LAS VEGAS (AP) — Victor Wembanyama is finally ready to play again. It just so happens that his return coincides with his San Antonio Spurs being in the NBA Cup semifinals against the defending league champion Oklahoma City Thunder.
Wembanyama will be on a minutes restriction Saturday night when he and the Spurs take on the Thunder in the Cup semifinals. It'll be Wembanyama's first game back after he missed 12 contests with a strained left calf; the Spurs went 9-3 in those games, including a Cup quarterfinal win in Los Angeles against the Lakers earlier this week.
He wanted to come back earlier. And he also acknowledges that wouldn't have been wise.
“When you’re part of a team like this, now we're starting to be even more successful, we’re starting to win," Wembanyama said. “Every single game is important, and I have a responsibility towards my team to come back as quick as I can — but also to be healthy, to not come back too early, It would have been a mistake to come back earlier. So, it just happens that I’m coming back on this game in Vegas here. But every single game I was pushing.”
It could have been argued — and surely was discussed at Spurs headquarters — that there's some logic around sitting Wembanyama on Saturday, not playing him in the Cup final if San Antonio got there because the game won't count in the standings anyway, and essentially getting him another week off before regular-season play resumes on Dec. 18 against Washington.
But Wembanyama lobbied to play. The Spurs' medical team deemed him ready to play. As such, he's playing.
“The added visibility and conversation around this game, around the game in LA, around any potential games after this, I totally understand," Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. "But in all reality, we would strip all that back when we had those real honest conversations about, ‘where are we at what are we walking out of, what are we walking into’ — understanding visibility, understanding it’s a long season, understanding all the things that go with it.”
Wembanyama is averaging 26.2 points and 12.9 rebounds this season for the Spurs, who are off to a 17-7 start — having gone 8-4 with Wembanyama and 9-3 without him.
“They have had a great start,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “We haven’t seen them yet. So, it’s a first pass at them, and we’ll see where we are at against them. We’re not going to overprepare or overdo anything. First time we’ve seen them, go out there and play and see where that leaves us. We’ll see them a few times here in the next couple weeks.”
The Thunder are 24-1, tying the best record through 25 games in NBA history. Orlando and New York are playing in the other NBA Cup semifinal at Las Vegas on Saturday.
Wembanyama expects some level of fatigue Saturday. He was winded Friday after a cardio workout in Vegas, and Johnson said Wembanyama was getting tired playing against the Spurs’ video staffers a few days ago as part of his ramping-up process toward this return.
“I would suspect an early sub and not his normal minutes,” Johnson said.
Saturday would be the first time that Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, De'Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper all play together for the Spurs this season. It might be more than a bit surprising that the Spurs entered Friday tied for the fifth-best record in the NBA despite constant injuries over the first few weeks of the season.
“Of course, it’s been hard to watch from my couch, but almost every night they’ve proven to me that I have nothing to worry about," Wembanyama said. "But yeah, no, really the brand of basketball we’re playing, that they’ve been playing just makes me proud because it’s getting closer to the ideal basketball in my opinion.”
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San Antonio Spurs forward/center Victor Wembanyama (1) shoots before an NBA basketball game against the New Orleans Pelicans, in New Orleans, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama, center, talks with teammate forward Carter Bryant (11) during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Memphis Grizzlies in San Antonio, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
San Antonio Spurs' Victor Wembanyama, center, reacts to a play during the second half of an NBA Cup basketball game against the Los Angeles Lakers Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
New York is the eighth state found to routinely issue commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants that are valid long after they are no longer legally authorized to be in the country, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday, and he threatened to withhold $73 million in highway funds unless the system is fixed and any flawed licenses are revoked.
New York was the fourth state run by a Democratic governor called out publicly by Duffy in his effort to make sure truck and bus drivers are qualified to either haul passengers or 80,000 pounds of cargo down the highway. He previously questioned similar practices in California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.
But letters have gone out to other states as well without fanfare, or comments from Duffy, including Republican-run Texas and South Dakota.
In addition to finding licenses that remained valid longer than they should have, these federal audits have also discovered instances where the states may not have even checked a driver's immigration status before issuing a license. Investigators check a small sample of licenses in each state.
Duffy launched the review this summer, but it became more prominent after a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August. The rules on these licenses the Transportation Department is enforcing have been in place for years.
The AP discovered letters online Friday that were sent to Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, and Washington in October.
Most of the states that have been the focus of the investigation so far have defended their practices and said they were following the federal rules. But Duffy has said the high percentage of problems in some states, combined with the defensive responses from officials, suggests a systematic problem, and he insisted Friday this effort is about safety — not politics.
“When more than half of the licenses reviewed were issued illegally, it isn’t just a mistake — it is a dereliction of duty by state leadership," Duffy said about New York on Friday.
Investigators also found that nearly half of the 123 licenses reviewed in Texas were flawed. Some of the other states involved small numbers, but most of the problems were similar. Since Duffy pressed the issue in California, the state has revoked some 21,000 commercial driver's licenses that were issued improperly.
The Transportation Department has threatened to withhold federal highway funding from these states — including $182 million in Texas and $160 million in California — if they don't reform their licensing programs and invalidate any flawed licenses.
So far, no state has lost money because they complied or because they have more time to respond. But as part of a separate review, California lost $40 million for failing to enforce English language requirements for truckers that the Trump administration began enforcing this summer.
New York State Department of Motor Vehicles spokesperson Walter McClure said the state is following all the federal rules.
“Secretary Duffy is lying about New York State once again in a desperate attempt to distract from the failing, chaotic administration he represents. Here is the truth: Commercial Drivers Licenses are regulated by the Federal Government, and New York State DMV has, and will continue to, comply with federal rules,” McClure said in a statement.
Duffy has previously threatened to pull federal funding from New York if the state did not abandon its plan to charge drivers a congestion pricing fee in New York City and if crime on the subway system was not addressed. The Transportation Department also put $18 billion of funding on hold for two major infrastructure projects in New York, including a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey, because of concerns about whether the spending was based on diversity, equity and inclusion principles.
A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that “public safety is the Governor’s top priority, and we must ensure that truckers can navigate Texas roadways safely and efficiently. To support this mission, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to strictly enforce English language proficiency requirements and to stop issuing intrastate commercial driver’s licenses to drivers who do not meet those standards."
Most of the other states have said they are working to address the concerns the Transportation Department raised.
Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses only represent about 5% of all commercial driver's licenses or about 200,000 drivers. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold.
Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers and drivers who can't speak English off the road along with the Transportation Department's actions last week to go after questionable commercial driver's license schools. But immigrant advocacy groups have raised concerns these actions have led to harassment of immigrant drivers and prompted some of them to abandon the profession.
“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk,” said Todd Spencer, who is president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association.
Associated Press writers Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, and Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, New Jersey, all contributed to this report.
Derek Barrs, Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, speaks as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy listens during a news conference at the Department of Transportation in Washington, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, left, and Derek Barrs, Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, listen to a reporter's question during a news conference at the Department of Transportation in Washington, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speaks during a news conference at the Department of Transportation in Washington, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
FILE - Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speaks to the media about the impact of the government shutdown on the aviation industry, outside of the West Wing of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
