Victor Wembanyama’s first 50 games show the NBA will never be the same

Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images

Victor Wembanyama’s spectacular first 50 NBA games show a potential all-time great in the making.

Victor Wembanyama flirted with the record books on Thursday night against the Sacramento Kings, coming agonizingly close to being the second rookie ever to finish with a hallowed 5×5 stat line. In addition to his 19 points and 13 rebounds, Wembanyama used his long arms to block five shots, grab five steals, and deflect six passes. He took six three-pointers and only made one of them. He got bullied inside by Domantas Sabonis all night, with the Kings center finishing with a triple-double on 11-of-15 shooting from the floor. He was one assist shy of history.

The Kings beat the Spurs, 127-122, to drop San Antonio to 11-45 overall, the third worst record in basketball. Wembanyama sat on the bench for a stretch during crunch time in a close game because he’s still on a minutes restriction.

This was the 50th game of Wembanyama’s NBA career, and it felt like a good window into his rookie year so far. He was brilliant at times, yet the lack of optimization around him felt maddening at others. He was undeniably effective even on an off-night when he finished with more field goal attempts than points. Wembanyama is just scratching the surface of his eventual greatness, but the rough outlines of his future domination are already easy to see.

Wembanyama’s rapid growth is all over the tape during a phenomenal rookie year. He’s leading the NBA in total blocks despite playing hundreds of fewer minutes than most of his competitors. He’s the first player to record 75 threes, 150 assists and 150 blocks in a single season, and it only took him 48 games to do it. His playmaking — which was severely unrefined as recently as two years ago — is quickly becoming a strength. His scoring efficiency is more of a work in progress, but it’s also taken off since moving to center full-time on Dec. 8.

Wembanayama turned 20 years old just over a month ago, and already has a case as a top-30 player in the world. That this is the worst version of Wembanyama the NBA can expect to see at any point over the next 15 years should terrify and confound the rest of the league.

Wembanyama’s historic tools were always the foundation for his once-in-a-lifetime talent. Measuring 7’4 barefoot with an 8-foot wingspan, Wemby was both the tallest and longest player in the NBA from the moment he was drafted. No one this big should be as light on their feet as Wembanyama is. His physical advantages alone put him in the land of legends, the mentality he’s displaying gives him a real chance to match some of the game’s all-time greats.

A year before he entered the draft, I wrote a scouting report on the NBA’s next big thing. It included this line: “The last prospect this big, this fluid, and this comfortable with the ball in his hands might be a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, when he entered UCLA in the mid-1960s.”

Abdul-Jabbar is, for my money, the second or third best player of all-time. This sort of comparison would be brutally unfair to any player, but it felt appropriate for contextualizing Wembanyama’s outlier gifts. While he’s still at the very beginning of his journey, nothing we’ve seen at the start of his NBA career should discourage the prophecies of immortality he’s long carried on his young shoulders.

By all accounts, Wembanyama is consumed by his pursuit of greatness. Early in his rookie year, he checked himself into a game against the Memphis Grizzlies at the opposition of legendary head coach Gregg Popovich, who immediately pulled him. It’s the type of story that will seem like a tall tale 50 years from now if the Earth hasn’t already melted. Wembanyama still has a long way to go, but his first season in the NBA is full of signs of the bigger things still to come.

Wembanyama’s defense was always expected to translate at an elite level earlier than his offense, but it would have been unreasonable to believe he’d be this good this quickly. Before he’s played his 50th NBA game, Wemby already has a case as the most disruptive defender in the league. If he’s not going to win Defensive Player of the Year yet, he should at least earn consideration for the All-Defensive team.

Wemby’s league-leading block numbers paint the picture of a dominant rim protector, but there’s so much more to his defense than just swats. His mere presence on the floor deters so many looks from even going up in the first place. The Spurs defensive rating with Wembanyama on the court is 112.6 — which would rank No. 7 in the NBA. With Wembanyama on the bench, San Antonio’s defensive rating jumps to 119.9, which would be No. 28 in the league.

The all-in-one stats back-up Wemby’s defensive dominance: only five players entered the All-Star break with a better defensive EPM so far this season. In his 48th NBA game, Wembanyama recorded a triple-double with blocks, swatting 10 shots against the Raptors. Watch them all here:

Wembanyama’s combination of length, closing speed, and instincts to go get the ball are completely unrivaled. He can be far outside the scope of a play for a normal defender, and still dart into it to deny or alter a shot. He’s lurking on every possession wherever he is on the floor, because the typical rules of NBA ground coverage do not apply to him.

On this play, Wemby sticks to an excellent shooter in the corner in OG Anunoby, darts in as soon as the ball is entered to the roll man, and erases the shot. It’s one small example of how offenses have to account for his presence regardless of where he’s at when a play begins.

This is true on the perimeter, too. Wembanyama’s length doesn’t just block shots, it disrupts driving lanes that would be open under any other circumstances. This two-handed dig from a preseason game against the Thunder is proof of how he shrinks the court.

Most good offensive players at this level only need a sliver of space to break the defense. Wembanyama will lull you into believing that sliver exists before slamming it shut at a moment’s notice.

Photos by Michael Gonzales/NBAE via Getty Images

The big inflection point in Wembanyama’s rookie year came on Dec. 8 against the Chicago Bulls. That’s when Popovich decided to move starting center Zach Collins to the bench, slide Wembanyama to the five, and make him the focal point of the offense.

It made sense to start another big man next to Wemby originally: playing center in the NBA is akin to playing in the trenches in the NFL. You’re going to get pushed, elbowed, hit from a variety of angles when you’re least expecting it. The flip side is that playing two bigs together automatically junks up the spacing unless one of them is a volume three-point shooter. No one was guarding Collins on the perimeter, not when he’s only hitting 27.5 percent of his threes this season.

This forced Wembanyama into more of a floor spacing role early in his career. The clips of Wemby splashing deep threes are tantalizing, but it stands in contrast to one fundamental truth to his game: he’s so dominant on the inside that shooting from the perimeter often feels like it’s bailing out the defense. When Collins moved to the bench, suddenly the floor opened up for Wembanyama to attack with a side cleared out or from the middle of the floor. Since then, both his playmaking and scoring has taken off.

Before the move to center, Wembanyama only had a 51.8 true shooting percentage — well below the NBA league-average this season of 58.2 percent true shooting. Since Collins was benched, Wemby is up to 58.3 percent true shooting.

Surrounded by more shooting, passing, and ball handling, Wembanyama has had more space to explore his individual shot creation and playmaking. The signs of progress are remarkable, and make the mind run wild with what he could eventually become.

The Spurs’ awful season feels like it’s by design, at least partially. San Antonio watched the way their in-state rivals, the Dallas Mavericks, rushed to build a competitive team around the league’s last true rookie sensation, Luka Doncic. The Mavs are a solid team — 33-23 overall, No. 6 in the West — but they spent a ton of future assets to get there. The Spurs are looking for something more sustainable, and that starts with adding another high lottery pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.

The Spurs know they need more shooting around Wembanyama. San Antonio is 11th in three-point rate this season, but dead last in three-point percentage at 34 percent. The Spurs need a point guard. More than that, they need a roster full of high-feel players who can consistently deliver Wembanyama the ball from a variety of angles. They need some point-of-attack defenders, because they know Wemby will be the ultimate eraser to clean up mistakes on the back line.

San Antonio’s season to this point has been defined by its odd lineup choices, its cascade of missed threes, and its inability to get its resident alien the ball. Meanwhile, Wemby himself is problem solving on the fly at a record pace. Having the greatest tools in NBA history sure helps. What the Spurs need to realize is they can’t hold Wembanyama back beyond this year. Next season, he needs to get the opportunity to prove he can handle more than the 28.5 minutes per game he’s currently playing. He needs to play with a real point guard all season, and with more shooters and perimeter defenders around him.

Following his career from the U19 FIBA World Cup in 2021 to his pair of stops in the French professional league has highlighted just how quickly he’s improving in a short period. To this point, Wembanyama has given San Antonio every reason to believe he will one day become the best player in the NBA. The origin story is often the most fun part of the hero’s journey. These first 50 games in the league have been such a thrill to watch that it’s hard to believe Wembanyama is only going to get exponentially better from here.