Wembanyama sparkles with 50

MIAMI (AFP) — Victor Wembanyama became the fourth-youngest player to score 50 points in a National Basketball Association (NBA) game when the 20-year-old Frenchman led the San Antonio Spurs to a 139-130 win over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday.

The first overall pick in last year’s draft rattled up his career-high 50 points in just 26 minutes and ended the game with 18-29 shooting with eight three-pointers — also a career high.

The Spurs center, whose previous highest-scoring game was 40, was at a loss to explain his incredible performance.

“I’d love to tell you that you wake up a certain way or you feel really smooth during warm-ups, but at the end of the day, in NBA games we got one game every other day,” he said.

“So, every time we struggle to warm up, we have pain, you know, we sweat, we bleed on the court, so it’s really a minute-to-minute thing, it comes to 48 minutes every game,” he added.

It was the third straight game in which Wembanyama had hit six-plus three-pointers.

The three players who scored 50 points at a younger age than the Frenchman were Brandon Jennings, LeBron James and Devin Booker, all of whom were also aged 20.

The Spurs again won the game without head coach Gregg Popovich. The team said on Wednesday that he had suffered a mild stroke earlier this month but is expected to make a full recovery.