SAN ANTONIO — Apparently, it’s obvious to Victor Wembanyama.
He was unwavering in his confidence.
“Everybody thinks – everybody knows,” Wembanyama said after Spurs practice Friday, “that we’re gonna do it.”
He was talking about the Spurs’ locker room, not necessarily everyone on the outside watching these NBA Finals, having been asked if he and his teammates actually believe they can overturn their 3-1 series deficit.
After the Knicks’ miraculous comeback in their 107-106 Game 4 win Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden, Wembanyama said the Spurs’ collapse would either divide or unite the locker room.
Two days later, he is confident that it is the latter and that they share that common belief.
And he thinks the Spurs have moved past their historic Game 4 choke.
“We’re very confident,” Wembanyama said. “I wouldn’t say it was so hard to, like, shake it off. Harder than any other game before, by far, for sure. I mean, now we’re over it. It’s the playoffs. There’s no time to regret things for too long.”
Only one team has come back from a 3-1 deficit in Finals history – the Cavaliers in 2016.
“I feel like we’ve made history all year, and we’ve proven that with our backs against the wall that we can step up,” Stephon Castle said. “So, I don’t really expect this to be any different.”
Both Spurs coach Mitch Johnson and his players have expressed a sentiment that their team has decided all four games of this series — for better or worse.
They pointed to their double-digit leads in all four games.
It has been their own shortcomings when they have those leads, they say, not anything the Knicks have done that has dictated the end results.
That’s why they are so sure that this series is still within their control.
“I think just our confidence,” Castle said. “We’ve had a 10-plus point lead in every single game. Just trying to stay poised throughout that and try to keep our foot on the gas really. I feel like once we get those leads, we start to play a little bit different, take our foot off the gas defensively. I just feel like we have to stay aggressive but be smart through it.”
They are not looking at the totality of needing to win three straight games, though.
Their eyes are solely on Saturday’s Game 5, back home at the Frost Bank Arena.
“I feel like we need to isolate that one game and take it one game at a time,” Wembanyama said. “I think it would be a mistake to waste our energy on multiple games. It’s one game at a time.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
