Four games into the NBA Finals, the numbers on Victor Wembanyama are worth a closer look. We tracked every field goal attempt across all four games - made or missed, inside or outside the paint, and the number of dribbles taken before each shot. What follows is what the data shows. Some of it is clear. Some of it raises questions.

The shooting arc across four games

His FG% went 29% - 52% - 61% - 36%. The peak in Game 3: 11/18 for 32 points at Madison Square Garden, a Spurs win - now reads almost like an outlier within the series. Game 4 was a near-mirror of Game 1 in terms of efficiency, though the shot selection looked different.

The dribble data is where things get interesting.

In Games 1 through 3, a clear pattern emerged: the more dribbles he took before shooting, the lower his field-goal percentage. His zero-dribble FG% rose from 25% to 50% to 69%. By Game 3, his 10 made field goals came with a total of just one dribble. The approach was working.

Game 4 broke the pattern in both directions.

His made shots averaged 1.78 dribbles - the highest of the series, and higher than his missed shots (0.75). For the first time, catch-and-finish wasn't his most efficient mode: he shot 40% on zero-dribble attempts, down from 69% in Game 3. Meanwhile, three of his nine makes came off the bounce, including a 9-dribble drive in the first half.

What does that mean? My guess is as good as anyone's, but I think the Spurs' dominance in the first half enabled Wemby to return to some old habits, primarily playing more as a guard than as a center, including a 9-dribble finish. The phenomenal team shooting from 3 (14-26 FG from beyond the arc) covered every flow. In the second half, Wembanyama's uber-confidence as the tallest guard ever took effect with 2 (missed) 3-point shots in one possession, 2:20 to go in the 3^rd, with the Spurs up 97-82.

The paint story

One of the clearest trends across the series has been Wemby’s progressive shift toward paint attempts. In Game 1, only 29% of his shots came from inside the paint. By Game 3, that was 72%. Game 4 settled at 52% - a partial pullback.

His paint FG% dropped to 38.5%, the lowest of the series. That includes a stretch in the second half where he missed six paint attempts in a cluster - shots 17 through 23 - most of them at or near the rim on zero-dribble looks. He was getting to his spots. The ball just wasn't going in.

One very reasonable reason is fatigue. 

The first half / second half split

Through his first 13 shots of Game 4, he made 7 (53.8%). From shot 14 onward, he made 2 of 12 (16.7%). Paint FG% in that stretch: 1/7, 14.3%.

He missed lay-ups in the fourth quarter. Six consecutive paint misses in the back half of a game, for a player shooting nearly 55% in the paint across the previous three games, is a notable data point. Which brings us to…

The minutes context

Wembanyama averaged under 30 minutes per game during the regular season and didn't play 40 minutes in any regular-season game. His entire playoff run has been physically uncharted territory.

The WCF against OKC stretched to seven games. He played for 49 minutes in Game 1 of that series in double overtime, a career high at the time. By Games 6 and 7, he was at 40 and 42 minutes. He arrived at the Finals having played 17 playoff games over roughly six weeks, with his load progressively increasing as each series got harder.

In Game 4, he played 43 minutes and 55 seconds. He rested for 4 minutes and 5 second total. The second-half collapse occurred during the portion of the game when accumulated fatigue is most likely to show up.