Wembanyama's absence puts glaring spotlight on heavily criticized area

San Antonio has been a non-shooting team for way too long. It's almost hard for some to remember when that wasn't the case. Young fans in elementary school wouldn't be able to recall a time when things were different. When you've been the fan of a team that's won as much as the Spurs have, going through these stretches is a different kind of pain, but here we are.

The front office must prioritize shooters in the offseason. It doesn't matter if they pull them in from other teams or get them in the draft, but it needs to happen because developing non-shooters isn't working. Victor Wembanyama was one of the best shooters on the team, despite all his criticisms, and without him, things have gotten much worse.

San Antonio misses Wembanyama's shooting

Wemby's three-point numbers in February weren't great, but we know he was dealing with a sickness at that point. There's no certainty on whether the blood clot issue had begun to manifest. Mitch Johnson says they didn't start checking for that until after All-Star Weekend. But there was something off with him; he looked under the weather, and it affected his play.

In the six games he played in this month, Wembanyama only shot 30% from three, but in January, that number was up to 36.6%. The Alien shot 37.7% in December—his season-high. On the season, he's 35.2%, and that ranks fourth on the team for players who average at least 10 minutes a game.

When viewers from the talking heads on television to basketball fans from teams across the league saw Vic launching so many three-pointers, they wondered why. Well, the answer couldn't be more clear as they toss up brick after brick without him: they needed him to do that.

In the five games the Silver and Black have played without him, they've ranked 26th in 3PT%, shooting 29.4%. While a good portion of the fan base wants them to lose at this point, you shouldn't want them to look inept. That's a larger problem, and the more they play, the more you wonder how many of them need to stick around long-term.

When you watch other teams play, you see young players stepping up and having amazing games all the time. That doesn't seem to happen here unless your name is Victor Wembanyama or Stephon Castle, and since there have been a bunch of young players on this roster over the past few seasons, that's not good.

The San Antonio Spurs are the only franchise not to have a five-game winning streak since 2020. The last time they had one was the 2018-19 season. That's just... not okay. Part of this organization's greatness has been the ability to constantly evolve with the times, but they are way behind this time.

The top three shooters above Wemby are Harrison Barnes (41.4%), Julian Champagnie (36.3%), and Chris Paul (35.4%). What those three have in common is that they came from other places. Scouting may be a part of the problem, but this team still hasn't recovered from losing Chip Engelland, and that's more apparent than ever.