DETROIT (AP) — Victor Wembanyama had 21 points, 17 rebounds and six blocks, Devin Vassell scored 28 and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Detroit Pistons 114-103 in a potential NBA Finals preview Monday night.
The Spurs have won a season-high nine games in a row and trail only the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference.
Click to Gallery
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama, left, goes to the basket against the Detroit Pistons during the first half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
San Antonio Spurs guard Stephon Castle (5) goes to the basket past Detroit Pistons guards Ausar Thompson (9) and Cade Cunningham (2) during the first half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
Detroit Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff shouts to his team during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the San Antonio Spurs, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham (2) battles San Antonio Spurs guard Stephon Castle (5) for a rebound with Pistons guard Javonte Green (31) helping on the play during the first half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama cannot grab a rebound during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Detroit Pistons, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
The Eastern Conference-leading Pistons, who had won five straight, host Oklahoma City on Wednesday night in another test.
Detroit star Cade Cunningham struggled, missing 21 of 26 shots and finishing with 16 points and 10 assists.
In the opener of a five-game trip, San Antonio jumped out to a 14-2 lead and was ahead for much of the game. When the Spurs return home, they will host the Pistons on March 5.
The Pistons rallied to lead by three after the first quarter, but the Spurs regained control by making 3-pointers while Wembanyama, their 7-foot-4 center, blocked and altered shots all night at the other end of the court.
San Antonio scored the first seven points of the fourth quarter to open a double-digit lead and didn't have trouble keeping a comfortable cushion.
Jalen Duren had 25 points and 14 rebounds for Detroit, playing for the second time after being suspended for two games by the NBA. Isaiah Stewart is still serving his suspension, stemming from a fight during a game at Charlotte this month.
Tempers flared in the second quarter when Cunningham was called for an offensive foul after extending his arms and knocking down Spurs guard Stephon Castle. San Antonio forward Keldon Johnson responded by pushing Cunningham, and then Duren pointed his right finger in Johnson’s face.
After a review, Johnson and Duren were called for technical fouls.
San Antonio plays at Toronto on Wednesday.
Detroit hosts Oklahoma City on Wednesday.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama, left, goes to the basket against the Detroit Pistons during the first half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
San Antonio Spurs guard Stephon Castle (5) goes to the basket past Detroit Pistons guards Ausar Thompson (9) and Cade Cunningham (2) during the first half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
Detroit Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff shouts to his team during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the San Antonio Spurs, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham (2) battles San Antonio Spurs guard Stephon Castle (5) for a rebound with Pistons guard Javonte Green (31) helping on the play during the first half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama cannot grab a rebound during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Detroit Pistons, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The world’s only flightless parrot species was once thought to be doomed by design. The kakapo is too heavy, too slow and, frankly, too delicious to survive around predators, and takes a shamelessly relaxed approach to reproduction.
But the nocturnal and reclusive New Zealand native bird ’s fate is teetering toward survival after an unlikely conservation effort that has coaxed the population from 50 to more than 200 over three decades. This year, with a bumper crop of the strange parrot’s favorite berries prompting a rare enthusiasm for mating, those working to save the birds hope for a record number of chicks in February, which would move the kakapo closer to defying what was not long ago believed to be certain extinction.
Kakapo live on three tiny, remote islands off New Zealand’s southern coast and chances to see them in the wild are scarce. This breeding season has launched one of the birds to internet fame through a livestreamed video of her underground nest, where her chick was born on Tuesday.
The kakapo is a majestic creature that can live for 60 to 80 years. But they’re undoubtedly weird to look at.
Birds can weigh over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds). They have owllike faces, whiskers, and mottled green, yellow and black plumage that mimics dappled light on the forest floor.
That’s where the flightless parrot lives, which has made its survival complicated.
“Kakapo also have a really strong scent,” said Deidre Vercoe, the operations manager for the Department of Conservation’s kakapo program. “They smell really musky and fruity — gorgeous smell.”
The pungent aroma was bad news for the parrots when humans arrived in New Zealand hundreds of years ago. The introduction of rats, dogs, cats and stoats, as well as hunting by people and destruction of native forest habitats, drove species of the country’s flourishing flightless birds — the kakapo among them — to near or complete extinction.
By 1974, no kakapo were known to exist. Conservationists kept looking, however, and in the late 1970s, a new population of the birds was discovered.
Reversing their fortunes hasn’t been simple.
One reason the kakapo population has grown slowly is that its breeding is, like everything about the birds, peculiar. Years or even decades can pass between successful clutches of eggs.
A breeding season only happens every two to four years, in response to bumper crops of fruit from the native rimu trees the parrots favor, which last happened in 2022. A huge food source is needed for chicks to survive but it’s not known exactly how adult birds become aware of an abundant harvest.
“They’re probably up there in the canopy assessing the fruiting,” said Vercoe. “When there’s a large crop developing, they somehow tune into that.”
That’s when things get really strange. Male kakapo position themselves in dug-out bowls in the ground and emit sonorous booming sounds followed by noises known as “chings,” which sound like the movement of rusty bedsprings.
The deep booms, which on clear nights can be heard across the forest, attract female kakapo to the bowls. Females can lay up to four eggs before raising their chicks alone.
Since January, admirers of the birds have had a rare glimpse into the process through a livestream showing the underground nest of 23-year-old kakapo Rakiura on the island of Whenua Hou, where she has laid three eggs, two of them fertile. So precarious is the species’ survival that the eggs were exchanged for fake replacements while the real ones were incubated indoors.
A technician on Tuesday replaced the fake eggs with the first near-hatching egg. The kakapo kept her distance while the switch was made but quickly returned to the nest, seemingly unperturbed. The chick hatched just over an hour later. The second real egg is expected to be added within days.
Perhaps the only thing stranger than the kakapo is the lengths to which New Zealanders have gone to save it. Quadrupling the population over the past three decades has required their relocation to three remote, predator-free offshore islands and the micromanaging of the parrots’ every romantic entanglement.
“We do what we can to make sure we don’t lose any further genetic diversity,” Vercoe said. “We manage that carefully through having the best matches possible on each island.”
Each bird has a name and is monitored by a small backpack tracker; if a bird vanishes, they’re nearly impossible to find. With the kakapo still critically endangered, there’s little prospect of conservation efforts ending anytime soon, although those working with the birds are easing their hands-on management each breeding season.
The painstaking work to preserve the species might seem odd to outsiders, but the parrot is just one of many spirited and strange avians in a country where birds reign supreme. The only native land mammals are two types of bat, so New Zealand’s birds, which evolved eccentrically before human and predator arrival, have become beloved national symbols.
“We don’t have the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids, but we do have kakapo and kiwi,” Vercoe said. “It’s a real New Zealand duty to save these birds.”
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds an egg for candling of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member checks the size of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds Kakapa chicks Tiwhiri A1 and Tiwhiri A2 on Anchor Island Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, Kakapo, Kohengi sits with her three eggs, on Anchor Island, Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 3, 2026. (Andrew Digby/Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
