Victor Wembanyama aka Wemby aka The Extraterrestrial

tre jones has held his own but he is the quintessential backup PG and not good enough a shooter or stout enough a defender to be a starting lead guard in the nba. wemby desperately needs shooting, and while sochan is passable as a low volume wide open guy, tre is a minus in that regard. it’s why if the spurs hit the lottery again risacher might be their guy as a big wing who can shoot.

What do you see as the highest priorities this offseason? Hoping they get a high lottery pick to pair another young star w/Wemby.

they have their own pick which is likely to be at least top 7 or 8, plus they might get torontos pick if it falls out of the top 6. so a pretty good shot at two top 10 picks with one in the top 5.

atp they need to draft for fit with wemby which i think makes sarr an awkward fit. they could use a wing shooter to pair with vassell (a la risacher), they could use a lead guard who can set up the offense and spread the floor, they can use a backup big with actual defensive ability, they could use rotation players who can reliably knock down open jumpers. they just don’t have a functional team because they’ve traded away anyone another team would want to pile up draft assets and all that’s left were a bunch of brian wright’s “best player available” draft selections and contract fodder that wasn’t diverted elsewhere

I’ve only seen a handful of spurs games but it seems to me things are going according to plan. they can let the young guys play pop’s preferred style (first in the league in assists% by a decent margin) and make mistakes, figure out who the keepers are, and dip back into the draft. don’t think it really matters if they win 18 or 30 games, they just don’t have the talent yet

considering how good webmy is already youd like them to have a more in place now

naw what’s the rush man

i mean for my personal rooting interests itd be fine if the spurs took their time, but from their pov the better wemby is the harder it is for them to build via the draft

which i suspect informed some of their odder coaching decisions in the first half of the season

there are just not many guys who are title contending players super early in their careers, and the guys who won young usually played with hall of fame big men (timmy with drob, kobe and wade with shaq). otherwise it takes ~7 years for most era-defining title-winners to arrive. that said, wemby might just be built different and i think he could be an all-nba first teamer before his rookie contract runs out (assuming some decline from jokic and embiid by 2026-7).

wemby being maybe the best defender in the league already and a walking 20-10 on any given night doesnt necessarily mean they have to cash in all their assets and put the best possible team around him right now, but i do think they should try to get a lot better a lot faster than what they probably initially planned. they need to start figuring out the archetypes that best fit around him that actually win games, but theyre not gonna learn anything new throwing out the same lineup plus a 19-year-old or two from the 2024 draft.

i dont know how much truth there was to the spurs' interest in trae young, but it's a gamble i think that's worth taking. he has 3 years left on his deal which would give them a comfortable couple of season to asses his fit with wemby/pop before needing to decide to extend or trade him. he's only 5 years older than vic. if anyone can compensate for trae's defensive shortcomings, it's vic, and if anyone can complement vic as a playmaker and floor-spreader, it's trae (ok luka and shai too but i dont think they're going anywhere anytime soon).

guys who are title contending players super early in their careers, and the guys who won young usually played with hall of fame big men

Or, in the case of HOFer big man Kareem, he got to play with the Big O in his second season.

wemby-trae would also be good from the pov of pairing the biggest guy and the littlest guy

Trae would average 15 assists playing with wemby

it might be good but at what cost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOZzFXolGJc

Other than that how was the game, Mr. Lincoln?pic.twitter.com/hkt590bCD6

— Tom Petrini (@RealTomPetrini) March 1, 2024

hahahhahaha this game was incredible

typical wemby line 28-13-7-5 blks-2 stls, 5/7 from 3

Victor Wembayama during his on-court interview after the win “I missed this shit” pic.twitter.com/GBQQw3A4xO

— Noah Magaro-George (@N_Magaro) March 1, 2024

i cannot express how much ppl in sa love this young man

lol that block got the ball before it left his hands

him vs. Chet has been really fun to watch

its crazy how good they both are

he said NOOOOOO! pic.twitter.com/5IYmqu4E9B

— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) March 1, 2024

Wemby on his penchant for live-TV bleeps:

“I’m still not used to the, uh, standards here. I’m adjusting.” https://t.co/QyDaJYSUEP

— Mike Finger (@mikefinger) March 1, 2024

wemby is currently -10000 to win ROY

I mean what can you say really

pic.twitter.com/kM97Vzcp64

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) March 23, 2024

not only did he not jump on that block he was off balance going backwards with one leg off the ground

important to learn from your mistakes

Wemby got players making a lot of business decisions pic.twitter.com/uHNHMbpgVw

— Lang Whitaker (@langwhitaker) March 23, 2024

I think there’s going to be an extremely compelling case for third team all-NBA by the time the season’s over. and it’s hard to envision a world where he’s not the best player in the league by the middle of the 2026 season. maybe even sooner

Is he not a top ten player right *now*?

if hes a top ten player then the rest of the spurs are insanely maybe even impossibly bad

his shooting percentages arent good he doesnt score a ton offensively hes not close to a star right now

tho if they just ran pick and rolls with him every play it would be interesting to see what happened

That block and dunk are insane, but the running the floor like a giant deer/Magic Johnson is what makes him so unique.

will be interesting to see how his game develops what kind of player he ends up being right now seems like hes just doing whatever

if his shooting never comes around then maybe he plays a giannis sort of game except less power more being eight feet tall, does he have giannises handle is it possible with those longest limbs, tho tbf giannis also has very long limbs, wemby also never going to be that strong which makes dribbling operating in tight spaces harder because you get bumped off yr spots

when you watch him the talent is so insane its easy to assume hes just gonna be able to do everything good, and honestly maybe he will but its not guaranteed, feel very comfortable saying hell be the best defender in the game and maybe the best defender ever, offensively i think hell find a way to score a ton of points but im not sure what itll look like and if its like all time great scorer or more all star level scorer

can little scooty guys not just blow past him?

even if theyre by him he can still block their shots lol but regardless thats just a normal big man problem

if he has good floater range touch i guess they could just put him in the post and let him shoot over people, even if he gets pushed out a little being inherently wide open all the time is a strong advantage

Every time this thread gets bumped I think of the guy I used to talk hoops with who really bought into the "he's just tall" "take," and that all a defender had to do against Wemby was to put a hand in his face to make him miss jumpers. I really wish I asked him if he thought if KD would be a good as he's been if he were 6' 4" instead.

being tall in basketball is good

if hes a top ten player then the rest of the spurs are insanely maybe even impossibly bad

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 23, 2024 10:39 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don’t think he’s top 10 but he’s obviously top 25 and really that’s just the average of the whole year, he’s rising fast. to your question specifically there was this chyron I can’t find now that was like team net ratings with their best player off the floor and iirc the spurs were 30th

I mean let’s not be silly just look at the guy he’s very close to being all the way there

his offense just isnt that good, defense is insane but prob unsound in some ways

like the spurs are very bad and he’s a positive in raw +/- since january or something, there’s no sense denying reality he’s taking over very soon

when you watch him the talent is so insane its easy to assume hes just gonna be able to do everything good, and honestly maybe he will but its not guaranteed, feel very comfortable saying hell be the best defender in the game and maybe the best defender ever, offensively i think hell find a way to score a ton of points but im not sure what itll look like and if its like all time great scorer or more all star level scorer

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 23, 2024 10:56 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I agree with all of this but imagine what best defender of all time plus all star level scorer is going to look like!

yeah with that youre in the running for best player ever

people do tend to underestimate how long it takes for young players to develop tho, almost every player who has a popular rookie season has a disappointing second year

if you look at seasonal averages, it really obfuscates how good wemby has been since they changed the starting lineup bc the sochan (pg) and collins (c) were just so bad and dysfunctional. moving sochan to pf, collins to the bench, and tre jones to the starting lineup gave them something useful. the spurs are so bad bc outside of wemby and vassell (and probably tre jones and sochan and keldon), they just don't have players who'd be at minimum rotation guys on good teams. they are very young and make lots of young dumb mistakes in close games. they get thrashed when the bench plays typically.

vassell looks like at least a middleton type scorer who can play some decent d. champagnie is not gonna be the starter forever, but he at least provides some reliable floor-spreading. the rest of the lineup is truly atrocious, just such a huge drop off going from wemby to collins who is an absolute turnstile on D and not enough of a 3pt threat to do much meaningfully on offense. the rest of rotation: project players (branham, wesley, and barlow who've shown some strides of growth but are not impactful players right now); keldon who i love but is a non-entity on defense and is more of a heart and soul microwave guy now; and cedi osman (ok).

they traded nearly everyone who could help you win games in order to get wemby, but i didnt expect they'd lose this many games this year. i have to wonder a little if the issue is down to their scouting taking a dive or if pop has maybe fallen behind the times last few years after being out of playoff contention for so long.

vic's splits before and after the collins benching:

before: (19 games) 18.9/9.7/2.5 with 2.6b and 1.3spg on .432/.265/.817
after: (43 games) 21.7/10.8/4.0 with 3.9b and 1.3spg on .478/.344/.791

should note that the spurs are the worst 3pt shooting team, a little bit of that is vic falling too much in love with that shot, but other part is the rest of the rotation ranges from above average-at-best (vassell, osman, champagnie all ~37%) to truly awful (wesley .135, collins .307). jones and sochan have shot almost respectably (34 and 32% respectively) but need to be wide open to be that accurate.

they traded nearly everyone who could help you win games in order to get wemby, but i didnt expect they'd lose this many games this year. i have to wonder a little if the issue is down to their scouting taking a dive or if pop has maybe fallen behind the times last few years after being out of playoff contention for so long.

― polyamerie "it's more than this 1 thing" (m bison), Saturday, March 23, 2024 2:39 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I’ve mentioned this before, and you’ve definitely watched more games than me, but I feel like there’s a very intentional process here: play spurs basketball (first in assist rate in the league!), let wemby play his way through the different lineup iterations, see what sticks, then reload via the draft next year. the west is just too stacked to have any real expectations. the team has been god-awful over the course of the year but they’ve been merely bad the past several weeks (most of which is probably attributable to wemby evolving). god willing he’s got 15-20 years in the league, who cares if they suck this year