Victor Wembanyama will be skating by without even so much as a slap on the wrist.
The NBA has decided not to retroactively assess the San Antonio Spurs star center Wembanyama a flagrant foul for his dirty hit on New York Knicks opponent Jalen Brunson during Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday (per the New York Post’s Stefan Bondy). As a result, Wembanyama will remain at two total flagrant-foul points for the 2026 postseason.
In the first quarter at Madison Square Garden in New York, N.Y., Wembanyama got tangled up with Brunson during an off-ball sequence on a Spurs possession. Wembanyama shoved Brunson off him and hit the 6-foot-2 point guard with some force in the back of the head and neck area (see the video here).
The play went completely uncalled at the time, and the Spurs went on to win Game 3 over the Knicks by a final score of 115-111 to trim the latter’s advantage in the series to 2-1. Now the NBA has gone back and reviewed the Wembanyama-Brunson incident … but determined that no further action is necessary.
Wembanyama already picked up two flagrant-foul points with a flagrant 2 for elbowing Naz Reid of the Minnesota Timberwolves during the second round. If Wembanyama had received a received a retroactive flagrant 1 foul for the dust-up with Brunson, he would have been just one more point away from an automatic one-game suspension (which is triggered by picking up four flagrant-foul points in a single postseason).
Now Wembanyama still has some leeway to potentially pick up one more flagrant 1 foul in the NBA Finals without having to worry about getting suspended. That ruling is sure to spark criticism from fans who might see the NBA as doing everything that they can to protect Wembanyama’s availability for the remainder of the Finals.
