Victor Wembanyama has answered every challenge posed to him on the court over San Antonio’s first three games of the season. Now it will be his stamina and ability to produce on consecutive days that will be tested when the Spurs host the Toronto Raptors on Monday.
Both teams will be on back-to-backs, with the Spurs winning at home 118-107 over the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday afternoon and Toronto suffering a 139-129 loss in Dallas to the Mavericks later in the evening.
San Antonio (3-0) has won its first three games of the season for the first time since October 2019. The Spurs have not captured the first four games in a campaign since October 2017.
“Everyone is really, really, just buying into their role and it’s paying off,” Spurs reserve forward Keldon Johnson said. “We’re winning, and winning is the most important thing for us. We’re for real.
“Every game we’re going in to win, and regardless of who the opposing team is, we look at our scouts, we come up with a game plan. That’s what we’re gonna do,” Johnson continued. “I feel like the shift started this summer. We had a lot of guys that bought into being here. And really everybody is making sacrifices to make this possible.”
San Antonio was up by just a point with 2:47 to play on Sunday before it forged a final 10-0 run to put away the game. Johnson had a reverse layup, Wembanyama hit a free throw and Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell drove the lane for layups, with Vassell’s coming after a steal. Wembanyama closed out the decisive surge with a cutting dunk and a technical free throw.
Wembanyama, playing his third game after missing the final three months of last season with a blood clot in his right shoulder, finished with 31 points and grabbed 14 rebounds. The French phenom’s 100 combined points over the Spurs’ first three games are the most over such a span in franchise history. The previous team record of 99 was set by Basketball Hall of Famer George Gervin in 1979.
Wembanyama is also the first player in NBA history to record 100-plus points and 15-plus blocks through a team’s first three games of a season.
The Raptors (1-2), who have dropped two straight outings, were up by as many as seven points on Sunday in a game that featured 25 lead changes before Dallas took charge midway through the third period.
Scottie Barnes led Toronto with 33 points and 11 rebounds in the loss. Brandon Ingram added 22 points, RJ Barrett and Sandro Mamukelashvili had 16 each and Immanuel Quickley scored 14.
“We’re gonna need 20 games, 30 games, 40 games for us to make conclusions about our team,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said. “You know, they’re gonna have nights when they’re gonna look like, wow, we figured it out. And then on some nights, it’s gonna look like we are disjointed. So we need to get that group time to gel and, you know, to work together, to watch film together, and to grow.”
The game on Monday is one of two between San Antonio and Toronto this season, with the second scheduled for Feb. 25 in Canada. The Spurs have won three straight in the series after sweeping the set in 2024-25.
–Field Level Media
