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It’s easy to see that the NBA will hold an audition Wednesday night in front of a national audience.
We are experiencing a rather rare occasion in which ESPN broadcasts four teams on its platform and none of them feature LeBron James or Stephen Curry, the faces of the league.
Want a look at what a post-LeBron/Steph NBA will look like?
Early in the game, we’ll get a possible preview of the Finals as the emerging Cleveland Cavaliers host the brilliant Oklahoma City Thunder, both running away with the top spots in their respective conferences. Not only are they good; They are young and hungry to take charge of everything in front of them. They are making a compelling case for the coveted real estate of tomorrow.
But I would say that the audition is already done. It’s a wrap. We can talk ourselves into falling in love with the collective teams of Cleveland and OKC, but if we’re honest with ourselves, the NBA has never been about hometown bands. This is the magnetic star, the one you can’t stop looking at.
The winner of the post-LeBron/Steph NBA audition has already been decided and it’s Victor Wembanyama, the guy who will face Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in the final game on ESPN. As much as we’ve invested in the Greek Freak and his remarkable story from the streets of Athens to an NBA championship at age 26, Antetokounmpo is no longer the future of the NBA.
It’s Victor Wembanyama. But he is not just the future. he is the boy now.
The Wemby clock
LeBron James and Stephen Curry were dating. you alone had to look at. In a way, you still do. As LeBron and Steph enter their twilight years, the dating viewing player hasn’t gone away. He has simply taken the form of a 7ft 5in French phenom.
How do I know this? On the one hand, he passed the grandmother’s test.
To be the face of the NBA, it is not enough to sell yourself to the NBA addict. It’s also not about winning over the casual NBA fan. It’s about those who are not fans at all. Here’s the real test: Can the player visually captivate the person in his circle who doesn’t follow the NBA? Do that and a star will be certified.
Last Christmas, while Big Vic was dazzling against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, my almost 80-year-old mother-in-law couldn’t take her eyes off the television in our house. Gran, as we call her, was completely transfixed by this smiling Spur that looked like a creation from a video game. Is it real? How does it move like that? While her grandchildren played with their freshly unwrapped American Girl dolls, Gran didn’t care about anything at that moment because her attention was elsewhere. She was at Wemby Watch.
She doesn’t watch the NBA. In the Knicks-Spurs game, the only player I knew was Chris Paul and that was only because his daughter and I went to college with him. He wanted to know more about his teammate. Victor Wem…so how do you pronounce it? What university did HE go to? Where is it from? How much does it weigh? What size shoe do you wear? How old are you? I explained the whole Alien nickname to her and she was hooked.
That’s when I knew Wemby had passed the test. A smiling Michael Jordan nailed the grandma test, flying through the air in a way the public had never seen before. LeBron James, an 18-year-old phenom who instantly dominated grown men, passed that test with flying colors. Stephen Curry overcame that barrier with his game-warping three-point shot, disguising himself as David with a slingshot to take down Goliath.
Wemby has it. In a close loss against the Knicks, he dominated with 42 points, 18 rebounds, four blocks and four assists, becoming only the third player in NBA history, after Chamberlain and Nikola Jokić, to score more than 40 points with more of 15 rebounds in one Christmas. game. Wilt was 23 when he did it. Jokić was 27 years old. Wembanyama was 20.
But it wasn’t just the Christmas Day game. It’s what came next that should sell Wemby’s appeal even beyond grannies. Hours after its debut on Christmas Day, Wembanyama’s X post: “What are the best places to play chess in New York?” – felt like a moment of epoch, the sign that Wemby’s personality could pierce the monoculture.
Best of all, his message didn’t seem manufactured by corporate suits. There was no hashtag announcement. He was a 20-year-old young man who wanted to play chess in the largest city in the United States. His tweet went viral and soon there he was, sitting in the pouring December rain with an impromptu game of chess in Washington Square Park.
That’s when I knew the King was really under control. Wemby’s visual appeal and approachable personality lead him to usurp the throne for NBA fans and non-fans alike.
But don’t be confused by the charm of Wemby’s chess moves from the ground. The guy is direct mean on the floor. The basketball court is where Wemby’s brilliance really shines.
The Wemby List
There is no more humiliating moment on the basketball court than being rejected. So far, the task of facing Wemby, a man who has 378 blocks to his name, has been a humbling experience for many.
Call it Wemby List. It is a non-exclusive club to which LeBron James and Stephen Curry already belong. In two seasons, Wembanyama has blocked those two GOATs twice each. Wemby has hit fellow Frenchman Rudy Gobert a whopping 10 times. Alperen Şengün another 10 times.
The player you have humiliated the most? That superlative belongs to three-time MVP Nikola Jokić, who Wemby has blocked a staggering 11 times. (Mind you, no other player has landed Jokić more than six times during Wemby’s short career.)
It gets better. According to Basketball Reference’s tracking, 465 different people have played against Wembanyama since he made his debut in October 2023 (or at least appeared as an opponent in a game in which Wembanyama played). Scan the scores and you’ll find that Wembanyama has recorded a block on 182 different players so far in the NBA.
Do the math and you’ll get this surprising fact: Wembanyama has already blocked 40 percent of the players he’s faced in the league. Two out of every five players he steps on the court with already feel humiliated. It’s not even halfway through its second season.
It has saved some players, but it is clear that it is only a matter of time before they join the Wemby List. According to the NBA’s optical tracking cameras, Wembanyama has guarded 404 different players at any given time on any given possession, even during a fraction of a possession, meaning he has blocked 45 percent of the players he has actually blocked. defended.”
If you eliminate small sample sizes, things get crazier. Of the 76 players Big Vic has defended at least 25 possessions against, the Frenchman has blocked 52 of them, 68 percent, or about two-thirds. Of the 24 players he has defended at least 50 possessions, Wembanyama has blocked all but two, a baffling total of 92 percent. If you’re wondering, the only two players Wemby have saved so far are Karl-Anthony Towns and Trayce Jackson-Davis. (The scripts apparently break Wemby’s operating system.)
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It feels like the only reason Wemby haven’t rejected some players is because they often choose not to dare try. In fact, when we look at his on/off stats at pbpstats.com, we see that when he’s on the court, opponents shoot at the rim less often and his average shot distance moves farther from the basket. Nobody forces a business decision like Victor Wembanyama on the prowl.
The blocks, all 378, have been humiliating. But that’s not all Wemby does on the pitch. Rejections are humiliating, but it’s Wemby’s Steph-type triples that will break you.
The Wemby style
Wembanyama’s second season has been a revelation even for me, the guy who voted Wembanyama MVP. A couple of weeks into the season, on the Kevin O’Connor show, I took issue with Wembanyama’s three-point selection and challenged Wemby to be, uh, more than an idiot and take it to the cup. Turns out I was the jerk.
I didn’t realize how demoralizing the Wemby triples could be. The guy can practically shoot without jumping, and yet he’s destroying teams by standing 30 feet away from the basket.
This is the part that is actually the citation display. Wembanyama, who is Dikembe Mutombo on the defensive end, aspires to be Kevin Durant on the other. I don’t know what happened before the Spurs’ Nov. 9 game against Utah when Wemby recorded six 3-pointers and seven blocks in the same game (the first time he ever did that), but since then he’s been virtually unstoppable.
In his last 22 games, Wembanyama has made 89 of 229 3-pointers (38.9 percent), giving him an average of 4.0 hits on 10.4 attempts per game from deep. The Durant comparison doesn’t really make sense in this regard because Durant has never made 89 three-pointers in a 22-game span in his 17-year NBA career. KD is more in that section, It is much less than 89. It is 68.
So, no, KD’s composition is not entirely correct. In fact, the only player in the Western Conference who has made more three-pointers per game than Victor Wembanyama since November 9 is Stephen Curry.
With Wemby, it’s not just about making and blocking shots. He is also a playmaker. Last week, Wembanyama played his 100th career game in style, beating Jokić and the Denver Nuggets in their oxygen-depleted building, with a lead for Chris Paul, no less.
What a 100-game entry. There have been 59 players who have scored at least 2,000 points in their first 100 games in the league, . From that elite club, have recorded more than 75 three-pointers and 75 blocks in those first 100 games: Victor Wembanyama, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid and LeBron James.
Only Of those players can match Wemby’s 386 assists, and his name is LeBron James.
Shooting like Steph, dominating like LeBron.
So, yes, enjoy the two best teams facing off in a possible Finals preview, but who is best to take over as the face of the league? It’s Victor Wembanyama. He is one of one.