarter, but the Spurs kept pushing and quickly turned the tide in the fourth quarter.

Let’s go through my notes.

Stephon Castle

Stephon Castle is emerging as the true #1 pick of the 2024 NBA draft. The rookie takes the game seriously, plays with intelligence, and continually comes up with big plays.

Stephon Castle convincingly won the individual battle with Steph Curry, hounding the all-time great into 5–16 shooting and 3 turnovers while registering 19 points on 7–15 shooting. Stephon’s defense was relentless and impressive.

The only blemish on this night was his poor three-point shot selection. He finished 2–7 and I took issue with how far beyond the arc some of his shots were. It’s one thing to shoot 25-footers, it’s another to shoot 30-footers — going this far out is just stupid on the Spurs’ behalf and works against their volume three-point shooting strategy.

A near-logo three and a corner three are not the same shot.

Victor Wembanyama

You could tell even the Spurs realized how stupid their usage of Victor was in the first half because they immediately started the second half by trying to get him closer to the basket. And there was some success with the twos.

Victor’s clearly regressed in his sophomore season and it’s not because of anything physical — it’s because of the Spurs’ approach and Victor’s mindset.

For the bulk of this game, Victor was a chucker. Fortunately, towards the end, some of his chucks converted, but a 7'4" chucker is a colossal waste of a generational talent.

The fact that Buddy Hield and Steph Curry don’t even have as much of a green light as Victor does should be a wake-up call to the Spurs.

What helped was towards the end of the game, even Wemby realized he was only hurting the Spurs by chucking up threes and stopped settling for them until he had more of a rhythm later.

Wemby’s early shot selection was downright embarrassing. He was out there chucking 30-footers that were missing badly.

Sean Elliott made a light note of it, and Mitch Johnson and the rest of the coaching staff need to rein Victor in. The threes got out of control and could have easily cost the Spurs the game.

More Victor notes:

• Victor has some showtime in him that annoys me. Sometimes he’s looking for the crowd reaction play instead of the right play.
• On one defensive stand, Victor started leaking out rather than securing the rebound and the Warriors got the ball. He gets extremely lackadaisical on occasion.
• Someone has to teach him to stop biting on so many pump fakes and jumping on shots he has no chance of blocking. It takes him out of position and leaves the Spurs completely vulnerable to surrendering layups. How come Victor’s still missing basketball basics?
• One one play Victor stupidly lunged towards whoever had the ball (maybe Steph) and whoever had the ball just passed to Trayce Jackson-Davis for a free layup. That was a stupid, stupid play by Victor. More discipline is desperately needed.
• I couldn’t tell if the Spurs were willing to give up pick ‘n roll layups to prevent Steph Curry from shooting threes or if Victor was just getting lost on the pick ‘n rolls, but the Spurs need to figure it out.

Spurs Three Point Shooting

The funny thing about the Spurs drifting towards the 50 threes a game mark is they’re actually a bad shooting team.

Chris Paul and Devin Vassell, yes.

Malaki Branham, begrudging yes.

Julian Champagnie, fine, but he’s completely unreliable. Tonight he was 1–8 and the previous two games he was 4–14. 1–8 on mostly open looks is shaky.

Blake Wesley (13.3%), don’t you dare shoot that ball again.

One Spurs staffer whose worth grows with every brick is Chip Engelland. That guy is worth his weight in gold. The Spurs nabbed him, but relinquished him.

That was a mistake.

Sandro Mamukelashvili

Mamu was missing tonight as well.

And he missed Victor for a wide open dunk.

He’s not cashing his opportunities like he was last year.

Three Game Win Streak

Red marks aside, the Spurs are winning. In fact, they’ve won 3 games in a row and 2 of those wins came against the West’s best.

I didn’t watch the Thunder game and I missed most of the Jazz game, but it’s really, really impressive that they notched two victories without their three best players.

Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes deserve a lot of praise. Also, Barnes gets even more points for sticking it to his former team tonight.

Despite all of the chucking, we did see a few glimpses of Victor the conqueror tonight. Victor hasn’t played up to his apex of last year, but if he does, the Spurs are a troubling matchup for any team.

The Spurs have a deceptively strong team:

• Harrison Barnes
• Chris Paul
• Stephon Castle
• Jeremy Sochan
• Devin Vassell
• Victor Wembanyama
• Keldon Johnson

That’s a lot of strong pieces to throw on the chess board.

And they’ll likely only get better from here.

As much criticism as is warranted (particularly towards the coaching staff), there’s also a lot to love about the San Antonio Spurs.