You have returned from a two-year spiritual retreat with digital detox and the name of Victor Wembanyama doesn’t mean anything to you yet?
Lucky you, you have a few hours of high-flying highlights ahead of you.
In the meantime, we’ll make it simple for you, Victor is already a star in the NBA without having played a single game yet!
He is capable of filling stadiums for simple training sessions of the Spurs, the team that drafted him first.
Sit down, drink a glass of water, reread the last sentence, then we move on.
It’s good ?
We’re talking about a 19-year-old kid announced as the potential future face of the prestigious American league… it’s complete rubbish, the hype is crazy, welcome to what the newspapers headline, Wembamania.
We explain to you why join her this evening at two o’clock in the morning (French time), for Victor’s first NBA match against OKC.
1/ A duel at the top…
The two teams that will face each other tonight, San Antonio and Oklahoma, are equipped with incredible talents (we have the right to invent all the words we want in this context).
There are those we know, like SGA who recently splashed international basketball with all his class and natural talent, and then there are the “little youngsters”, those we long to discover .
Here the oxymoron is significant because we designate “little young people” Victor Wembanyama et Chet Holmgren, respectively 2.24 m and 2.16 m…
The latter should have played last season in the NBA but was injured, as if he was waiting for the arrival of Wemby to offer us a fabulous narrative arc.
Here we have two players playing in the same positions and who are “monsters of nature”, but with a different game, the clash promises to be epic!
And although it’s only pre-season and the two protagonists will probably play little more than 15 minutes each, there is reason to be excited in front of so much raw talent.
2/ The beginnings of a (very) great player…
But not only that, because you see, size is not everything.
Certainly, it is a considerable advantage in basketball, but beyond a threshold, it also becomes a handicap.
Last night, Canal broadcast the documentary Un1que on Victor and his last season in France before heading to the States (if you haven’t had the chance to see it, go).
In it, Wemby said something very interesting. In basketball, height helps considerably to find a place, but the biggest players are rarely the best (except Giannis Antetokounmpo, 2.11 m or Kevin Durant, 2.08 m)…
And the voiceover rightly adds that 2 meters is already big!
2.24, it is above all more problem to move with fluidity and to make all these movements which for us, earthlings (earth) earth find easy.
And yet, when you watch Victor play, it’s beautiful, it’s fluid, it’s clean!
He literally knows how to do everything and can play all positions on the court (except possibly pivot in the NBA, paradoxically).
3/ An athlete who reminds us that age is different from maturity
There are tons of talented athletes, but few have the maturity of Victor.
At just 19 years old, the kid not only speaks solid English, but shares thoughts on basketball and life that show how special he is.
His ex-coach Vincent Collet says that Victor sometimes borrowed his tablet to create perfectly usable gaming systems…
To assess the level of maturity, watch this video at 4:15admire how the guy handling the interview is stunned by the depth of Victor’s response to his simple question “what do you love so much about this game (basketball), about competition:
4/ A hard worker born to shine!
We can see proof of this in the Canal documentary Un1que, when Victor works with his trainer and lacks a little flexibility (with his size, nothing could be more normal).
Two months later, guess who is doing the splits (video above)?
The kid has only had one dream since he was little, to become the number 1 that his jersey already indicates.
And deep inside he knows it, he is special, he is the one.
He is not simply a person full of talent, he is a well-thinking head, firmly fixed on his shoulders and who will do anything to reach the highest step of the podium.
During the event in Las Vegas which gave him his media explosion, he was faced with the number 2 in the draft, Scoot Henderson.
Asked about his opponent’s abilities, Victor calmly said “if he hadn’t been born the same year as me, he would deserve to be number 1”.
Not to brag, not to cheat, not to trash talk, but naturally, simply because Victor knows it, it’s first place for him and nothing else.
Behind such declarations, one had to assume…and guess what, he does!
Because Wemby does not fear any pressure and that’s good, the pressure that weighs on his back is immense.
Let’s hope that the American dream does not break the immense wings of our Frenchy, because the bigger we are, the higher we fall.
Updated by Quentin on: 09/10/2023
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