Victor Wembanyama scores 52 with 24 rebounds and 8 blocks as the Spurs edge the Mavericks 112-111

Victor Wembanyama scored 52 points, grabbed 24 rebounds and blocked eight shots on Wednesday night as the San Antonio Spurs beat the Dallas Mavericks 112-111, CBS Sports reported. The 52 points and 24 rebounds were career highs, the Associated Press reported, and CBS described it as a career-best performance for the fourth-year center.

San Antonio has since extended its winning streak to seven games with a 124-109 win at Sacramento on Friday, Nov. 6, when Wembanyama had 30 points and 14 rebounds, per Basketball-Reference. The Spurs are 7-2.

The box score

Per the ESPN box score, which Basketball-Reference matches. His previous career high was 50 points, against Washington on Nov. 13, 2024, per CBS Sports.

How rare it was

• It was the first game with 50 or more points, 20 or more rebounds and five or more blocks since Bob McAdoo in 1974, per a post by the NBA that appears in the AP recap on NBA.com.
• The NBA said in another post, also shown in the AP recap, that no player had posted a 52-point, 24-rebound, 8-block line since blocks became an official statistic in 1973-74.
• He is the first player since play-by-play records began in 1996-97 with at least 25 points, 10 rebounds and 5 blocks in a single half, per the AP and ESPN. He had 29 points, 15 rebounds and 5 blocks in the first half.
• He is the first Spur with 50 points and 20 rebounds in a game, per ESPN Insights as cited by theScore.

How the Spurs won it

Dallas led 103-100 with 5:38 left, per Sports Illustrated, and Wembanyama tied it with a three. His putback made it 111-108 with 1:47 left. With 24 seconds to go he was fouled on a double-team, missed the first free throw and made the second. Dallas’s Kyrie Irving then missed a contested 15-foot turnaround with three seconds left, the AP reported. Wembanyama had rolled his ankle at 9:11 and returned at 6:05, per the AP.

San Antonio’s 14-point advantage in made free throws was a major factor in the one-point win. By our reading of the box score, the Spurs made 33 free throws to Dallas’s 19, and Wembanyama’s 19 makes alone matched Dallas’s team total. The Spurs also made seven more two-point field goals, while Dallas made nine more three-pointers: 14 of 37 to San Antonio’s 5 of 36.

What he said

Wembanyama said after the game that he had been unwell. “I’ve been sick for a while and today I felt like I got my legs back,” he told the Associated Press, as quoted by CBS Sports. CBS wrote that the Spurs opened the 2026-27 season with a loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in which he played poorly, which raised questions about whether he had plateaued. The streak that followed began after an 0-2 start, with the second loss coming against Houston.

The streak

Per ESPN’s schedule. Through nine games, Wembanyama is averaging 29.1 points, 12.6 rebounds and 4.2 blocks, per Basketball-Reference.

The shooting question

CBS reported in its Nov. 5 piece that he was hitting 24% of his threes and was 11 of 36 from mid-range this season. Basketball-Reference now shows 28.6% from three through Nov. 6. CBS’s analysis argued that the encouraging sign for San Antonio is that he dominated without his jumper, by attacking the rim; CBS also published a separate piece on his shot diet. Those figures are early-season samples and will move as the schedule gets longer.

What we do not know

It is not clear how much of the improvement is health and how much is matchup. We found no on-the-record comment from coach Mitch Johnson about the 52-point game in the reports we reviewed.