An up-close look at Victor Wembanyama’s first two weeks in the NBA, when he showed right away why he is considered the league’s best prospect since LeBron James.
The legendary San Antonio Spurs coach had just finished his 27th season — which happened to be the losingest season of his career — and didn’t want to get his hopes up. Tony Parker, the longtime Spurs star, had raved about his talented French countryman, a 7-foot-4 center with guard skills. Popovich didn’t give the scouting reports much thought: San Antonio only had a 14 percent chance at the top pick, and it hadn’t had much luck during four straight losing seasons.
Now, the prospect Popovich had tried to put out of mind is all anybody wants to discuss. In city after city during the first two weeks of Wembanyama’s NBA career, Popovich was queried about the new face of his franchise.
“We’ve got a famous saying in San Antonio: ‘Pound the Rock.’ It has a deep meaning,” Wembanyama said. “How I see it and how I see life: It’s not about how bad the struggles are going to be; it’s about how persistent we’re going to be.
The show begins each night more than an hour before tip-off, when Wembanyama takes the court for an individual warmup session that can run longer than 20 minutes. Fans wearing his French pro team Metropolitan 92s jersey crowd near the court as they angle for an autograph, and first-time observers inevitably gawk with wide eyes.
“We’re at 60 or 65 percent of where we could be,” Spurs guard Devin Vassell said. “We’re messing up on little stuff. I’m very interested to see halfway through the season where we are.”struggled badly with turnovers in their early losses, and Wembanyama often rushed through his decisions when he did get the ball. Early in his first matchup with Durant, a nervous Wembanyama was stripped by the Suns forward on the perimeter.
“I know we’re both skinny and he said he watched me growing up, but he’s his own player,” Durant said. “His enthusiasm for the game, you can tell that through the TV and playing against him. He’s going to create his own lane. It’s much different than anybody who has ever played.”Placing Wembanyama in the Venn diagram of NBA superstars is no simple task.
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