The NBA decided not to penalize Victor Wembanyama for pushing Jalen Brunson in the first quarter of Game 3, and Knicks fans aren't taking it well. Timberwolves fans are having flashbacks to the Naz Reid elbow. They thought he should have missed the next meeting in that series after his Jon Jones impersonation. The league office disagreed then, and they disagree now.
The reasons they didn't issue a flagrant for the Brunson incident or suspend him for the Reid fiasco are several, and they're nuanced. Still, the biggest factor is Wemby's undeniable star power.
This was the dumbest non-story of all time. Did anyone really think the NBA would be dumb enough to suspend one of it's biggest stars when 16.43 million tuned in to see game 2? Come on man, saying they were " looking into it" was just to satisfy Mike Brown. ABC and other networks… https://t.co/GL82wD1fkc
— Don Harris (@DonHarris4) June 10, 2026
The NBA community has been asking who the next face of the league would be for years. Most people realized that The Alien would be the next man up, but it was unclear whether or not it had already happened. Now, all doubt has been erased. Welcome to the WemBA.
The NBA isn't going to sabotage their golden goose
The reality that superstars get preferential treatment has always been apparent, so this should be nothing new. But people are up in arms about it anyway. The viewership numbers during the Western Conference Finals and now the NBA Finals confirm that all eyes are on Wemby. He's the next global superstar up, so naturally, the league wants to feed into that.
Combine that with the elephant in the room. Being the face of the NBA is only part of why he wasn't suspended for the elbow or given a flagrant for the push. He's been on the receiving end of some pretty egregious physicality consistently.
Monty McCutchen, Senior VP of officiating, appeared on NBA Today yesterday. He discussed this situation at length, and one of the things he revealed was that the league looks at the entirety of a game when they review it, and they review them all. They don't just isolate one play. Well, if that's the case, what they would have seen was constant attacks on the 7'4" extraterrestrial.
Spurs fans have been yelling about borderline dirty play since the beginning of the postseason. Guys are having their way with Wembanyama, and almost none of it gets called. And we're not just talking about a little grab here or a shove there.
Teams are trying to rough Wembanyama up
Opponents have thrown themselves into his lower body, thrown cheap shots at his rib cage, pulled his arm in one direction as he's moving in another, and the list goes on. He's being subjected to play that could get him injured at any moment, and he isn't complaining about it. But eventually, he has had enough, and he does something back to defend himself, sending a message that he won't be bullied.
On the play against the Timberwolves, he was fouled at least 5 times on that single possession, including being hit in the face, before he threw that elbow. But that doesn't take into account everything else Minnesota was doing before then. It's the same thing in the Knicks situation. Brunson was grabbing Vic, and New York has been ultra-physical with him since Game 1.
The decision-makers for the NBA realize this, and I'm willing to bet a combination of all factors led to these results. So many people are framing this like Wembanyama is just lashing out at people when the film shows he's constantly being beaten up. He's the one responding, not the other way around, and it's actually nice to know the league is taking these things into account.
