At the end of the first quarter of Saturday’s Emirates NBA Cup semifinal between the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Oklahoma City led by 11 points as it sought to improve to 25-1. It looked like just another dominant performance for the Thunder, who have cast aside good team after good team in lopsided affairs.
Then Victor Wembanyama — playing on a minutes restriction in his return from a calf strain that had cost him the previous 12 games — entered, posted a plus-20 in seven minutes in the second quarter, and led the Spurs to a 111-109 victory in one of the best games (and most impressive wins) this season.
As a result, San Antonio will face the New York Knicks tonight with a chance for Wembanyama to lift his first trophy — and, critically, it will count towards his chances of eventually meeting the 65-game threshold for NBA awards eligibility, even if it doesn’t count towards the regular season standings. The game will begin at 8:40 p.m. ET at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
San Antonio is a 2.5-point underdog for tonight’s game at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the total set to 233.5. Below, I’ve highlighted my favorite prop bets centered around the 2023-24 Rookie of the Year.
Best Victor Wembanyama Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Victor Wembanyama 20+ Points (-133)
This is somewhat of a hedge. Wembanyama has scored at least 20 points in 10 of his 13 games this season, including 22 in just 21 minutes against the Thunder, but it’s unclear just how restrictive his minutes limit will be or if he’ll even start. Plus, he’s undoubtedly weaker on offense than defense, and while his offense — 25.8 points per game on 50-36-84 shooting splits — is hardly a liability, 20 points isn’t a complete guarantee from him like it is from some other high-volume shooters, especially against a physical opponent like New York. I’m not completely comfortable taking him at 21+ (-108), 25+ (+187), or 30+ points (+444), despite the fact that he’s scored 40 or more against the Knicks twice in three career matchups.
That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be able to get his if he chooses to be aggressive. Over the last 10 games, since re-inserting Josh Hart into its starting lineup, New York has been the clear second-best team in the league behind Oklahoma City, but even in that span, it still ranks merely 13th in opponent shot attempts at the rim. As long as Wembanyama can get downhill, he should be able to finish: of the 32 players who attempt at least five restricted-area shots per game, his 75.6% conversion rate ranks fifth. Last season, the Knicks primarily guarded him with Karl-Anthony Towns, whom he torched for 22 points on seven-for-16 shooting in 42.6 partial possessions, though Mike Brown, not Tom Thibodeau, is now New York’s coach.
Victor Wembanyama U2.5 Blocks (-121)
Wembanyama has mastered blocking to such an extent that he has transcended even his gaudy block numbers, which have gone down from 4.3 per 36 minutes in his rookie season to 4.1 in 2024-25 to 3.7 so far this season, and he already has nearly as many one-block games (three) in 13 games as he did in 46 games last season (five). It’s a matter of deterrence: in his rookie season, when he played 71 games, opponents attempted 47.1 shots in the paint per game, but that figure dropped to 44.1 in 2024-25 before the All-Star break (when he played 46 of the Spurs’ 52 games) to just 38.3 in the first 12 games of this season. Given that his realistic block opportunities have decreased by nearly 19%, the fact that he’s still averaging 3.5 blocks per game is extremely impressive.
Plus, the Knicks are good at preventing blocks. Though they were blocked more frequently than average last season, they’ve been the seventh-least rejected team so far in 2025-26, thanks in part to improved ball movement, and their two most-blocked players last season, OG Anunoby and Towns, have both taken their average shots from roughly a foot further away from the basket than they did in 2024-25. Plus, New York’s leader in usage rate is Brunson, one of just two players who’s six-foot-two or shorter, averages at least 10 points per game in the paint, and has been blocked fewer than once per game.
