Victor Wembanyama aka Wemby aka The Extraterrestrial

the layup is insane he just…lays it in

They should get him a go pro instead of having him hold his little phone.

He has scored

So "only" 3 blocks in the last game, guys are maybe testing him less now?

he's definitely altering drives and perimeter jumpers even if he isnt getting contact

This guy reached the highest level for his sport on the planet and his highlight reel still looks like when there’s a 5-star recruit in a small high school district https://t.co/kfB8oRY36b

— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) November 3, 2023

love how much the announcers are just chuckling at how insane this dude is

making KD look like Mugsy Durant out there

The question now might be how soon does he become the best player in the league.

when theyre running the throw it up where no one else can get it play they could still be throwing it much higher lol no ones brain can process what hes capable of

Kareem is the only near-analog to Victor in terms of instant impact on the whole league, but Kareem arrived in the league aged 22 and already had three NCAA championships under his belt. Wembanyama just needs to add some muscle and show his body can endure the grind of 82 games plus endless playoff series and he'll unquestionably be in the top three or four. Getting enough separation that everyone agrees who is "the best player in the league" is almost impossible these days.

when theyre running the throw it up where no one else can get it play they could still be throwing it much higher

Yeah I noticed that too, I mean where's this kid's (literal) ceiling?

you know who I feel a little bad for is Pop, I mean the guy was fairly vocal about wanting to hang it up someday soon and suddenly this absolute freak just lands in his lap

lol no way, wemby just added like ten years to pops life. hes set

I mean its a good problem to have but I kinda feel like Pop was finally letting himself think about fucking off for a while and spening all day fishing

I assume pop is having the time of his life with this kid

its his karmic payout for being one of the first nba guys to take european basketball players seriously

most nba coaches are overworked type-A nervous wrecks. pop strikes me as about the most mentally healthy coach out there. he'll quit whenever he wants to.

well yeah he seems like the one dude who might like a life outside of basketball

dont get me wrong when the Spurs got the pick the first thing I thought was that I was happy for Pop, I love when coaches like that can go out on a high note

The question now might be how soon does he become the best player in the league.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Friday, November 3, 2023 1:31 PM (two hours ago)

you have guys like jokic, tatum, luka who are still just into or haven't even entered their prime years so i think i'd peg it at like 3 years until victor is indisputably the best player in the league

i think the more interesting question is how much better will he be than the second best player of his wave of guys? like if you put luka, tatum, shai etc to the side -- they're all 24/25 -- and focus just on the 22/23 year olds and under you have guys like: paolo, ant edwards, cade, halliburton, chet, franz, barnes... it feels like victor could be 2x better than them even as most if not all of those guys will be all NBA players

if hes the best player in the league at 22 well boy howdy, not usually how it works but could happen

hard not to get ahead of ourselves here after witnessing last night... but yeah. please just stay healthy

im sure hell have some injuries as his alien body adjusts to earth life, just hopefully nothing too serious

since we're getting ahead of ourselves in this thread after seeing some of those plays last night my reaction wasn't just "he could be the best player in the league in 3 years" but also "they may have to change the rules for this guy"

will this guy even have to box out? he gumbied a pass last night with his arm bent like 90 degrees over the defenders head lol

Need E-40 to say victor wembanyama one time

— no bells (@nobellsblog) November 3, 2023

lmao

haha id be surprised if he wasnt working up a song right now

Mr Wembanyama Mr Vic Wembanyama

I've been singing "Wembanyama Mama" to myself since ums posted that.

Been singing his name to the tune of Mistadobalina myself

genuinely would be terrified if I saw this out in the wild. like my only thought would be "that better fucking be Wemby"

Happy HalloWemby!

📺 Spurs/Suns, 10pm/et on TNT pic.twitter.com/ZCNU1f5oBh

— NBA (@NBA) October 31, 2023

He's apparently working on a skyhook, if he ever gets that down RIP NBA.

Sorry but kool Keith

Chilling with wembanyama
Stroking llamas

hey his album earlier this year has a song about old Supersonics players so anything is possible

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

I love it when he raps about basketball. The Baldwin hills spacemen would be my fantasy basketball team name if I played

def periodically new people or words appear that make me think i want to hear kool keith say that

It's like he's doing this on an 8-foot rim:

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

nerf rim

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

Let's try that again.

is pop cooked?

i didn’t think so until this year

like im really starting to wince watching them play, i get that they wanted to experiment to see how everyone fits with wemby, but i feel like the experiment has lost the plot when you lose 12 games in a row. sochan is never gonna be pre-playoff freakout ben simmons and i worry that pop will break him trying to make it happen. giving wemby no direction means he plays like a 19-year-old, no shit he's gonna try to do too much and get a bunch of turnovers. this team feels rudderless without competent point guard play and their defensive woes are compounded by the turnovers and missed shots. tre jones isnt a world-beater but he's a capable pg whose on-off numbers and netrtg with wemby are fuckin good. they should experiment with winning even at the expense of some theoretical all-switching all-the-time defensive lineup.

im not terribly worried in the long run bc its not like pop was given a loaded roster to begin with. there are several good pg prospects in this draft (i like collier and topic rn but who knows) and some servicable bigs that can upgrade charles bassey pretty quickly.

the approach they’re taking may have worked more 10 or 15 years ago….the overall talent in the league means that there aren’t any easy games early in the season. so if you’re openly fucking around while everyone else is trying to win the results are going to hurt.

i also wonder if, even for a player as unique as wemby, a more traditional development approach where you ask him to focus on a few fundamentals and gradually expand his responsibilities over time, just works better.

cant help but think theyre just tanking

if you were just running jones-wemby pick and rolls all game you might win too much

meanwhile letting wemby and sochan get some reps doing whatever prob has some value, its like everyone else is playing basketball and youre playing 21 lol

idk Pop taking the mic to tell people not to boo Kawhi kinda made me feel like his heart isn't really in it anymore. its just a weird thing for a coach to do and I think maybe Pop just can't suppress his inner human anymore the way being a head coach requires you to do. but I dunno maybe they are just tanking.

i would tank if i were them, go back to the well one more time

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

4 assists a game for a 19 year old 7-4 guy is insane. we’re not ready

here's a pretty incredible passer too, like not jokic obv but hes got vision

xp i think thats mostly true, it was an experimental year to see who fits around wemby and how they would fit best, but i think i'm still disappointed in how inconsistently some of these guys look like ball players. i dont know how collins has disappointed me bc i had p low expectations for him, but his play last year post-poeltl trade suggested that he'd at least be a good stretch 5, and hes been shitty! i was mad that the spurs drafted two combo guards in branham and wesley bc they already had a bunch of those, but branham's things was that he was at least a good shooter and he has also been shitty! wesley is becoming a point-of-attack defender but he can't shoot to save his life. keldon isnt exactly regressing, but his development feels like it's stalled out.

A lot of the best free agents are likely to receive max deals and are in pretty good situations. I'm curious who they'll be able to add. I'm sure there are one or two who would take less to play with wemby... probably a vet like derozan or maybe klay thompson? bruce brown?

I don't think paul george wants to move to san antone

i loved demar when he played here, and i think he would work as a game-closer/6th man at the end of his career and help them rack up a few regular season wins. the spurs will need 3pt shooters around wemby, though. klay is the archetype of guy they need on the wing, but he's already 34. i can't see them doing anything more than 1-year mle type deals with vets that deep into their careers. bruce is a good rotation guy, but they can't afford to flesh out the bench when the starting lineup has such glaring holes. also bruce belongs in denver.

its gonna have to be a draft-built team just as it was with duncan (and the warriors with curry mostly). thankfully they've got a lot to build with there, but it does mean they'll need to land an all-star (assuming vassell is what he is right now as a borderline all-star on a 60-win team type player).

just get four more wembys, what i would do

sarr incoming

The total eclipse has just begun. 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑 pic.twitter.com/ihGr5mFzai

— Nike Basketball (@nikebasketball) April 8, 2024

The Shammgod. 😱
The Spin. 🌪️
Prime Wemby. 👽 https://t.co/8XcAkJxSLo pic.twitter.com/EPdbIiEWfv

— NBA (@NBA) April 10, 2024

even though they havent won a lot this year, wemby has been a joy to watch every night

that’s such a casually sick move

hes improving at a crazy rate

7-5 guy who can do high level dribbling in traffic ok

lol at Nike using the classic 90s alien, they need to put a joint in his mouth and recreate the "take me to your dealer" poster

shd do a 90s rave flyer aesthetic for all of wembys stuff

KG is so funny pic.twitter.com/Hga5CrUnQA

— Dom2K 🎅 (@Dom_2k) April 12, 2024

WEMBY 17 PTS IN 3 MIN 😱 pic.twitter.com/ig4dvRxNn8

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 13, 2024

in a stunning turn of events wemby has won the rookie of the year award

thats my guy who i like

scoot was robbed

otm. scoot was the victim of more than a few steals this season

congrats wemby!

https://i.postimg.cc/5NygxHC7/leader.jpg

A student at St. Mary’s Hall High snagged the ball after Wembanyama’s exuberant heave. A Spurs staffer was sent to retrieve it from the youth with a promise of a ticket to another game. That contest turned out to be that big win over the Nuggets. Aware of the ultimate fate of the ball he had tossed into the stands, Wembanyama autographed another ball to be presented to the St. Mary’s Hall student. On it, he wrote in all caps: SORRY YOU COULDN’T KEEP THE OTHER BALL. HOPE THIS WORKS TOO.

lmao kid goes to smh he gets enough breaks in life already sheesh

smh high

kid shouldve taken off with the ball try to get out of the stadium thats a challenge