The NBA reviewed Victor Wembanyama’s shove of Jalen Brunson in the first quarter of Monday’s Game 3 and decided not to upgrade it to a flagrant foul. The call leaves Wembanyama with two flagrant foul points for the postseason heading into Wednesday’s Game 4, still one point short of an automatic suspension.
The decision matters because Wembanyama was already living close to the line after earning two points earlier in the playoffs, when he was assessed a flagrant-2 and ejected for elbowing Minnesota Timberwolves big man Naz Reid in the second round. A player who reaches four flagrant foul points in a single postseason is suspended for a game, so the difference between a common foul and an upgrade can shape not just one possession but the rest of a series.
Wembanyama’s night was not defined by the whistle alone. He led the Spurs with 32 points, eight rebounds, six assists, three blocks and two steals in Monday’s 115-111 win, a result that cut the Knicks’ series lead to 2-1. That is part of why the play drew so much scrutiny: the same player whose shove drew replay attention also powered the win that kept San Antonio in the chase.
Still, there was no debate on one point from the league office. Monty McCutchen said Tuesday on ’s NBA Today that a foul should have been called, saying, “Well, most certainly I think we can all agree that a foul was missed on that play.” He added that “a big part of our job is on-ball, off-ball exchanges between referees,” and said officials “did a poor job of that here, where we’ve got two people on ball and we don’t see the screening action.”
McCutchen said there had been “lots of fighting over screens throughout the game” and that when fundamentals slip “in even the smallest amounts, we have the opportunity to miss a clear foul as we missed here.” The NBA, though, stopped short of turning the contact into a flagrant foul, which is the line that would have put Wembanyama one play away from sitting out a game.
That is the gap left hanging over Wednesday’s Game 4. Wembanyama still has two postseason flagrant foul points, and the Spurs move forward with their star available for now, but one more upgrade would trigger the kind of suspension that has altered the shape of playoff series before. The most famous example came when Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5 of the 2016 NBA Finals after his team had built a 3-1 lead against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
