Suns run into Spurs avalanche, Wembanyama masterclass

PHOENIX — Monday was not the right night for the Phoenix Suns to build off their season-best performance on Saturday.

We talk about the hunger we see the following season after a team loses in the championship round, and the San Antonio Spurs look starving.

They are the class of this young NBA season, and the Suns were in a helpless position to compete with them in a 122-96 loss.

There is so much harmony within how the Spurs (9-2) coexist at the moment, functioning beautifully as a team in every facet. The way they play off each other is borderline divine. Devin Booker said on Saturday the Suns (3-6) feel like a fairly new group to begin the year, so when that group runs into this group, that’s how it’s going to look most times early in the season.

It is not the night to deeply analyze the strengths and the weaknesses of the Suns. That’ll come on Tuesday and Thursday, with the lowly Los Angeles Clippers and Charlotte Hornets visiting as far better barometers for where this team will be at 10-plus games into the year.

Monday was the latest tour de force from Victor Wembanyama, who is meeting all the hype that followed after a postseason where it looked like the basketball gods had anointed a new “face of the league.”

Wembanyama finished with 40 points, 11 rebounds, three assists, nine blocks and one turnover on 15-of-19 shooting. He was +30 in 25 minutes. Again, I said twenty-five minutes for 40-11-9. It’s only the second time in NBA history someone has scored 40 points in 25 minutes or less, joining Sleepy Floyd in 1991, according to Stathead.

It’s the first time in the 30-plus-year history of Mortgage Matchup Center that a player has recorded 40 and 11 with at least eight rejections, and the only other player to do it in a contest featuring the Suns was Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes posting 40 points, 18 rebounds and 13 blocks in the Coliseum in 1968, per Stathead.

“It’s something like we’ve never seen before. … His instincts for the game are off the charts too. … It’s a tough matchup,” Booker said.

We talk all the time about what makes a “star” and a “superstar.” For the latter, all you have to do is listen to the crowd. If you hear audible reactions to what a visiting player does, and then they grow to a point where you can tell we are beyond the point of fans watching the actual game and they are instead just waiting for the next big moment from the player, then that is a superstar.

Wembanyama rivals Stephen Curry, the best showman I’ve ever seen, in achieving that.

The Frenchman’s performance on Monday was one fans afterward will be telling their friends and family about. And when he’s back in town, they will want to be back at the arena again. And their friends and family who haven’t been in person to see it yet will now want to be too.

I have implored everyone I know for multiple years to see him live at least once. I was thrilled to run into our own Luke Lapinski on media row for this one, because he needed to see it for himself. Everyone does. Wembanyama’s feats and how he controls a basketball game do not come close to translating over the screens.

He’s catching up to Curry on the showman front, too.

Check out this ridiculous finger roll in transition from behind the free-throw line.

WEMBY FINGER ROLL FROM BEYOND THE FREE THROW LINE 🤯🤯🤯 https://t.co/F5G9iCXAvL

— NBA (@NBA) November 10, 2026

Or this handle work to get a scooping layup.

WEMBY’S GOT 40 POINTS 👽

CRAZY HANDLES AND FOOTWORK. https://t.co/fxlLFlR4mp

— NBA (@NBA) November 10, 2026

That is him deciding to put on a performance for the crowd.

Wembanyama dominates in such a way that an opponent has to play the game differently on that night, unlike any way they’ve played basketball before.

If the megalodon is in the building and reaching Godzilla mode, with the way the Spurs maximize him, the only way you are even granted a chance is by executing as a team at a high level. That’s the minimum for being competitive. From there, you just gotta hope it’s your night.

The Suns did not execute well enough, and it was not their night.

After Booker scored 15 points in the first quarter, the game was tied when Wembanyama entered late in that period.

After he checked back out, the Spurs were up 16.

Phoenix’s pick-and-roll coverage and help principles are not there yet to deal with a downhill Wemby, whether that is with him as a screener or as a scorer. San Antonio relentlessly hunted second-year big Khaman Maluach during this spurt, easily generating a pair of Wembanyama lobs and a separate bucket at the rim by attacking him.

On the other end, the Suns’ player and ball movement were not fluid enough to find opportunities away from Wembanyama. Too many possessions ended with someone having to go at him, which is exactly what the Spurs want. You cannot attempt a shot if he is in position on the ball, or he is going to block it. And if he’s not in position, you still have to account for his presence that altered several other shot attempts and passes.

“That’s tough. I think you want to have an approach and attack mindset no matter who’s out there. … You just gotta continue to do it to try to move [him] out of the way,” head coach Jordan Ott said.

If this feels like a letdown after Saturday’s win over the Houston Rockets, it shouldn’t. While Houston was also playing very well coming into Phoenix, the Spurs are clobbering teams to begin the year and zooming off all their built-up continuity, winners of now nine straight. This was a whole different caliber of team.

As it will for all Spurs opponents, Monday was going to come down to how the Suns did once Wembanyama was off the floor.

I deeply trust the great folks at NBA Stats, but when I saw San Antonio was +166 in Wembanyama’s 303 minutes coming into Monday and -63 in the 182 minutes he sat, I instinctively thought I was on the wrong website or categorizing the data incorrectly. Nope!

The Spurs were outscoring teams by 26.5 points per 100 possessions when Wembanyama was out there, easily the best mark among the top players in the league. The only others within range are Luka Doncic (20.7) and Alperen Sengun (15.2). The defensive rating is 95.6, nearly 10 points better than league-leading Minnesota’s.

Devin Vassell (left adductor tightness) was out for San Antonio, and it hasn’t had Tobias Harris (left calf strain) yet this season either, so if there was ever a game for the Suns bench to win, this was the one.

In the first half, across the 8:02 Wembanyama sat for, the Suns were only +4. That’s not good enough.

Phoenix settled too often for midrange attempts that the Spurs roll out the red carpet for. They entered the night giving up the most shots there, and Phoenix’s selection of scorers tends to favor that zone.

Booker was up to 30 points a few minutes into the third quarter, enjoying that space and not seeing double-teams or exaggerated help defense. No one else, though, could join him in finding the pace of the game in those pockets.

It was one of those Dillon Brooks tunnel-vision nights, and so that already hurts when the ball’s not moving as a whole. He also shot 3-of-14 with zero assists and one turnover. His last shot of the game was a pump-fake 3, and he had an open Collin Gillespie one pass away, a guy begging for a clean look to get a rhythm before the game got out of hand.

When Wembanyama went for his first rest of the second half, the game did in fact get out of hand.

Dylan Harper, a top-50 player you would have hardly noticed in the first half, scored 14 of his 17 points in the third quarter to inflate the Spurs’ edge beyond 20. In that 5:21 Wembanyama rested for, the Suns went -5, ending the competitive total on the night at -1 for the 13:23 he was on the bench for before garbage time.

By the time he made a few more plays to close that third quarter, the Spurs’ lead grew to 25 and the proceedings were finalized.

Jalen Green is still trying his hardest to play the way the Suns want him to play. But he’s now shooting under 40% from the field this season and has 33 assists with 22 turnovers. There are still way too many negative plays with him as a ball-handler, and despite the growth in accepting the role, he’s hurting his team while doing so. He ended Monday 2-of-8 for six points with four assists and three turnovers.

In this role, he can find a way to be impactful on only eight shot attempts. It’s just going to be much harder for him to do so. Sure, he can’t take 20. But he shouldn’t only attempt eight. That’s also hard to do while also bringing the most rim pressure on the team.

“That’s a good question. I don’t know,” Green said when asked about how to play this role while being himself. “Just gotta start with aggressiveness for sure.”

The aforementioned needed bench game resulted in the Suns getting outscored 17-14 by the time garbage time began. Gillespie had six points, Luke Kennard added three and Ryan Dunn also scored three on 1-of-6 shooting. Ott wanted Gillespie and Kennard to be more aggressive in getting up 3s on a night the Suns only took 26, noting not only the lack of improvisational off-ball actions but also the pick-and-roll game where early-clock shots aren’t so bad when the Spurs give up so little.

Jordan Goodwin (right calf injury management) missed his fourth straight game.

To keep up with our every-game tracking of some problem areas in the team-wide statistics, the Suns lost on the offensive glass 15-11 and on free-throw attempts 25-19.

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