Why did the NBA fine San Antonio Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama $25,000?
The French sensation has been making waves with his performances, but this is the first time he’s done so with his behavior, and it wasn’t good.
From his stature to his technical ability, Victor Wembanyama continues to show us that he’s a freak of nature, but alas, the Frenchman is human. Indeed, during the Spurs’ most recent game the 20-year-old prodigy lost his cool and with that, had to learn that the hard way that the NBA is quite strict when it comes to discipline.
NBA fines Victor Wembanyama $25K
Though an easy jab to make, it’s hard not to resist the urge to point out the fact that the San Antonio Spurs star, Victor Wembanyama, has added yet another first to his growing list of impressive achievements. Only this time, it’s not the kind of milestone we imagine he would have been hoping for. If you missed the NBA’s official announcement on Sunday, Wemby was fined $25,000 by the league for throwing the basketball into the stands during Friday’s game against the New York Knicks.
In what turned out to be a 130-126 overtime win for the Spurs, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft hugged the ball with both arms as the clock ran out in an apparent attempt to keep it away from New York’s Jalen Brunson. Immediately following the sequence of play, he launched the ball into the home crowd in attendance at Frost Bank Center, which subsequently resulted in the sanction. Incidentally, this isn’t actually Wembanyama’s first fine though it’s by far the most noteworthy. Previously he was fined $2,000 for a technical foul after he bounced the ball over his head in frustration earlier this season.
It’s worth mentioning the context here in that at the time of Wembanyama’s ‘mistake’, Brunson had just scored a whopping 61 points for the Knicks. As you can probably imagine, there would have been some degree of satisfaction - for Wembanyama and Co. - in the idea that such a performance wasn’t good enough for a win. With 40 points of his own, as well as 20 rebounds and seven assists, it’s not hard to see how the moment could have got the better of the rising star. As for the team itself, the win marked the Spurs’ third in the last five games which is something when considering that they are one of the worst teams in the league this year. Again, context is key.