]Victor Wembanyama didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t puff his chest. He didn’t feel the need to prove he belonged. But when Draymond Green got in his face midway through the fourth quarter of Friday night’s game, the Spurs’ 7-foot-4 star decided quiet wasn’t an option.

The brief dust-up — featuring Wembanyama rising over Green for an inbound alley-oop dunk that sent Frost Bank Center into a frenzy — ended as fast as it began. What lingered, though, was the message he intended to send. “It’s not trying to prove anything to anybody. It’s just, at some point, somebody speaks to you a certain way, you have to respond a certain way,” Wembanyama said after the game, echoing the mix of calm and conviction that has come to define his young career.

For a 21-year-old in his third NBA season, it wa

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