HENDERSON, Nev. — We can do only so much to manufacture our own history: identify the actors who might shape things to come, place them in the arena, hope for the best results, subject them to the ensuing chaos. Perhaps no unseen force can wrench a plan faster than the nerves of teenagers. And so the chances of two basketball prodigies each putting on a transcendent display Tuesday night were probably not as favorable as the oddsmakers in this desert would have surely loved you to believe.
Much of the NBA’s scouting cognoscenti descended on Las Vegas this week to find out anyway, as it’s not every day implausible 18-year-old Frenchman Victor Wembanyama flies around the world to show you what you’re missing. With a worthy foil in U.S. point guard wunderkind Scoot Henderson, the two players widely designated as the two top draft picks in next year’s cohort (in that order) faced off for the first time. Teams are going to have to lose a lot, whether engineered or incidental, to truly fathom drafting either one, but damn if that concept doesn't carry a little extra credence the morning after.
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