If the San Antonio Spurs aren’t able to win two straight games in this Western Conference Finals that they now trail 3-2 to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Victor Wembanyama is going to regret his Game 5 performance for a long time. This was the biggest game of his life and he laid an egg with 20 points and six rebounds on 4-of-15 shooting in a 127-114 loss. He only reached the 20-point mark because he piled up 12 free throws.

The six rebounds is inexcusable for Wembanyama, a skyscraper of a human being at 7-foot-4. The four buckets speak more to Wembanyama’s weakness — in more ways than one — as a 22-year-old who is still, as crazy as it sounds, in the infancy stage of his basketball development. 

And here it is: Wembanyama does yet operate consistently enough in the paint. It’s not exactly a revelatory observation that the dude who can damn near reach the rim without lifting his feet off the ground should be playing closer to the basket, but it’s the truth nonetheless. 

Sometimes Wembanyama gets down there, as he did in Games 1 and 4. Not coincidentally, those are the games the Spurs won in this series. And sometimes he doesn’t, as was the case in Games 2 and 3, and most painfully, Game 5 on Tuesday. If all you do is put Wemby’s Game 1 shot chart (a 41-point, 24-point masterpiece) next to his Game 5 shot chart (Tuesday night’s clunker), you already know which game the Spurs won and which one they lost. 

It has been said that great strengths can also be great weaknesses, and in this case, Wembanyama’s ability to play a skill- and too often perimeter-based game that nobody his size has ever been able to play has, at least for now, clouded his offensive judgment in terms of where his true advantage lies. 

Great scorers score on their terms, from their spots, but Wembanyama doesn’t have any ironclad terms or spots yet. He is something of an offensive free agent, willing to listen to any and all defensive offers and then accept whatever option strikes his fancy in the moment. 

That needs to change. And it will. Wembanyama needs to establish an offensive office — the spots and shots he goes to when it’s time to work. Not because the defense broke a certain way to allow it, but because he owned the possession from the start. This is Kevin Durant at the elbow. Luka Dončić or Houston James Harden getting to the step-back. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander separating in the midrange. Carmelo Anthony facing up. Stephen Curry saying “screw it” when the off-ball movement isn’t working and just running high pick-and-roll for a pull-up 3.  

It’s plainly evident in a game like Tuesday night that when the circumstances of an offensive possession don’t play out a certain way, Wembanyama can’t consistently bend them to his will. Defensively, he’s the best player on earth and it’s not particularly close. Offensively, he’s a jack of all trades but master of none. The paint needs to be his point of mastery. 

But understanding this need to set up in and operate from deeper positioning is only half the equation. The other half is having the physical force to actually do it. That’s the literal weakness in Wemby’s game right now. Thunder coach Mark Daigneault has put Isaiah Hartenstein on him, and the 250-pound Hartenstein is just bullying him farther out on the court. Through the first 19 minutes of Game 5, Wembanyama had two buckets and one rebound. He’s 7-foot-4. That is a guy who is literally being pushed out of a game. 

There are different ways to dominate in the paint. Wembanyama is obviously a terrifying roller, but he doesn’t do this consistently enough. He often sets the pick and pops to the 3-point line. Other times, he flares out and simply serves as a floor spacer for the rest of a possession. 

When he tries to catch at the elbow and attack downhill from there, he’s often not strong enough to hold his line to the basket. At points, he’s having to resort to firing balls off the backboard intentionally to try to get his own offensive rebound because his initial foray has looked like, well, an extremely skinny guy running into a brick wall. 

After the Miami Heat lost in the 2011 Finals to the Dallas Mavericks in a series in which he was exposed, embarrassingly, for his inability, or unwillingness (or probably a combination of both) to punish Dallas for guarding him with small defenders in the post, LeBron James famously spent the summer working out with Hakeem Olajuwon to develop his back-to-the-basket game. It took his domination to another level in the years to come, and it’s still buoying his scoring at 41 years old. 

Generally speaking, post-up offense isn’t the way the game is played today. Teams wants spacing. Wembanyama, as a 3-point threat, pulls opposing centers out of the paint, which is good for spacing. He’ll probably never be a guy who consistently plants himself on the block. He shouldn’t be, in fact. 

But he needs to develop both the strength and mentality to force his way into the paint when push comes to shove. Be it as a roller, facing up from deeper pre-pass positioning (which requires more strength to earn), or simply attacking quickly with real intent before the defense can get set, good things are going to happen even if Wembanyama isn’t the one scoring because of all the attention his paint presence draws. Like this:

There just weren’t enough attacks like this from Wemby in Game 5. There weren’t enough lobs. Post-ups. Seals. There certainly weren’t enough offensive rebounds, of which he had just one. You just cannot stress the obvious enough: This is the tallest guy on the court by a wide margin. Sure, it’s cool to be able to shoot 3s and show off your handle and pull-up over any contest, but winning is cooler. 

And right now, this feels like the difference between the Spurs winning and losing this series. When Wembanyama plays in the paint, they win. When he doesn’t, they lose. This game was there for the taking. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had another mediocre night by his standards (32 points, yes, but just 7 for 19 shooting) and Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell didn’t even play. 

The Spurs were within eight with seven minutes to play despite shooting 29% from 3 and killing themselves with out-of-control and, at times, just straight-up airhead turnovers. Relatively speaking, Wembanyama didn’t show up for this one when a signature performance would’ve likely led to the Spurs going back home with a 3-2 lead and a chance to clinch an NBA Finals showdown with the New York Knicks rather than on the ropes of elimination. 

But it’s still there for the taking. Again, it’s not that Wembanyama never asserts himself inside. He does it about half the time. If Game 6 on Thursday is the right half for San Antonio, we could very well be headed to a Game 7. At which point, throw everything out the window; anything can happen in one game. 

Understand, this isn’t so much a critique of Wembanyama as it is an observation. The evolution of a superstar doesn’t happen all at once. Wembanyama has ascended at a meteoric pace, but offensively, he’s not quite at the level of the best players in the world, even though his overall impact warrants inclusion in that conversation. 

But he’s a lot better than he was on Tuesday, when he and the Spurs missed a golden opportunity to take control of this series.