Victor Wembanyama wants to talk about something important. Kind of life-changing, he says. It’s a book. Well, books. The Witcher, a six-part series of fantasy novels that follow a monster hunter with supernatural abilities. Took him three years, Wembanyama says, but he finally finished them. “It’s incredible,” Wembanyama says. “Following the same characters for years like this, it feels like you know them.” It’s not just The Witcher universe that draws him in. It’s The Hobbit. Game of Thrones. Berserk, a Japanese manga series. “Any good art piece,” the 20-year-old says. If coaches from Paris to San Antonio have sharpened Wembanyama’s basketball skills, characters in Middle-earth and Westeros have molded his mind. “The experiences are so detailed that you learn the lessons that the author tries to teach as well,” Wembanyama says. “It’s not just a story, it’s a fantastic story about somebody that’s also full of lessons.”
It’s mid-September and Wembanyama has folded his 7' 4" frame onto a couch inside the Spurs’ practice facility, escaping, briefly, the still scorching San Antonio heat. These are the conversations Wembanyama enjoys. About arts and literature, science and science fiction. “He is naturally curious,” says Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. Last season, Wembanyama’s agent, Bouna Ndiaye, arranged a meeting between Wembanyama and Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut. “If you heard them talking,” Ndiaye says, “you wouldn’t know which one was the astronaut.” During a late-season trip to Utah, Wembanyama met with Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy novelist. In August, Popovich arranged for Peniel Joseph, an associate dean at the University of Texas and a leading expert on the history of the Black Power movement, to speak to a group of players about voting. Wembanyama—who, as a French citizen, can’t vote in U.S. elections—stuck around after to ask a few follow-ups.
Wembanyama doesn’t find his inquisitiveness particularly unusual. “I just like to understand things,” he says. Others see it differently. “You tell him something, and it could be about anything, and he picks it up,” says Spurs general manager Brian Wright. “And the next time you talk to him, he will know more about that subject.” His representatives describe a client determined to grasp the nuances of every deal he is involved in. Jordan Howenstine, the designated Wemby guy on the Spurs’ PR staff, thinks Wembanyama could have had a career in aerospace engineering. Popovich imagines a writer. Wembanyama thinks he could have been a physiotherapist. It’s as if his impossibly rare blend of size and skill have denied his true calling. “I have plenty of ideas,” Wembanyama says. “Life is going to be about more than just basketball.”
But he is really good at basketball. Last fall, Wembanyama entered the NBA with lofty expectations. By any metric, he exceeded them. He averaged 21.4 points and 10.6 rebounds per game, while leading the NBA in blocked shots. He ran away with the Rookie of the Year award and finished second in the race for the league’s top defender. The notes the Spurs provide the media detailing Wembanyama’s accomplishments are 11 pages long. He played in 71 games, silencing skeptics who wondered if his lanky frame would hold up to the rigors of an NBA season. “I learned so much,” Wembanyama says. “Playing 70 games, I’d never done that in my life before. But it went by super quick.”
When his first season ended, Wembanyama returned to France. He saw family, friends. Played a little paintball. It was relaxing. Sort of. Wembanyama likes structure. A schedule. He refers to himself at times as a “machine.” The NBA, with its limitless resources, is perfect for him. “We have the best everything,” he marvels. Most of his time is spent at the Spurs’ facility, where everything he needs—chefs, coaches—is under one roof. “He wants his life to be in order,” Popovich says. At 9:00 each night, Wembanyama puts his phone into airplane mode and disappears into a novel. “It’s kind of a paradox,” he says. “I’m more tired when I’m on vacation.”
The Spurs’ season ended in early April and by May, Wembanyama was back in San Antonio. Popovich gave him a list—three pages long— of things to drill down on. Half offense, half defense. For six weeks, Wembanyama worked. After a monthlong Olympic tour with the French national team—Wembanyama averaged 15.8 points per game in a silver-medal-winning effort—he was back. Individual work in the morning. Scrimmaging in the afternoon. At night, Wembanyama was back in the gym getting up a thousand shots—mostly threes. Around the Spurs these days, there is a palpable energy. Like, what you saw from Wembanyama last season was special—but you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The message was surprising. Since retiring from the NBA in 2020, Jamal Crawford, a slick-handling scorer, has dabbled in individual coaching. Guards, mostly, a position Crawford adeptly played for 20 seasons. In March, Crawford’s phone buzzed. Victor would like to work out with you, Ndiaye texted. Do you have time to come to Texas after the season? Wembanyama, in tinkering with ways to improve his pull-up three, admired how Crawford was able to shake defenders and was hoping to collect a few pointers. In June, Crawford flew to San Antonio. For several days, the two ran drills. “It’s actually scary how fast he learns,” Crawford says. “He was picking up footwork and rhythms that took me years in a matter of minutes.” At night, the two went to dinner, where Wembanyama would mine Crawford’s mind. “I’ve never met a 20-year-old like him,” Crawford says. “When it comes to basketball, working with him is one of the greatest things I’ve ever been a part of.”
This is the truly terrifying part of Wembanyama. He isn’t trying to be great at one thing. He wants to be great at everything. Last season was a lot of trial and error for the Spurs and their young center. Popovich started Jeremy Sochan, a power forward, at point guard for most of the season. Zach Collins started alongside Wembanyama before the Spurs opted for more floor spacing. San Antonio’s 22 different starting lineups were tied for the 11th most in the league.
Offensively, Wembanyama’s role changed nightly. Popovich worked him on the wings and high post. “The Nowitzki spots,” Popovich says. He encouraged him to bring the ball up after a rebound. Pick-and-rolls as both a ballhandler and a screener. “We wanted to see what all is there and where is he most comfortable in his own skin, where does he gravitate to,” Popovich says. Wembanyama provided plenty of data. A 38-point game against the Suns in November. A 20-rebound effort against the Bulls a month later. In February, Wembanyama swatted away 10 shots against the Raptors. The skills—the frightening, never-before-seen skills—were there. He just needed to put them together.
Popovich, 75, embraced the challenge. He has polished Tim Duncan, developed Tony Parker and harnessed the skills of Manu Ginobili. In Wembanyama, Popovich was gifted a player with more raw talent than any of them. The task was refining it. Initially, they focused on footwork. Popovich showed Wembanyama film of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Rocker steps, pivots, pump fakes. “We talked to him about how important it was to get that base really solid and disciplined,” Popovich says. He encouraged Wembanyama to watch how Stephen Curry moved after the pass. “Chasing space,” Popovich says. “We weren’t teaching him Kareem’s skyhook. Simple concepts.”
Wembanyama absorbed it all. Again, the curiosity. Wembanyama loves information. Craves it. He asks questions. He devours scouting reports. “To see how thorough, detailed and disciplined he was at that age,” Wright says, “it was kind of mind-blowing.” For Wembanyama, it was about making things instinctive. All the eye-catching things he can do—the crossover dribbles, the one-legged jump shots, the pull-up threes—is the result of years spent screwing them up.
“For me, it’s the only solution,” Wembanyama says. “Expanding my game is not thinking twice when you want to do something crazy. I don’t think I’ve had one game where I really applied everything. Not one. I want eventually to have a wide variety of tools that I’ve really mastered. I don’t want to have a role on the court. I don’t want to be the shot blocker. I don’t want to be the scorer. I don’t want to be the playmaker. I want to be all of this at once.”
Indeed, Wembanyama expects his game to grow as he does. Not up, but out. Officially, Wembanyama weighed 210 pounds last season. He will weigh more in this one. Spurs coaches pushed him to be more aggressive last season. Opponents, looking for advantages, would often use sturdier wing players to try to push him off his spots. Among the things he worked on with Crawford was how to deal with physical defenders. “I think my physical potential,” Wembanyama pauses. “I don’t know where it can lead me. I’m sure it’s not complete at all. I want to work so that I have the chance one day to invent new things.”
Pop’s offseason program focused on defensive fundamentals. How to close out better. How to use his hands, his length. How to get between two spots on the floor and remain balanced. Offensively, it was decision-making. “He intuitively understands space and where people are, but he tends to dribble in crowds,” Popovich says. Shooting drills to become more efficient from beyond the three-point line. Popovich estimates Wembanyama worked with eight to 10 different Spurs coaches this summer.
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Wembanyama loves it. He’s fully bought in. To the Spurs way. The Pop Way. The ex-Air Force officer is the ideal coach for the star who longs for structure. “The most important thing to remember to know about him as a player is how he thinks about the human first,” Wembanyama says. “He knows sometimes I need to get yelled at, sometimes, when I make the mistakes, the same mistake multiple times in a row. First of all, I need it and I want to be yelled at. I’m not here to waste time. Neither is he.”
San Antonio lost 60 games last season. Wembanyama was on the floor for 52 of them. They got drilled by 36 points by New Orleans. They lost by 33 to Boston. The Spurs’ point differential (minus-6.5) was sixth worst in the NBA. At times, Wembanyama says, “It was hard to get your head out of the water.” Meaning? “At some point, you’re going to be tired, you’re going to have injuries. It’s inevitable,” he says. “But for how long are you going to be on a losing streak? You can lose two games in a row, and even the best, the 2016 Warriors or the [1996] Bulls, they lost only nine or 10 games, but they could have easily lost 11 or 12 if they didn’t react the right way when they lost one or when they lost two in a row. It’s about minimizing where difficulty leads you. Where losses and difficulties lead you.”
The losing, of course, was expected. The Spurs’ dynasty had crumbled years earlier. Parker, the last vestige of San Antonio’s championship teams, retired in 2019—in a Hornets uniform. In recent years the Spurs’ win totals have looked like locker combinations. Last season wasn’t about the record, Popovich says. It was about development.
Not just for Wembanyama. For Devin Vassell, a fourth-year swingman. For Malaki Branham, a second-year point guard. Now they’ll try to incorporate UConn point guard Stephon Castle, the No. 4 pick in the 2024 draft. “As a team, they’re learning how to play,” Popovich says. “How to chase space, how to spread the floor, decision-making. You don’t want to skip steps.”
This season should be different. “Development has helped significantly when you start winning,” Popovich says. “They start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.” During San Antonio’s title-winning heyday, the Spurs were steeped in veteran leadership. David Robinson and Avery Johnson gave way to Duncan and Ginobili. These Spurs needed that. So San Antonio signed Chris Paul to a one-year, $11 million contract while Castle gets acclimated to the pro game. They facilitated a deal between the Bulls and Kings by absorbing Harrison Barnes. “You could coach your ass off and say the same thing 60 times,” Popovich says. “But sometimes it’s [better] coming from somebody else.”
So Popovich wants Paul teaching the intricacies of the pick-and-roll. He wants Barnes’s practice habits to rub off. More tangibly, he wants both to help the team win. The Spurs had 35 games last season where they led by double digits. They lost 20 of them—most in the NBA. San Antonio had the third-worst record in games that were within five points in the last five minutes. “All plights of a young team,” Wright says. “We feel like they check a lot of boxes.”
Wembanyama welcomes the help. He was never fazed by the expectations on him. Still, Popovich checked in regularly. “I’d get a look,” he says, “like in his mind he’s looking at me saying, ‘Why is this man telling me these things? I don’t need to hear this s---.’ ” But Wembanyama wants to win. After France’s loss to the U.S. in the Olympic men’s basketball final, cameras caught Wembanyama in tears. “Because I didn’t for one second imagine losing,” he says.
Popovich has tried to manage expectations. He has pointed to Nikola Jokic, the three-time MVP. Jokic didn’t win a championship until his eighth season. Popovich asked Wembanyama how many of Jokic’s teammates in Denver’s 2023 title season were there at the beginning. “The answer is zero,” Popovich says. “It was the same thing with LeBron, same thing with Michael. It takes time. It takes patience. Or you can make a huge mistake.”
Wembanyama gets it. He enjoys San Antonio—the Spurs and the city. He’s a conspicuous figure, but in a town familiar with seven-foot stars, he can blend in. “They have been seeing the same guys for 25 years,” Wembanyama says. He visits museums and shopping centers. He’s a regular at Shiro, a Japanese bistro. Says Wembanyama, “They make me feel like a regular person.”
With the same goals. Last year, Wembanyama says, “felt like a dream, like walking in the shadows.” This year? “Much different,” he says. “I still don’t know what I’m doing, but at least I got my habits.” Indeed, whether it’s from a coach, a fellow player, an astronaut or a professor, Wembanyama is always learning.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Seeker: As a Rookie, Victor Wembanyama Took Over the NBA. His Journey Is Just Beginning..
