San Antonio Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama will remain sidelined through the weekend with an ankle sprain and miss the team's showdown with the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night. He is expected to be back in the lineup come Monday, however, when the two teams meet again in San Antonio.
Wembanyama, who has surged to a big lead in the Rookie of the Year race with unprecedented performances in recent months, tweaked his ankle during the Spurs' loss to the Houston Rockets on Tuesday. The team then sent him home to rehab and he did not play in their loss to the Sacramento Kings on Thursday.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich did not seem overly concerned with the injury when speaking to reporters in Sacramento.
"He'll probably miss these two games and hopefully be ready for Monday," Popovich said ahead of the Kings game. "He didn't say a whole lot, so we didn't realize that he was hampered by that really at the time. When you looked at the film after, you could see that he wasn't moving very well. So he's taking care of it now."
Through 56 games this season, Wembanyama is averaging 20.7 points, 10.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 3.4 blocks per game. He leads all rookies in scoring, rebounding, and blocks and is tied for fourth in steals.
He's on pace to become the first player since Shaquille O'Neal in 2000 to average at least 20 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks, and just the 10th player ever to do so. (Blocks were not recorded until 1973.) All of the other nine are Hall of Famers, while five of them – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bob McAdoo, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and O'Neal – won an MVP.
Though still just a rookie, Wembanyama appears to be on that sort of trajectory as long as he stays healthy. Despite concerns about how his unique body would hold up to the rigors of the NBA, Wembanyama has largely been available. The game versus the Warriors will be just the eighth he's missed all season and the first time he's sat out two contests in a row.
To that point, it's worth noting that Rookie of the Year is exempt from the NBA's new 65-game threshold for major awards. While Wembanyama is on pace to get there anyway, neither he nor the Spurs will have to take that into consideration down the stretch.
