‘We absolutely dominated for most of the series’: Victor Wembanyama does not hold back on ‘painful’ loss
· Yahoo Sports
The New York Knicks topped the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night, clinching their first NBA Championship since 1973 with a 4-1 series win over the Spurs. However, despite the 4-1 loss in the series, Spurs star Victor Wembanyama seems to think that San Antonio actually “dominated” New York for most of the series.
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Following the 94-90 loss to the Knicks on Sunday, which officially ended the series, Wembanyama expressed his frustration at losing the series, as he called it “painful” and “the biggest lesson in life” after losing a series he felt that they should win.
‘Using it to fuel me’
Following the game, Wembanyama spoke to the media, where he shared a bit about how he was feeling following the loss. The Spurs superstar made it clear that he was going to use the experience to “fuel” him for previous playoff runs.
“It’s painful,” Wembanyama said after the game via ESPN. “But I’m not running away from that. I’m using it to fuel me. I’m sure all these guys you named, they’re not satisfied with being eliminated in the earlier rounds or not making the playoffs. I’m not satisfied with not winning. This is the biggest lesson of my life. As a team, there’s no better experience than what we just lived.”
This was Wembanyama’s first experience in the NBA Finals in just his third season in the league. While Championships are fleeting, he will have the opportunity to pursue many more championships throughout his career after already establishing himself as a superstar.
‘We absolutely dominated them’
Wembanyama’s biggest source of frustration was the way the team lost their games. In each of the five games in the series, the Spurs held a double-digit lead, including a 29-point lead in Game 4. New York’s four wins in the series came by a combined 16 points, which ties for the third-smallest margin in four wins by a championship team in NBA history.
Wembanyama explained that it felt like the Spurs “absolutely dominated” the Knicks for “most” of the series, but their own errors led to the series loss.
“The margin for error is very thin,” Wembanyama said. “Our domination stints are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of the series. But our errors, our mistakes, are punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this so much, you know? The ups are OK. The downs are the reason we lost.”
The only thing Wembanyama can do now is try to bounce back, but he knows it’s now a long wait until he could possibly have a chance to do it again.
“What I’m pissed about is there’s probably a hundred games before we can be back in the Finals,” Wembanyama said. “I don’t know how to say it in English. But I’m going to have to hold that inside of me, slow down, wait and execute for a hundred games. It’s going to be all of it [shaping my mentality in the future], who we are, what we’re made of, our experiences.
“This has been a hell of a year in terms of experience. I don’t think we could have learned more and gained more experience in one playoff run and in one season, and personally in 18 months. This is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment. I can’t tell you exactly what the lesson is. But we’re learning from that. I’m learning more than any other time in my life.”
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