After Game 1 Finals loss, Gregg Popovich tells Victor Wembanyama he’s ‘played better than this’

SAN ANTONIO — Victor Wembanyama heard from Gregg Popovich after Game 1 of his first NBA Finals, and the critique sounded like something the legendary former San Antonio Spurs coach might say.

“In the big lines, it was that I’ve been bad and played a lot better than this,” Wembanyama said Thursday.

Wembanyama scored 26 points with 12 rebounds and three blocks in the Spurs’ 105-95 loss to the New York Knicks Wednesday night, but shot 6-for-21 from the field and 2-for-9 from 3-point range.

In the immediacy of the loss, Wembanyama said, “I was bad tonight. It’s not more complicated than that,” and his characterization of Popovich’s text messages sounded similar. Wemby added that he and Popovich had not had a chance to speak after Game 1.

The Spurs didn’t practice Thursday due to the short turnaround from the end of Game 1, and Game 2 is at 8:30 p.m. ET on Friday. Wembanyama said the reason the Spurs lost was not “technical or tactical.” They blew a 14-point lead in the third quarter, and Wemby was mostly guarded by Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns.

Though respectful, Wembanyama didn’t sound overly impressed.

“We need to approach the game with a better mental state, and we just need to play our game, to be normal,” Wembanyama said. “We don’t need to do anything incredible.”

Asked to explain what “normal” meant — was this another of Wemby’s ‘ethical basketball’ bombs? — he said, “‘Normal’ means trusting each other, trusting the basketball gods, trusting the game plan, executing and not relying on talent so much to make shots or to save the day.

“We’ve been playing a certain way all season,” Wembanyama said. “We’ve been successful this way. There’s no reason to change the day the Finals start.”

The Spurs were outscored by nine on second-chance points (23-14) and only collected 16 assists — two areas where coach Mitch Johnson said it was obvious San Antonio could improve. He also said the Knicks packed the paint and took away lobs at the rim — a play typically run for Wembanyama — and the Spurs should be able to take advantage of what the Knicks are leaving open to take away Wemby in the lane.

“I think we gave ourselves a lot of aspects of the game where we need to improve,” Johnson said. “We can be much sharper on a lot of game-plan-execution stuff.”