When Victor Wembanyama came into the NBA as the No. 1 pick in 2023, the hype, quite literally, couldn't have been any bigger. Wait, you're telling me there's a 19-year-old kid in France who makes seven-footers look small with the skills of a guard?
Yes, that's what we're telling you.
You can imagine the "OK, buddy" snickers, because honestly, if you weren't tapping into the EuroLeague circuit, the idea of this guy sounded inconceivable. Some freakish combination of Kevin Durant and Bill Russell? What are you going to tell me next, that in his third NBA season, he's going to become the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year in league history, finish third in MVP voting and go to the Finals, where his team will hold the lead for more than 70% of the total minutes played, by way of a Game 7 road win over the defending champion Thunder?
Funny you should ask. As it turns out, that's precisely what Wembanyama accomplished last season despite not being old enough to legally buy a beer until the month before the All-Star break. His learning curve looks like the vapor trail of a rocket ship headed straight for the moon.
Not since LeBron James, who averaged an astonishing 31 points, seven rebounds and six assists in his third NBA season, has a player been this dominant this soon. When LeBron carried the 2007 Cavaliers to the Finals, he was 23 days younger than Wemby was when he made his Finals debut on June 3 against New York. LeBron is arguably the greatest player in NBA history, which is probably the only career outcome that could have actually exceeded the teenage expectations with which he was saddled.
It's close to the same for Wembanyama, who is already on a GOAT trajectory. Everyone knows you're supposed to wait until a player has won at least one championship and/or MVP, or hell, at least until he's actually through his rookie contract, before you even start whispering things like that, but Wembanyama is leaving us no choice. He's the best defensive player on the planet to the degree that Stephen Curry is the best shooter on the planet.
Just about everything else in basketball is debatable. Those two things are not. Both Curry and Wembanyama warp the geometry of a court in ways nobody could have imagined before they came along. Curry stretches defenses. Wembanyama shrinks offenses.
NBA.com tracking defines an "open" shot as the nearest defender being at least four feet away, but tell that to all the scared-to-death scorers who have been forced to rewire every spatial instinct they've spent a lifetime calculating, parading into the paint only to come running right back out as if they've seen, well, an alien.
Baby Turns Around GIF from Baby GIFsOn one half of the court alone, Wembanyama is among the most impactful players in the game. The fact that last season, he became the only player in history to average at least 25 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks on 62% true shooting was enough to claim the No. 1 spot on our CBS Sports Top 100 player rankings.
Quibble with that designation if you must. Call it premature. Maybe it is. There are no fewer than five players with a reasonable claim to that throne, one of whom, Jalen Brunson, just bested Wembanyama in the Finals. This is a projection for what's ahead, however, and the fact of the matter is Wembanyama -- who clocked in at 5-foot-7 in the second grade and hit 6-5 before his 13th birthday -- is growing too fast for anyone to keep up with for much longer.
Wemby's next step
This is what's most exciting. We get to watch these growth spurts happen in real time, from season to season, month to month, sometimes even game to game. In the first playoff game of his career, Wembanyama hung 35 on the Blazers. When the Timberwolves had the Spurs 2-2 in the second round after Wemby was ejected early in Game 4, he fired back with 27 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and three blocks as San Antonio won the next two games by 59 points.
Then it was OKC in the conference finals, where the dream season was supposed to finally end. Until Wemby went for 41 points and 24 boards in a double-overtime Game 1 win, that is. For me, and I suspect a lot of others, this was the night Wembanyama became the best player in the world. So far, this is the signature shot of his career.
WEMBY, WOW!
— NBA (@NBA) May 19, 2026
WHAT A SHOT TO TIE THE GAME AT 108. pic.twitter.com/HELQUpxww7
The nerve to even take that shot as a dead-tired 21-year-old playing in your first conference finals game is one thing. The ability to actually make it as a 7-foot-4 center is out of this world. These are Steph Curry shots, plain and simple. This crossover-into-stepback 3 in a preseason game last week should be impossible for a man of Wembanyama's size.
Shots like this are almost too accessible for Wemby at times. He can get them whenever he wants, and they're a hell of a lot of fun to take, but the reality is that he was only a 34% 3-point shooter last year. He doesn't overdo it (five and a half 3-point attempts a game feels about right for now), and the threat of it alters spatial dynamics in ways traditional shooting percentages can't encapsulate, but on any given night, Wemby can be susceptible to falling a bit too deeply in love with the deep ones.
Indeed, the most obvious next step in Wembanyama's offensive evolution is continuing to drill down on the right shots from the right spots. At the moment, he doesn't have a quote-unquote office. No kill zone like Kevin Durant at the elbow, Carmelo Anthony facing up or SGA stepping back. He may never have such a specific go-to spot or shot given his fluid, freelancing ways, but in general, he can stand to more consistently establish himself closer to the basket.
That's easier said than done. Part of it is just having the intent to do so, but the sheer strength to do it is another matter. Wemby is still maturing physically. Isaiah Hartenstein manhandled him at times in the conference finals -- literally pushing him out of the paint as Wemby was forced to initiate almost all his offense for long stretches from the perimeter, particularly in Games 2 and 3 after he was so dominant in the paint in the series opener.
It was largely the same story early in the Finals, when the Knicks forced him to take 22 of his first 42 shots from outside the paint. But each game, he forced his way a little lower on the court, and by Game 3, you could see the clear markings of his efficiency growing as his average shot distance shrank.
- Game 1: 17.3 feet -- 33.3 eFG%
- Game 2: 13.2 feet -- 57.1 eFG%
- Game 3: 10.6 feet -- 66.7 eFG%
None of this is to suggest that Wembanyama shouldn't look to utilize his jump shooting abilities, but this also isn't rocket science. The closer that a guy who can touch the rim without his feet leaving the ground can operate to the basket, the better. This can happen in a variety of ways. Rim rolls. Short rolls. Post-ups. Lobs. Dunker's spot catches. Face-ups from the Joel Embiid free-throw-extended zones, where he can put the ball on the floor and reach the rim in a single step.
As defenses collectively sink to deter Wemby's point-blank finishes, the soft spots in the short mid-range -- where he took just 20% of his shots last season and made just 42% of them, per Cleaning the Glass -- are seemingly ripe for growth with more frequent exploitation. This preseason look Wemby got against the Suns is a prime example.
Not all jumpers are created equal, and again, 3-pointers, self-created or off the catch, are going to and should be a part of Wemby's arsenal, but on some level, every 3-point shot that Wembanyama takes, especially the crazy off-the-dribble ones, is a win for the defense.
The next step is about launching as many offensive attacks as possible on his terms. Understanding that he is still figuring out what those terms are is going to be like watching a young dinosaur slowly realizing its power to destroy everything in front of him.
Predictions for Year 4
- MVP and DPOY: The 65-game rule will be interesting. The Spurs have the depth, both top end and overall, to deploy Wemby with greater caution as they balance the long- and short-term goals of his career. At the same time, Wembanyama has been open about his accolade ambitions. Wemby wants the MVP, and my guess is he gets his first one this year along with his second straight unanimous DPOY. This will make Wembanyama just the fourth player in history to win both awards in the same year, joining Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
- Spurs win it all: I'll take it one step further and say that Wembanyama becomes just the second player to add a championship to that ledger in the same season, as only Olajuwon has done. It won't be easy. The Thunder were missing Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell for the most part when the Spurs eliminated them last season, and the Knicks dominated them in crunch time. But the Spurs are too much. Wemby has a spell over Chet Holmgren, and the fact that San Antonio has him, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper all still playing on rookie contracts allows them to keep De'Aaron Fox's $229 million contract on the books as a luxury third guard, at least until they potentially trade him for even more talent. Either way, there is an embarrassment of riches piling up in South Texas.