Wembanyama shakes off ankle scare, Sabonis gets flagrant 1

For about 30 seconds in Sacramento, every Spurs fan on earth stopped breathing.

It happened in the second quarter. Wemby rose for a 3, Sabonis closed out late and underneath him, and the 7-foot-4 franchise came down on Sabonis' foot. That's the landing-space play the league has been trying to legislate out of the game for years, and it's the exact way an ankle turns into a 3-week absence. Wemby went straight to the floor holding his left ankle. Then he got up and walked to the bench on his own, which is the first thing you look for and the best news there was at that point.

The officials went to the monitor and upgraded it to a Flagrant 1 on Sabonis. Better still, Wemby never left. You can argue about whether Sabonis meant anything by it, and he almost certainly didn't, but a closeout that ends with a defender's foot under the shooter is reckless by definition. The flagrant was the right call. The ankle holding up mattered a lot more.

Wemby didn't look bothered once play started again. He went 10-for-18 for 30 points and 14 rebounds, and San Antonio cruised to its 7th straight win in the Spurs' first NBA Cup game of the season. Sacramento hung around for a while, but the gap only grew in the second half, and by the end of the 3rd quarter the Kings trailed 99-80.

That 4th-quarter 3 is the part that should calm everyone down. A guy nursing a bad ankle doesn't keep launching from deep with 9 minutes left in a 19-point game, and he did. Same tweet, other side of the floor: Kings rookie Darius Acuff Jr. was shaking off a tweaked ankle of his own and stayed in too. Acuff finished with 22 points and 8 assists, his 5th straight 20-point game, which puts him among only 8 rookies in franchise history to do it. He's about the only good news in a 1-8 start for Sacramento.

Next up is the one to watch. This was the first stop on a 4-game road trip for San Antonio, and the Spurs flew straight to Portland for a game Saturday, November 7. Back-to-back, travel day, and an ankle that got rolled the night before. If Wemby shows up on the injury report, it's going to be as precautionary rest, not because of anything he showed in Sacramento. He played through the rest of the game like nothing happened. The question is how it feels when he wakes up in Portland.