Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs are four wins away from an NBA championship, but the young superstar isn’t letting the moment change his mindset.
After surviving a brutal seven-game Western Conference Finals battle against the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, the Spurs now enter the NBA Finals against the New York Knicks as favorites.
For most teams this young, simply reaching this stage would already feel like an achievement. Wembanyama doesn’t see it that way.
“It doesn’t motivate me,” Wembanyama said Tuesday when asked how the spotlight of the Finals motivates him. “At the end of the day, only 20,000 people fit in the arena. So it doesn’t really remake a difference.”
Despite his calm approach now, the Spurs star admitted the emotions after eliminating Oklahoma City in Game Seven were unlike anything he’s experienced recently.
San Antonio celebrated heavily after finally closing out the Thunder, but Wembanyama made it clear the team understands the job is far from finished.
“The emotion was really something I haven’t felt in a while, I won’t even know since when,” Wembanyama said. “And coming back down from this is a challenge. And it’s not done yet.
“We still need to really come back down to Earth and realize that we haven’t done the hardest yet. The job isn’t done at all. So we’ve still got about — I don’t know, what time is it? — 30-plus hours to re-center.”
The Spurs’ youth has been one of the biggest talking points throughout their playoff run. Alongside Wemby, San Antonio has leaned heavily on twenty-one-year-old Stephon Castle and rookie Dylan Harper during this postseason push.
Castle, however, said the outside noise surrounding the team’s age has never affected the locker room.
“I mean, I don’t think that was ever a problem for us,” Castle told reporters Tuesday. “I think for us, that was really just all outside noise. And in-house, we have nothing but confidence in each other.”
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