The San Antonio Spurs had a disappointing home opener to start their new season, following a season where they qualified for the NBA Playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, eliminated the defending champions, and reached the NBA Finals.
The team suffered a 116-104 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the same team they defeated in the best-of-seven series to reach the Western Conference Finals. However, Victor Wembanyama had an underwhelming performance, finishing with 12 points, 13 rebounds, three assists, a steal, and six blocks.
While his rebounding and shot-blocking made an impact, Wemby has shown he's capable of much more offensively. NBA legend Carmelo Anthony called him out during "7 PM in Brooklyn," questioning whether Wemby improved anything this offseason.
"What have you worked on, skill set-wise?" Anthony asked, adding, "As someone who went through that and always tried to figure out [how] to get better every summer ... skillset is so important. Like, I want to see, and again this is his first game, but in that first game, I didn't see any developed skill set."
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Anthony specifically suggested that developing a post-up skillset would further complement the skills Wemby already has, including his ability to handle the ball and score from the perimeter.
"You can’t be seven whatever and don’t have that [post] skillset … Did I work on back to the basket traditional right hook, left hook. Did [Wemby] work on that enough to be effective?" Anthony asked.
He mentioned Wemby previously working on building his mindset to deal with the pressure of being the top star and playing in the NBA. He also brought up how Wemby learned that players were going to get physical with him and test him, but Anthony brought it back to developing additional skillsets.
"What skillset did you work on, where you feel good about coming into this season?" he asked.
"I know when I worked on something in summer, I knew when I came in, I felt good about the work that I put in, even if it was just fade baseline, the whole summer," Anthony said.
In Wemby's first game of the season, he struggled to find his rhythm, shooting 1-of-13 from the field, and relied on the free-throw line for most of his points. The Thunder not only used big men Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein against Wemby, but also their first-round draft pick, 7-foot-2 center Aday Mara from Michigan.
Along with Holmgren and Hartenstein, Mara made life difficult for Wemby around the basket, so Melo's comments make perfect sense about the Spurs' French phenom needing to add that post-up aspect to his game.
Wemby will have his dominant performances, but based on the way he and the Spurs looked on opening night against their biggest Western Conference rivals, there may be much they need to figure out to return to the NBA Finals.
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