Spurs face Game 3 do-or-die task: make Victor Wembanyama an offensive centerpiece

The New York Knicks took another step toward a championship on Friday, beating the San Antonio Spurs 105-104 in Game 2 to seize a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals. Game 3 shifts back to Madison Square Garden on Monday, with the franchise’s return to the arena’s biggest basketball stage coming for the first time since 1999. The stakes are immediate for the Spurs, who need a win to avoid the unforgiving 0-3 hole and to keep their season from ending in consecutive home losses.

If San Antonio is looking for a single hinge point, Yahoo Sports framed it plainly: the Spurs’ chances of surviving Game 3 depend on “unlocking” Victor Wembanyama’s offense, particularly through pick-and-roll opportunities designed to make him consistently impactful rather than sporadically disruptive. In other words, Wembanyama can still be a scoring and defensive centerpiece, but the Spurs need him to generate more reliable half-court value against a Knicks team that has tightened the series by controlling shot quality and pace.

New York’s defense has also limited the Spurs’ ability to cash in on transition chances, which is where teams often find easier paths to offense in the Finals. In the first two games, the Spurs generated 57 transition possessions, but they have scored just 0.84 points per possession in that stretch, down from 1.14 per possession through their earlier playoff rounds. The Knicks have been even more efficient on the break by comparison, and the gap matters because transition layups and open threes can offset the difficulty of generating clean looks in New York’s half-court coverage.

The Wembanyama-Towns matchup has been the other central story of the first two games. Karl-Anthony Towns has been productive enough to win the minutes matchup, and Wembanyama’s offensive response has not yet forced the Knicks into sustained breakdowns. Even so, San Antonio showed what it can look like when Wembanyama gets closer to the rim: he finished Game 2 with 29 points and nine rebounds, including 22 points in the second half, as the Spurs found him for more shots at the basket. The Spurs are winning the minutes when Wembanyama is on the floor by only 1.5 points per game, meaning they need bigger swings to cover the stretches when he is not.

The adjustment, then, is not only “run pick-and-roll,” it is “run pick-and-roll with an answer to what New York does.” ’s preview of the Finals emphasized that against a physical rim-protecting opponent, pick-and-rolls may not produce easy lobs, because weak-side defenders do not allow Wembanyama to roll untouched. But those same possessions can still work if San Antonio uses them to create good post positioning as defenders recover, allowing Wembanyama to plant near the restricted area, command the ball, and potentially draw attention that frees teammates.

Game 3 also sits inside the larger historical odds that come with starting 0-2. NBA communications’ game notes point out that teams winning the first two games of the Finals go on to win the series 86.5% of the time, and they also note the Knicks are the third team in Finals history to win the first two games away from home. With that context, New York does not need to invent a new identity for Monday. It needs to keep executing, while forcing the Spurs into longer stretches where their offense stalls and Towns and the Knicks’ defenders can sustain their advantage.

What to watch next is whether San Antonio can translate its best moments into a steadier offensive system around Wembanyama. That means turning transition chances into points at a higher rate, not just creating opportunities, and using pick-and-roll sequences to get Wembanyama into post or rim action more often than he has managed so far. If the Spurs can increase the difference they make when he is on the floor, the rest of the roster will have a more manageable job, and Game 3 will look less like a finish-line game for New York and more like an actual series again.