Victor Wembanyama Has Arrived!
In the game heard round the world Victor Wembanyama had his breakout game, dropping an efficient and clutch 38 points to will the Spurs to a consecutive win over the Phoenix suns.
While Victor has already come in and been one of the league’s truly elite defenders, his offense had been a bit shaky until last night. But on Thursday night we saw the first overall pick put everything together, and what a terrifying sight that was.
While the part of Wembanyama’s game that will always get the most attention are the plays that make no sense for someone his size to be capable of doing, whether that be the pullup threes, smoothe handles, and poster dunks, the aspects of his game that his game is built upon is the simple stuff. Victor has one of the highest IQs I have ever seen from a rookie and being able to mix that with his unmatched physical tools make him an unfair player. The understanding of positioning Victor has as well as a catch radius that does not even make sense while watching left the Suns looking hopeless and defeated on so many occasions last night. It seemed San Antonio finally had a mindset switch of putting a priority on getting Wembanyama the ball around the rim and we saw how unstoppable they are with this game plan.
What is so terrifying to me is that this Sochan at PG experiment has been such a mess most of the year, with it only starting to look better last night as he notched a season high of 9 assists, meaning Victor is nowhere near his ceiling as an offensive player yet. When Wembanyama has been paired with a more traditional PG in Tre Jones, the Spurs fall in the 95th percentile of point differential as they are beating teams by 18 when those two are on the court.
This is completely contrasted by when Victor and Sochan have been paired as they are one of the worst lineups in basketball, falling in the 4th percentile of point differential as they are losing by 15.9 with that duo playing and the offense is in the ZERO(!!!) percentile for Pts/Poss. Seeing these numbers and imagining the thought of the Spurs acquiring an elite point guard to run their offense down the line has to be a terrifying thought for the rest of the league.
While it may sound weird, what is so inspiring about this team’s 3–2 start and what speaks so highly of Wembanyama’s impact is that this roster has so many flaws. The starting lineup falls towards the bottom in nearly every meaningful offensive stat, yet they have somehow been able to now grit out two straight games over the Suns, with the second game including an incredible performance from Devin Booker in his return to the lineup. Victor has already proved to have the “it” factor as he has been one of the league’s most efficient 4th quarter scorers and that was put fully on display in these last two games. On Tuesday they were able to somehow steal a win in a game where they had not led until the last 1.2 seconds and then last night Wembanyama scored 10 out of the teams 12 points right as it seemed the Suns were completely there comeback. The NBA’s youngest roster should simply not be doing this so early on into the season but these are the benefits a once-in-a-lifetime player brings to your team.
So often NBA fans want people to pump the brakes when trying to put rookies into conversations with the elite players in the league but I see no reason to do so with Wembanyama. A generational defender whose offense is rapidly improving in just a few games is an all-star level player and Victor should absolutely be held in that regard. If we continue to see the Spurs tailor the offense towards Wembanayma’s strengths, we are going to have to have some serious conversations about where Victor ranks in the league and I am all for him being much higher than most would give him credit for. While fans should still give Wembanayama leeway to have the typical rookie struggles, in every other way he is not the typical rookie and we should treat him in that manner.
