Victor Wembanyama grabbed Jalen Brunson by the back of the neck and threw him to the floor in Game 3 of the NBA Finals and walked away without so much as a foul call. Now Charles Barkley wants the Knicks to answer in kind.

Barkley, on the Dan Patrick Show on Wednesday, issued new instructions to the Knicks following the controversial incident:

“Well, first of all, the Knicks should stop whining,” Barkley said. “What the Knicks should do is clearly, what the Knicks should do is knock the hell out of Victor Wembanyama at some point, because them two things they did to Jalen Bronson, I didn’t like it. I loved it. This is a competition, but you can’t let them manhandle your best player. You got to knock the hell out of Victor.”

After Wembanyama’s shove went uncalled in Game 3 and the NBA later admitted officials missed the foul, while still declining to upgrade it to a flagrant, Knicks guard Jose Alvarado told the New York Post:

“I think that’s not basketball. That’s something that they gotta look at. But he got away with one. That’ll be the last one.”

Head coach Mike Brown also pushed officials on the no-call afterward, warning that an unanswered shove like that “can cause a fight.”

It was against this backdrop – a non-call, a missed-foul admission with no real penalty, and a locker room still fuming that Barkley made his case for retaliation.

“If I am the Knicks, early in the game, I knock the hell out of Victor,” he continued. “They should have did it last game because Jalen went toward Victor, but he’s too little to intimidate Victor. That’s where Karl-Anthony Towns or OG or somebody got to take a flagrant foul on Victor. Like, every time y’all hit Jalen, we’re going to knock the hell out of y’all too. That’s the way sports are played.”

It isn’t the first time Barkley has pushed a team toward a little extracurricular gamesmanship to rattle an opponent. Back during the 1993 NBA Finals between the Phoenix Suns and the Chicago Bulls, Charles Barkley arranged for notorious sports heckler Robin Ficker to be flown to Phoenix and seated behind the Bulls’ bench specifically to get under Michael Jordan’s skin.

The incident occurred in the first quarter at Madison Square Garden. Brunson was battling through traffic while trying to defend a play involving Wembanyama. Video replays showed Jalen Brunson grabbing Wembanyama’s jersey as the two became tangled, with the 2026 unanimous DPOY extending his arm and shoving Brunson in the upper back/head area, sending the Knicks star to the floor.  

The play immediately went viral because of the size difference involved: the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama knocking down the 6-foot-2 Brunson with what many viewers considered an obvious push.

To be clear, Barkley isn’t disputing that the Knicks had a legitimate gripe, the NBA itself admitted officials missed the call, and Barkley’s own “I didn’t like it. I loved it” reaction concedes the play crossed a line.

His comment is about strategy. In his view, protesting a no-call to officials or on TV changes nothing once the league has already reviewed and closed the matter, but a physical response on the floor is something the Knicks can actually control.

It’s the same logic Barkley applied to Mike Brown’s free-throw complaints after Game 3, when he argued that referees will miss calls but that dwelling on it doesn’t fix the problem. Only better play (or, in this case, a more physical response) does.

“And it can’t just come from Alvarado,” Jay Williams said on ESPN’s SportsCenter on Wednesday. “It has to come from Karl-Anthony Towns,  has to come from OG. It has to come from everybody. Look for multiple shots to be delivered to Wemby tonight in game four. Yeah, I expect this whole Knicks squad to respond to that.”

Interestingly, Brunson didn’t escalate the situation, saying, “whatever you saw is what you saw.”

Wemby, on the other hand, downplayed the moment and villain status with a Trae Young joke, the former Atlanta Hawks star who became a literal symbol of hate for fans at the Mecca.

Barkley’s call to “take a flagrant foul on Victor” isn’t just trash talk, it lines up with where Wembanyama actually sits under the league’s discipline system. A player who accumulates four flagrant foul points in a single postseason is automatically suspended for one game, and Wembanyama already carries two points from a Flagrant 2 foul against Minnesota’s Naz Reid in Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals.

An upgrade to even a Flagrant 1 in Game 3 would have pushed him to three points, one shy of the automatic suspension threshold, meaning one more hard foul of that nature in Game 4 could sideline San Antonio’s franchise center for a Finals game.

That math gives Barkley’s “send a message” instruction an edge beyond intimidation: a Knicks team that draws Wembanyama into retaliating physically isn’t just making a point, it’s playing for a potential one-game absence from the player San Antonio can least afford to lose. The historical precedent looms large here. Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5 of the 2016 NBA Finals after hitting four flagrant points, an absence that preceded Golden State’s collapse from a 3-1 lead.

A Pattern, Not a One-Off

The Brunson shove didn’t happen in a vacuum. It capped a stretch of increasingly physical incidents involving Wembanyama this postseason, beyond the Naz Reid elbow, he appeared to pull Oklahoma City’s Lu Dort by the hair while running upcourt in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, and in Game 2 of these Finals he was seen tossing Knicks guard Jose Alvarado by the neck while boxing out for a rebound.

By the time Brunson hit the floor in Game 3, some in the Knicks’ orbit were already counting. The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski summed up the frustration bluntly, noting that Alvarado, Brunson, and Josh Hart had all been on the wrong end of what he considered clear, uncalled flagrant fouls from Wembanyama, and that “at some point something’s got to give.”

Yet while the Knicks’ camp felt the calls were missing, the basketball world’s most iconic big man had a different take. Shaquille O’Neal is not a stranger to making his presence known. He made a career out of terrorizing opposition defenses and joined Wemby’s defense team, saying after the game:

“Listen, I love that he’s playing with energy, enthusiasm, and effort. They got out to a great start. They didn’t keep that lead,” O’Neal said. “But listen, this is what you want to see if you’re a big man. I like that move right there. You got to let those little munchkins know.”

With Game 4 underway, fans will be eager to see how well Wembanyama is closely guarded. Fans would love an explosive, entertaining game between two teams that have made the 2026 NBA Finals one of the most exciting in recent memory.