Wembanyama owns costly turnover as Spurs fall to Knicks in Game 2

Victor Wembanyama owned the play that turned Game 2 in New York’s favor, but the final possession also exposed how fragile San Antonio looked when the game tightened. The Knicks escaped with a 105-104 win at Frost Bank Center on Friday, June 5, after the Spurs erased a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit and still lost on a sequence that ended with Wembanyama’s turnover, a foul on Jalen Brunson and a missed 20-footer at the buzzer.

With 12.7 seconds left, Wembanyama grabbed his ninth rebound and tried to move the ball upcourt. His pass bounced off Stephon Castle’s back and into Brunson’s hands, and Wembanyama then fouled Brunson, who made the go-ahead free throw. Wembanyama did not hide from it afterward. “I threw that one away. I messed up,” he said, adding that urgency got the better of him and that he planned to use the frustration as fuel for the next game. Castle said he was trying to give Wembanyama space to dribble up the court and did not see the pass coming.

The mistake mattered because it fit a larger pattern. Wembanyama also missed a 17-footer in the final three possessions, and his buzzer attempt to win the game fell short. ESPN noted that he is now 1-of-9 in his career on go-ahead field-goal attempts in the final five seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime, with the lone make coming on March 19, when he clinched San Antonio’s playoff berth. That context gives more weight to his sharper self-assessment and to the spoiled-tinged critique that followed, a warning that the Spurs’ problems are not just about one turnover but about habits that do not yet hold up under Finals pressure.

The loss left San Antonio down 0-2 as the series moved to New York for Games 3 and 4. NBA.com noted that the Knicks have won 13 straight postseason games, and only the 1993 Bulls and 1995 Rockets had previously won the first two games of an NBA Finals on the road and gone on to capture the title. For the Spurs, the task now is bigger than fixing one late possession. They have to prove that the composure Wembanyama demanded can survive the stage where every mistake becomes the story.