Victor Wembanyama Reveals Most Heartbreaking Loss of His Career

Victor Wembanyama reflects on the Spurs’ painful Finals defeat against the Knicks.© LOU BENOIST / AFP

Victor Wembanyama has mostly avoided the NBA Finals since the Spurs lost, and nearly five months later he finally spoke. The San Antonio Spurs center sat down with “60 Minutes” on Sunday, and his answer was blunt. Asked which losses still sting, he went straight to Game 4 in New York, where the Spurs gave up a 29-point lead in a 107-106 defeat to the Knicks on June 10. He ranked it above two painful nights in Oklahoma City. His reason was short.

Victor Wembanyama Calls Game 4 Collapse The Most Intense Heartbreak Of His Career

CBS correspondent Jon Wertheim asked Victor Wembanyama which games he replays most. The 7-foot-4 center needed a second to sort through them. "It's the most intense heartbreak moment in my career," Wembanyama said.

“I think there's two. I think… there's three,” Wembanyama continued. “I would say Game 1 [of the Western Conference Finals] in OKC, Game 7 [WCF] in OKC, and Game 4 in New York.”

Asked about the last one, he did not soften it. “Because it's the most intense heartbreak moment in my career,” he said.

The numbers show why. The Knicks pulled off the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history at Madison Square Garden. San Antonio had been favored, had won 62 games and had beaten the defending champion Thunder in seven games in the West. The Knicks then closed the series with a 94-90 win in San Antonio, their first title in 53 years.

Wembanyama Is Speaking Freely, Yet The Finals Still Sting

The villain label never reached him, he said, even after the shove on Jalen Brunson in Game 3.

“Because I'm not paying attention to this during the Finals. And I don't think any player on either team really is,” he said.

He did take a lesson from it. “It showed my limits more than anything else going out there, you need to play basketball. You don't need to be beating the s–t out of people, if you want to win at least.”

Wembanyama pointed to the blood clot in his shoulder in 2025, which ended his second NBA season. “It had a huge impact on this,” he said about being less afraid to say what he thinks. “After that, life is so short, I don't even want to waste it being somebody else. Simple as that.”

Away from the cameras, the series is still a sore spot. French reporter Maxine Aubin said Wembanyama's agents told him the star does not want to discuss it. “From what I understand now, this is still something that hurts him, what happened in the finals. He does not really want to talk about it yet,” Aubin said.

Wembanyama is looking ahead anyway. He said he should win MVP this year, and his early line backs him up: 28.0 points, 10.7 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 4.2 blocks and 1.3 steals through six games. The Spurs face the Knicks again on Christmas Day in New York.