Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs will learn a lot from their chokejob against the Raptors, however painfully.

Victor Wembanyama’s rise has helped the San Antonio Spurs rise rapidly. After two strong wins over the Phoenix Suns, the Spurs led the Toronto Raptors by 22 points on Sunday night and looked poised to win their fourth game of the season.

Unfortunately, explosive offenses meаn there is no safe lead in the NBA, as Wembanyama has said. The Raptors rallied from a large hole and forced overtime on an OG Anunoby putback off a missed rebound by the brilliant Spurs youngster.

The seasoned Raptors won 123-116, sending the Spurs to their third loss of the season in heartbreaking way. Given the Spurs’ inexperience, these growing pains may be inevitable, since they can only reinforce Gregg Popovich’s advice on how to protect leads.

“[Coach Popovich] often says it’s important to play for the whole 48 minutes and even relaxing a couple seconds is too much,” Wembanyama told reporters, according Paul Garcia of Project Spurs.

Due to Victor Wembanyama’s speedy development into one of the NBA’s most significant talents, these young Spurs will soon have to protect enormous leads, thus it will be a crucial lesson.Losing a game in which they led 20-plus is a surefire way to help them remember what to do next time; learning from mistakes is painful but necessary. The Spurs didn’t get to learn from their mistakes when they beаt the Suns Thursday night despite blowing a huge lead.

The Spurs meet the Indiana Pacers tomorrow at 8:00 PM E.T., so they won’t have much time to recover.