As the New York Knicks celebrated their championship at Frost Bank Center, Victor Wembanyama sat quietly behind a curtain outside the San Antonio Spurs locker room, processing the 94-90 defeat that ended the NBA Finals in five games. The loss concluded San Antonio’s season on its home floor.

Minutes later, Wembanyama took the microphone, inhaling deeply and exhaling audibly as he tried to keep calm. When asked about legendary players who had failed before eventually winning, he reflected on his emotions.

“It’s painful,” Wembanyama said. “But I’m not running away from that. I’m using it to fuel me. I’m sure all these guys you named, they’re not satisfied with being eliminated in the earlier rounds or not making the playoffs. I’m not satisfied with not winning. This is the biggest lesson of my life. As a team, there’s no better experience than what we just lived.”

San Antonio’s players and fans found little comfort in the moment. The Spurs built double-digit leads in every game of the series, yet dropped four of five. In Game 5, they surged ahead by 16 points in the second quarter before New York narrowed the gap to five by halftime.

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Wembanyama delivered five first-half blocks as San Antonio held the Knicks to 37 first-half points, their lowest total of the season in any half. Scoring consistency remained a challenge, though, as the Spurs’ offense sputtered down the stretch.

“There’s a lot that goes into it,” coach Mitch Johnson said. “We didn’t deserve to win the games. There’s a lot of levels of execution. There can be rebounding. There can be end-of-game details. There can be starting the game where you get the lead and then you don’t sustain that. We weren’t ready to win an NBA championship. The better team won. We did a lot of good things, and we didn’t finish the job.”

One of the bright spots came from rookie Dylan Harper, who scored a team-high 25 points alongside Wembanyama’s defense and Julian Champagnie’s four made three-pointers. Harper later said, “There were a lot of possessions I want to take back and do differently.”

New York broke the game open with a 10-0 fourth-quarter run, tying it with 4:48 remaining. The Knicks closed on a 21-7 run behind Finals MVP Jalen Brunson, who scored 15 points on 4-of-6 shooting in that stretch and finished with 45 points. The Knicks’ four series victories came by a combined 16 points, tied for the third-smallest margin for a championship team.

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“The margin for error is very thin,” Wembanyama said. “Our domination stints are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of the series. But our errors, our mistakes are punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this so much, you know? The ups are OK. The downs are the reason we lost.”

Throughout the Finals, Wembanyama averaged 7.8 fourth-quarter points on 34% shooting and collected 3.2 rebounds in those periods. The Spurs needed him to close games, but late leads repeatedly faded.

Outside the locker room, NBA Sixth Man of the Year Keldon Johnson wore a black cowboy hat and brown leather jacket, wiping away tears with a towel. He spoke about the “genuine love” within the locker room and how the team grew close over the season.

Nearby, forward Devin Vassell heard the Knicks’ celebration continuing and admitted the moment hit hard. “Hearing that right now, seeing them storming the court on our home court, it’s tough,” Vassell said. “We don’t want a participation trophy to where we just got here. We wanted to win.”

The Spurs entered the Finals as the youngest team, with an average age of 25, and became the youngest to reach the championship since the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, who had come back to win their own Finals series in six games. None of San Antonio’s players focused on that youth, as they believed they were capable of more.

For the first time all season, San Antonio lost three consecutive home games at Frost Bank Center. Wembanyama admitted the wait to return to the stage would be difficult.

“What I’m pissed about is there’s probably a hundred games before we can be back in the Finals,” he said. “I don’t know how to say it in English. But I’m going to have to hold that inside of me, slow down, wait and execute for a hundred games. It’s going to be all of it [shaping my mentality in the future], who we are, what we’re made of, our experiences.”

He added, “This has been a hell of a year in terms of experience. I don’t think we could have learned more and gained more experience in one playoff run and in one season, and personally in 18 months. This is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment. I can’t tell you exactly what the lesson is. But we’re learning from that. I’m learning more than any other time in my life.”

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