SAN ANTONIO -- Victor Wembanyama rocked the rim with a reverse jam off a lob tossed by Stephon Castle on Friday night and quickly fired off a four-punch combination into the padded stanchion underneath the basket.
Clearly, the beatdown was on against the Golden State Warriors.
"I'm ready to put my body on the line for the team if that allows us to win by 40," Wembanyama said.
Wembanyama's dunk with 7:31 left in the opening quarter punctuated an eventual 18-0 run to start the game, and San Antonio cruised to a 123-85 win over the Warriors in an NBA Cup game. It was the Spurs' largest run to start a game over the past 30 seasons as well as the largest allowed by Golden State to start a game under coach Steve Kerr.
San Antonio extended its league-best winning streak to 11 games.
Warriors leading scorer Stephen Curry sat out because of an oblique abdominal tear that will keep him out of action for at least two weeks.
"They were lights-out," Kerr said of the Spurs. "They played a great first five minutes, took it to us. Give them the credit."
Castle inflicted most of the damage by hitting his first three 3-pointers in the opening quarter and finished with a season-high 32 points in 25 minutes. It was Castle's sixth career regular-season outing with 30-plus points and his eighth when including the postseason.
The 22-year-old entered the contest shooting 31.5% from 3-point range this season but caught fire early against Golden State, finishing 5-of-8 from deep to go with six assists, five rebounds and a block. Castle racked up 13 points in the first quarter on 5-of-7 shooting and finished with at least 30 points, five assists and five rebounds in the second-fewest minutes in franchise history. Wembanyama achieved that stat line in 24 minutes in 2023.
"He's in the middle of everything," Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said of Castle. "He's an unbelievable impact player. He's never blinked at anything we've asked, never shown any poor body language. He just attacks everything."
That included the hobbled Warriors.
Throughout the season, teams have sagged off Castle on the perimeter, essentially daring him to shoot. The 2025 NBA Rookie of the Year made the Warriors pay for those tactics and never hesitated along the way.
"I think the biggest obstacle I've had was really myself, kind of just getting into my own head sometimes, not taking open shots and forcing worse shots," Castle said. "I think today just coming in with a clear mind, thinking about our defensive stuff, our principles, trying to play the right way, and the basketball gods found me."
San Antonio led by as many as 26 points in the first quarter and took a 30-point lead into halftime. The cushion stretched to as many as 43 with less than a minute to play in the third quarter, when Harrison Barnes nailed a 24-footer to put San Antonio ahead 95-52.
Kerr called San Antonio "the best team in the league, the hottest team in the league."
The Warriors suffered their most lopsided defeat since Jan. 20, 2025, when they lost by 40 to the Celtics. It was the second consecutive game the Warriors failed to hold a lead at any point in the game.
"We can beat you in many ways, and our offense isn't really our only offense," Castle said. "Our defense makes a lot of those plays and sparks our runs. We could be having not the greatest shooting night, but showing up on defense is really a nonnegotiable. If we do those things the right way and play our way, eventually, teams will start to break down."
ESPN's Anthony Slater and ESPN Research contributed to this report.