Victor Wembanyama's turnover cost the Spurs Game 2, but why did his coach put him in position to commit it?
A little more than one month ago, Mitch Johnson made the most consequential, in-game decision of his young coaching career to date. Leading by two with around 10 seconds left on the clock, Julius Randle missed a mid-range jumper that could have sealed Game 1 of the second-round series between the Minnesota Timberwolves and San Antonio Spurs in Minnesota's favor. With a bit more than seven seconds on the clock, Dylan Harper secured the rebound.
Johnson could have called a timeout. He had two. Instead, the Spurs played out the possession. It was frantic. Harper passed the ball to Victor Wembanyama, who quickly passed it back to Harper on the move. Both sides raced down the floor. Harper passed the ball to Julian Champagnie. He got Naz Reid in the air, took a side step, and then fired up a clean 3-pointer for the win. No good. The Spurs lost.
At the end of Game 2 of the NBA Finals between the Spurs and Knicks, Johnson found himself yet again facing the most important strategic decision of his coaching career to date. The circumstances were somewhat similar. His opponent even had the same number of points: 104. This time, however, the Spurs also had 104. The game was tied when Jalen Brunson missed a mid-range jumper with around 16 seconds remaining.
Wembanyama secured the rebound with 13.5 seconds remaining. He took one dribble and passed it off of Stephon Castle's back. Brunson secured the ball, got fouled, and made what ultimately turned into the game-winning free throw.
> VICTOR WEMBANYAMA TURNOVER AND THEN THE FOUL. 😅 pic.twitter.com/NkbqchaAkn
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) June 6, 2026
It's not an exaggeration to call this one of the most consequential turnovers in NBA Finals history, up there with Gerald Henderson's steal from James Worthy in 1984, Michael Jordan's steal from Karl Malone in 1998 and Jrue Holiday's steal from Devin Booker in 2021. In terms of the degree of mistake, it's probably worse than all of them. Arguably the best player in the NBA, after leading an incredible 12-point fourth-quarter comeback, threw the game and maybe the championship trophy off of his teammate's back when he wasn't looking.
The degree to which that mistake will haunt Wembanyama remains to be seen. The odds that it is something like Chris Webber's ill-fated timeout in the 1994 NCAA Championship Game are thankfully low, but something more akin to, say, the airballs Kobe Bryant fired up against the Utah Jazz in the 1998 playoffs, or the Tragic Johnson series in 1984? That's more plausible. It's an unnecessary splotch on what we hope will be an otherwise sterling résumé. So it's worth asking, should Wembanyama have even been in that situation in the first place?
Go back to the clip. Watch the sideline. Johnson is signaling for the Spurs to go. If he'd wanted to call a timeout after a miss, he could have told his players as much during the timeout the Knicks called to set up Brunson's shot. Obviously, he did not. The rest, as they say, is history. So this begs an important question... how much blame should Johnson shoulder for his decision not to call a timeout? Let's weigh the pros and cons of calling one in that situation.
The argument for a timeout
Well, we can start with the obvious: the Spurs were in this situation a month ago. They made this decision and lost the game.
Should they be beholden to their previous mistakes? No, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from them either. The Spurs are technically the second-youngest team to ever make the NBA Finals, trailing only the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers. That number doesn't quite do them justice, since there are so many older players on their bench. Victor Wembanyama is 22. Stephon Castle is 21. This is their first run through the postseason. They are presumably tired.
Young players are more vulnerable to mistakes like this. If you call a timeout, you can take a lot of the chaos out of the equation. You'd certainly face some pressure inbounding the ball, but having Wembanyama, who is so much taller than everyone else on the floor, mitigates that pressure slightly. You don't have to worry about getting the ball up the court because the timeout would advance it. You're running a set play in which you can dribble as much or as little time off the clock as you want.
That's the other component of this. There was so much time on the clock. Wembanyama got the ball back with 13.5 seconds remaining. There was enough time left that even after the turnover and Brunson's two free throws, the Spurs were able to take a timeout with 7.5 seconds remaining. They ultimately lost on a missed jumper by Wembanyama, but at least they managed to get a shot up.
All of that time posed a bit of a problem for a transition scramble. Say Castle had caught the ball. It hit him in the back with 11.4 seconds remaining. If he races up the floor for a layup, no matter the result, the Knicks could potentially get the ball back with plenty of time of their own to work with. They had