In October 2003, I flew to Sacramento, California, to watch LeBron James play his first pro basketball game. Even at 18 his physical presence was incredibly impressive. I wrote at the time (for this paper) that most tall men look etiolated, like the normal amount of human material has been stretched too thin. LeBron by contrast looked like a statue of a normal person – not just taller, but substantially more solid. The scouting report suggested that his jump shot was still shaky, and I noticed him missing short in the pre-game warm-ups. There seemed to be a hitch in his stroke, a kind of hesitation; he leaned back a little on the release. Then the game started and this teenage kid playing with grown men swished his first three mid-range jumpers without any hesitation at all.
Twenty years later I flew to San Antonio, Texas, to watch the most hyped teenage prospect since … LeBron James, even while LeBron himself remains one of the handful of best players in the NBA. (It helps, as Michael Jordan once joked, to start “while [you’re] young”.) Victor Wembanyama is the etiolated kind of tall man. Even the way he runs reminds you of the kind of long-limbed lightfootedness that might not break the surface tension of a body of water. Tall basketball players sometimes fudge their heights – they pretend they’re shorter than they are. I’ve heard him listed everywhere between 7ft 3in and 7ft 5in. He’s 19 years old. He may still be growing.
