Wembanyama Broke The All-Time Playoff Block Record. He And De'Aaron Fox Went 0-Of-12 From Three.

The mark belonged to Andrew Bynum, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Mark Eaton, each of whom had recorded ten blocks in a playoff game. Victor Wembanyama broke it Monday night with twelve, and he did it in three quarters of a Game 1 the San Antonio Spurs ultimately lost 104-102 to the Minnesota Timberwolves. He had eleven points and fifteen rebounds to go with the twelve rejections. At 22 years and 120 days, he became the youngest player in NBA history to record a triple-double with blocks in a playoff game since the league began tracking blocks in 1973-74. He passed Tim Duncan as the youngest Spur to do it; Duncan was 25 years, 360 days old when he got his first.

The other record Wembanyama set is the one San Antonio carries into Wednesday's Game 2. He shot 5-of-17 from the field. He shot 0-of-8 from three-point range, the most attempts from deep without a make by any Spur in a playoff game in franchise history. De'Aaron Fox went 0-of-4 alongside him. The two stars combined for 21 points and 0-of-12 from three. The Spurs lost by two. They were a single made triple from owning Game 1 on Wembanyama's defense alone, and the team that defended every other shot held them to 102 anyway.

Fox's box score lived in the same neighborhood as the rest of the offense. He finished with 10 points, 3 rebounds, 6 assists, and 6 turnovers in 33 minutes. The Spurs were outscored by 13 points with him on the floor. Coach Mitch Johnson, asked about it after, said he had 'no concern about his or Victor Wembanyama's box score' — a defensive answer that worked the postgame and will work less well if Game 2 looks the same. Fox is the player San Antonio acquired to give Wembanyama a downhill scoring guard. In Game 1 he was outplayed by a player who had not been on the floor in nine days.

That player was Anthony Edwards. He hyperextended his left knee and suffered a bone bruise on April 25, in Game 4 of the Timberwolves' opening-round series against the Denver Nuggets. The early read was a multi-game absence. He came off the Minnesota bench Monday at nine days post-injury, played a restricted 25 minutes, and scored 18 points — 11 of them in a fourth quarter Minnesota won 35-30. He did it without Donte DiVincenzo, whose ruptured Achilles ended his postseason in the same series that hurt Edwards. Minnesota was the team without two starters and the team that won.

Wembanyama's most-quoted line afterward was a hedge wrapped in a critique. 'If I had been better, if the offensive leaders on our team would have been better, it would have been different.' The reference to 'offensive leaders' is the phrase being parsed in San Antonio this week. Wemby is one of those leaders, and he said so. De'Aaron Fox is the other. Stephon Castle, the reigning Rookie of the Year, was supposed to be the third punch on a Spurs roster that ran out of punches. Devin Vassell, the regular-season three-point shooter, was supposed to be the fourth. The defense was historic. Everything else was not.

Game 2 tips in San Antonio on Wednesday night. The Spurs lead the Western Conference semifinal series in blocks and trail it in everything else. The fix isn't Wembanyama — he is on a one-game pace nobody has ever maintained, and he will not shoot 0-of-8 from three again in this series. The fix is the rest of the rotation finding range against a Wolves defense that contested every catch on the perimeter and got Edwards back without losing a beat. If San Antonio drops Game 2, the team holding the records by Friday won't be the team that won them.