SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Spurs lost 119-101 against the Lakers, snapping their four-game winning streak.
Victor Wembanyama finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds. Julian Champagnie had 18 points and two rebounds, Keldon Johnson finished with four, Harrison Barnes had 19 and two rebounds, and Chris Paul had five points and six assists.
In his return to the court, Devin Vassell added 14 points, and Stephon Castle scored 10 points and seven assists.
San Antonio was without Jeremy Sochan due to injury. Head coach Gregg Popovich was also out due to illness. Assistant coach Mitch Johnson assumed head coaching duties for the game.
The Spurs are 10-9 on the season and will next visit the Kings on Sunday night.
Here's a sample of what the teams said after the game.
SPURS
Mitch Johnson:
"I think there were some things that got us back into the game at that point. Physicality, rebounding, taking care of the ball. I think [we] let our guard down a little bit. I may be mistaken, like I said, I have to go back and look at the tape, but it felt like we finally, there had a couple stretches where we had some solid fundamental basketball and we're creeping our way back in and didn't sustain it."
Champagnie:
"At the end of the day, there's no excuses. We got to do better on that. I said last time, we hang our hats on that (defense), and of course, so if that's what we're going to do, we have to come do it every night, even if it's a loss. We want to play 48 minutes of good defensive basketball."
Wembanyama:
"I think maybe we can focus on the right things, on getting easy baskets and doing the right thing. I think this is something, collectively and also myself, we could focus more on doing the right play because, without our basics, our youth shows, and our opponent's experience shows even more."
Barnes:
"I think just the biggest thing for us is just continuing to learn from our mistakes and get better. We have a game like tonight, but we didn't have the pace we wanted. We didn't play with a sense of urgency."
LAKERS
Anthony Davis: