Knicks’ Jose Alvarado Issues Victor Wembanyama Warning After Dirty Play In Game 3: 'that'll Be The Last One'

After a third straight physical game to begin the NBA Finals, Knicks guard Jose Alvarado has issued a warning after Spurs star Victor Wembanyama got away with a bit of nastiness on Jalen Brunson early in Game 3.

In the first quarter, San Antonio’s center gave a shove to the back of Brunson’s head as the guard jockeyed for position at the high post, sending him to the ground.

Brunson took exception to the uncalled one-armed shove and addressed it with Wembanyama, jabbing his finger at the Frenchman during the possession.

On Tuesday, Alvarado issued a warning to the Spurs.

“I think that’s not basketball,” Alvarado said Tuesday, via The New York Post. “That’s something that they gotta look at. But he got away with one. 

“That’ll be the last one.”

After the Spurs grabbed a 115-111 win that saw Knicks head coach Mike Brown decry a free-throw discrepancy, Brunson said San Antonio’s level of physicality on the night didn’t bother him, and on the play in question, said, “Whatever you saw is what you saw.”

Monty McCutchen, the NBA’s Senior Vice President and Head of Development and Training for Referee Operations, said Tuesday the play should have been whistled for a foul.

"Well, most certainly I think we can all agree that a foul was missed on that play," McCutchen said on ESPN's "NBA Today." "A big part of our job is on-ball, off-ball exchanges between referees. We did a poor job of that here, where we've got two people on ball, and we don't see the screening action… And if we break down in our fundamentals in even the smallest amounts, we have the opportunity to miss a clear foul as we missed here."

The NBA has yet to announce whether Wembanyama will receive a retroactive flagrant foul for the action on Brunson. If the league does upgrade the foul, Wembanyama would be one flagrant foul away from an automatic one-game suspension, after he was issued a Flagrant-2 foul and ejected for elbowing Minnesota’s Naz Reid earlier in the postseason.

Spurs guard De'Aaron Fox said everybody knows playoff basketball will be physical, and nobody expects to “not have bumps and bruises” in his defense of his teammate.

“If you get hit, you hit back. That's life,” Fox said Tuesday. “If life hits you, you need to figure out a way to get on your feet and hit it back.

Every time he rolls, he gets tagged, he gets hit. If he's trying to go set a screen, box out, whatever it may be, he's getting grabbed, he's getting held. It would be crazy for him to think he's going to get open by not hitting somebody.”

Fox added: “You know that team's going to be physical with you, so you go out there and you try to hit first.”