As the September sun rose somewhere on I-35, near the end of a drive between Arkansas and Texas, Patrick “Big Red” Carson awoke from a brief nap. Fixing his endlessly twirled mustache and rubbing the haze from his eyes, he recounted the night he just left behind.
He was with his friend Peyton Jansenn at the welcome dinner for one of their best friends’ weddings in Little Rock when they both got a text: They needed to report to the San Antonio Spurs practice facility Sunday morning, 9 o’clock sharp.
Big Red’s head began to spin, wondering how they were supposed to make the nine-hour drive back to San Antonio without missing the wedding. Then his eyes caught the last message he received from that number, one simple emoji: 👽
He and Jansenn looked at each other and knew what to do. With a neon glow stick necklace still flashing across his chest, the 29-year-old farm realtor said goodbye to the bride and groom and hit the road.
Nine hours later, they were sitting in the Spurs film room with five strangers, expecting a team staffer to come in and explain what exactly they had signed up for. Instead, in walked the 7-foot-4 guy.
Victor Wembanyama was carrying an iPad and speaker and greeted the seven captains he had hand-selected to lead the project he hopes will change American sports fandom: the Jackals.
They shouldn’t have been surprised by his presence. Wembanyama had been running the show, start to finish. He hosted the tryouts, sitting on a makeshift ice throne like a mythical king. He spent hours studying the film to select the captains himself. After the captains had received that alien emoji, Wembanyama FaceTimed them to offer the role of their dreams.
He wanted to make it clear this was not just something he was asking the Spurs to do for him. This was his project. This was a part of his legacy. Now it was time to pass it off so it could reach its full potential. He needed to show his deputies how bought in he was, so that they would reciprocate.
“The pack leaders, I told them they don’t have to call me Wemby anymore,” Wembanyama says as he leans in from his chair. “Because now we’re part of the same crew.”
“Victor” needed their support because he was trying to build something bigger than himself. Ducking through the doorway into the morning meeting, he was once again stepping into the unknown. This was his attempt to channel those familiar nerves of novelty into something of which he could be proud.
He remembered the day he came face-to-face with his mortality. The tears, the fear, the realization that his singular focus on his career had to be pushed aside. When he was diagnosed with a blood clot in his shoulder last February, it threatened to take away almost everything he held dearly.
It also lit a fire within him to expand his world. Now it was time to make it real.
He stepped to the front of the room, took a breath and connected his iPad to the projector like he was any sales rep giving a presentation in a La Quinta meeting room.
“I’ve never done something like this before,” Wembanyama told them.
The screen revealed the first PowerPoint presentation of Victor Wembanyama’s life, one the 22-year-old put together from scratch. It opened with a photo of Wembanyama in a sea of cheering fans, with the title “Launching the First NBA Ultras: Building a Cultural Movement for the San Antonio Spurs.”
Wembanyama introduced a full-fledged concept for the first true ultras fan section in the NBA, modeled after the Paris Saint-Germain soccer club supporters he admired as a kid growing up in France. It is a members-only section that stands all night long, banging drums and singing songs to build a European arena atmosphere that does not exist in the NBA. It is more than a group of loud fans. It’s a source of civic pride.
When it was time to choose a name, Wembanyama proposed the Jackals, the wild canines that are Europe’s counterpart to the Spurs’ mascot, the North American Coyote. It was his way of honoring the Spurs tradition he has joined, with a little French twist.
He asked for a show of hands. They shot up faster than a starved jackal’s ears hearing prey. Now, they were formally united.
“They really started seeing me as one of their own, which is not something given in our position, in our job,” Wembanyama says. “It’s very often that players might be dehumanized.”
Two weeks later, when Wembanyama stepped onto the floor for the first time after his blood clot diagnosis, he was back in the place he feared he’d never return, at least for a brief yet eternal moment. This was a chance to tell his body and his fate that he won’t be stopped.
At the coda of an isolating journey back to where he belonged, he didn’t celebrate in solitude.
He thought of the trepidation when he received his diagnosis. He pondered the things he learned traveling the world this summer. Then he walked down the court toward the Jackals, threw his hands up to the sides of his head to form tall ears and howled at his pack.
The pack howled back.
The Jackals, and the next stage of Wembanyama’s life, were born.
“Call me delusional, but Victor is just one of the boys to us,” says Jackals president Aidan Sterling. “He has been a Jackal from the start.”
“I’m one of the first eight Jackals,” Wembanyama says. “Of course, I’m a Jackal.”
Members of the Jackals cheer during a recent Spurs home game. (Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Spurs)
Seven months before Wembanyama led the Jackals’ orientation, he was processing life-altering news of his own. He thought he had done everything to make his anomalous body impervious to the forces of nature. The towering Spurs star concocted a formula of training methods, ranging from plyometrics to martial arts, to hone limbs that could bend beyond limits.
Yet here he was, in a hospital room, learning that no amount of yoga and calisthenics could have prevented the formation of a small blood clot in his shoulder, called a deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
The diagnosis required him to miss the final 30 games of the season as he underwent treatment, putting his career at risk. While several players have continued through DVTs, it ended Hall of Fame 7-footer Chris Bosh’s career a decade ago when he was diagnosed with one in his lung. Wembanyama had to truly ask himself if his body was capable of handling everything the NBA and life would throw his way.
“All of us have what was given to us by nature, how we’ve been created or built. This is how I’ve been created and built,” Wembanyama says. “I was born, and since the day I was born, it was in my body that I was going to have a thrombosis someday. It’s also written that I’m having this height and I’m having this talent for basketball. Just like everybody in (our locker room), we were all born with a roll of the dice, and we just have to make the most out of it.”
Minnesota Timberwolves star Rudy Gobert first met Wembanyama when the Spurs center was just 13 years old, watching his future French national teammate grow physically and emotionally. When his friend ended up in the hospital, Gobert reached out to help him maintain perspective on the bigger picture.
“When you’re young and you’ve got everything you want, it’s easy to take it for granted,” Gobert says. “When everything disappears, you realize that it can be taken away from you just like that. It makes you cherish the moment even more. This summer, he realized every day is a blessing.”
For the first time since he came to the NBA, Wembanyama began to ask himself what that really meant. His body had been hiding roadblocks to living the life he had so meticulously worked toward since he was young. How would he redefine making the most out of the opportunity he was given and earned?
“After that, I really pressed the gas on lots of projects I had in mind, thinking there’s no better time than now,” Wembanyama says. “All the opportunities we have, it is not going to be forever.”
On the court, that meant putting himself through what he called “hell.” But Wembanyama wants to be defined as more than an outlier hoops prodigy.
“The championship part of it and the sports greatness part of the legacy is what speaks to my instinct. It’s really what drives me forward. It’s the locomotive of my life and my direction,” Wembanyama says. “But there’s many things I want to do, various ambitious things. Some secret projects. Some that are becoming public as time passes more and more, because they’re getting realized.”
He has a creative side informed by his passion for science fiction, music and seeing the world through an anthropological lens. He solicits opinions from those around him about the things that intrigue him, maintaining common ground even as he stands far above it.
As he sat in that hospital, Wembanyama began to explore the various ideas he’s kept over the years.
“You can see the course of life as checking boxes. When you have anything that happens, good or bad, like the bad thing that happened to me, you have boxes to check,” Wembanyama says. “How are you going to bounce back from this? Are you going to get down on yourself and collapse, or are you going to deal with the situation to use it (as) much as you can?”
It didn’t take long before he found something that would bring a deeper purpose. A few months later, the Jackals were incubating.
They have become more than just a staple of the Spurs’ gameday experience, a fascination of TV broadcasters and fans around the world. They are a fixture of the San Antonio community, just as Wembanyama intended.
“I guess the main thing is having a true project with depth,” Wembanyama says. “Whatever the form, doesn’t really matter, as long as the depth is there.”
In forming the Jackals, Victor Wembanyama found what he was seeking: “A true project with depth.” (Michael Gonzales / NBAE via Getty Images)
Earlier in September, Big Red donned his signature gold jacket as he walked into the Freeman Coliseum, located a stone’s throw away from the Frost Bank Center. He bought it at the arena’s team store on Oct. 25, 2023, after witnessing Wembanyama’s NBA debut. Seeing the No. 1 pick’s presence up close helped Big Red realize how much bigger his life could be. It helped him decide it was time to move to the big city, and he signed a lease just weeks before he saw Wembanyama’s call for auditions.
Big Red, like most of the others, figured he would be performing for a few Spurs entertainment folks for a minute or two. Maybe he’d briefly see Wembanyama at some point, perhaps in some quick speech to the whole group. Then, as he got closer, he heard Wembanyama’s unmistakable soft-yet-booming voice echoing from behind the curtain.
When Big Red walked through the curtain and took center stage in his gold jacket, he saw the tallest man he’d ever seen, notebook in hand, a wide smile across his face.
In perhaps the longest second of his life, Big Red processed the scene in front of him and realized he had a choice: Either fan out and scream “Oh my gosh,” or do what he really came there for.
“And that’s for business,” Big Red says. “When the lights shine, I shine the brightest.”
Big Red pointed to the crowd of staffers surrounding the throne and yelled if they were ready to get on their feet. Then he pointed squarely at his hero, reaching deep into his diaphragm to drop his voice an octave into a menacing growl.
“Are you ready to get on your feet?”
“I’m ready. I’m ready, man,” Wembanyama said back to him.
Big Red ran to the drum nearby and banged it as he chanted. He sang an improvised rendition of “That’s Amore” in Spanish as Spurs general manager Brian Wright poked his head into the room. The performance was as jarring as it was captivating, exactly what Wembanyama was looking for.
Wembanyama was jotting down notes in a small notebook but eventually put it down to take in the show. How could he not? This was the awe most people feel when they watch one of his transcendent performances.
“Big Red is special; that’s why he’s been selected,” Wembanyama says. “But what’s crazy is they all have their own personality and their own talent, and all of them bring a different thing. And in this case, we got lucky, because literally, I had only met them for one day at the tryouts. And we got lucky to only choose good people. They’re proving every day that it’s going to work.”
By that point, he had a few captains in mind already, some who could organize the group and some who could bring creative inspiration. But he needed a face for the movement. Now, that is Big Red’s job title with the Jackals.
“Show Pony.”
After his tryout, Big Red walked to his car and felt his adrenaline finally plummet. His body was overwhelmed with energy, and it was time to get it all out. He makes being the Show Pony look easy but it takes its toll.
So he drove to a secluded spot in the parking lot, puked his brains out, then went on his merry way.
Back in the spring, when Wembanyama pitched the Spurs on the Jackals concept, he described sitting in the stands at PSG’s Parc des Princes football stadium to watch the Collectif Ultras Paris cheer on icons like Kylian Mbappé and Neymar. He wanted to see that blossom in San Antonio.
“It’s bold. It’s creative, and it was unafraid. That’s, in a lot of ways, who he is,” Wright says. “He is uniquely himself, and he’s not afraid to put himself out there, and also not afraid to put in the work and time.”
The Spurs liked it but had some qualms. It couldn’t be located courtside, as Wembanyama first proposed, for a litany of reasons ranging from lost ticket revenue to the drums disrupting the game. They discussed section 210 in the balcony to match San Antonio’s area code but that was too far away to fulfill Wembanyama’s vision. Eventually, they agreed to place the fans behind the basket near the visitors’ bench, giving them a center stage to project their songs out into the arena.
Other NBA teams have tried launching dedicated fan sections, but none have unleashed their full potential like the international clubs Wembanyama experienced in Europe before being drafted. The LA Clippers have their wall, but this would be different. You have to audition to join the pack and show up all season long if you want to keep one of approximately 75 spots in the Jackals Lair. Each member pays $1,000 for a full-season ticket package with parking passes, an incredible discount for lower bowl seats. This was designed to attract true fans who would happily stay on their feet and sing all night long.
Wembanyama ventured off to the other side of the world over the summer as the wheels on the Jackals project began to slowly move. When he returned to San Antonio for training camp, team staffers figured the project was way in the back of his mind.
Nope. He wanted the latest updates, right away. And he wanted to be involved in every step of the operation, especially the tryouts.
“We were hopeful that Vic was going to be there a decent amount of time, and we knew he was at least going to stop by,” says Carter Snowden, the Spurs’ 40-year-old associate director of game presentation. “But we didn’t know how it was all going to go down.”
After hearing dozens of auditions in just a few hours, Wembanyama spent the next few days carefully choosing his captains. Once his selections were final, Snowden texted each of them to be ready for a FaceTime from an unknown number.
This was more than just a fun side hustle for Mario Moreno, known as the Spursbarian in his medieval warrior fit, who received one of those texts and soon found a dream rekindled.
Though he is the tallest and most loquacious member of the Jackals, he was a shy kid growing up. He confronted his fears and tried out to be the mascot for the University of Texas Longhorns in Austin, the top of the top in college football, and he actually got the gig. But admissions hurdles got in the way, the opportunity slipped through his grasp and he had to move on with his life.
That mental block nearly got in his way when the Jackals opportunity came knocking. When he found out about the tryouts, it seemed obvious he had to go for it. But as the day got closer, he started to talk himself out of it, fearing rejection once again.
“I was so in my head the night before the tryout. I’m feeding my son, and I just had this realization,” says Moreno, a 34-year-old cybersecurity customer representative. “How can I, as a man, ask my son to face his fears and be the very best he can be, if I’m unwilling to face my own?”
Just as he started to process what it could mean, his phone dinged. It was the alien emoji from Snowden.
When the call came in, Moreno scrambled to the kitchen to find his wife with their baby. Wembanyama was about to inform Moreno’s 2-month-old son that his dad was anointed one of the seven Jackals captains.
“I told him I’m about to rename my kid from Alonzo to Victor at this point,” Moreno says with a laugh. “He’s unofficially going to be our son’s uncle. Unofficially, of course.”
While Wembanyama represents them on the floor, the Jackals Lair — actual name — is full of distinct characters. There’s Spurs Spidey in his Spider-Man costume, a father with his 14-year-old son who has his own YouTube page and so many other wild characters. It’s a party lasting all night long, just as intended.
The special fans that make up section 114 at San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center are impossible to miss. They wear everything from capes to wigs while singing on their feet, all night long. When Wembanyama flew them out on his dime to the NBA Cup final in Las Vegas, they loudly marched, one-by-one, into an empty arena hours before the game and turned every head in the building.
Inside the Jackals Lair, every night is a party. (Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Spurs)
When the team got off to a great start and raced toward the top of the standings, viewers in person and at home noticed their presence. While the Spurs went on the road for nearly a month in November and December, the Jackals continued to meet for practice and prepare for the team’s return. They weren’t the only ones left behind, as Wembanyama himself skipped most of the team’s prolonged trip so he could focus on rehabbing a calf strain suffered on Nov. 14. He had a little more time on his hands, just enough to dedicate to his side hustle.
President Sterling got word from the Spurs that at their next practice, the original Jackal himself wanted to join. Wembanyama had cleared out a 30-minute block in his schedule to pull up to practice. By the time he was done rehearsing with his pack, they had been going for two hours, schedule be damned. Wembanyama taught them a call-and-response clap routine, something that he would often see at PSG games as a kid — and a routine Spurs rival Oklahoma City Thunder does before its games now.
“He goes, ‘I like what y’all are doing, but I think I can make it even better,” says Sterling, a 26-year-old accountant. “We’re like, ‘All right, Vic, we’ll try it.’ And sure enough, he made it even better.”
After beating the Thunder on Dec. 23, Wembanyama gathered his teammates around a drum at center court.
“Now I would like, with my teammates, to introduce a little new tradition that we have been working on with the Jackals over there,” he told the crowd. “Everybody, spread your arms and do just like the Jackals.”
Wembanyama banged his drum as the whole arena clapped in unison, building tempo as the crowd roared.
Wemby introduced a new tradition with the Jackals after the win pic.twitter.com/Rn0yUwuzjp
— Jared Weiss (@JaredWeissNBA) December 24, 2025
The glee on his face revealed a childhood dream come true, to control the crowd in the palm of his hand in a different way than dunking on a defender’s head. As the Spurs have piled up more home wins, he has passed the mallet to whichever teammate is the star of the night, happy to just be along for the ride.
“I was always shocked by the humility of this dude. It was genuinely all his idea, and it worked out,” Sterling says. “You can’t beat this. This is passion. This is energy. This is family.”
Sitting in her hospital bed between 4 a.m. treatments and moments pondering the isolation of mortality, Valerie Romo remembered the time she first heard the Jackals’ call through the TV.
Just before Thanksgiving, the Spurs fan was diagnosed with leukemia. She was quickly admitted for a bone marrow biopsy and an aggressive treatment program. The 55-year-old marketer had previously undergone heart surgery after suffering from long COVID, so she wasn’t a stranger to this moment. The frustration and fear of being back there made her want to seek out support — something from someone out there to make her feel a bit better.
She saw the Jackals post a merch giveaway on X and threw her hat in the ring, replying that she was in the hospital battling leukemia and would just love a T-shirt.
“You’re just like, it would be great if somebody would respond,” Romo says.
Her story caught the eye of Alex Garces, a Jackal whose family members have also battled leukemia. When he saw Romo’s post, he immediately asked Sterling if he could hand-deliver a shirt himself.
He managed to track down where Romo was admitted and showed up with a shirt, flag and other Jackals swag, wearing an orange pin in honor of blood cancers. Romo couldn’t believe it.
“It just really warmed my heart that somebody actually read my message and did whatever they could to bring a little bit of joy to me while I was in the hospital,” Romo says. “Giving back, doing stuff for us is amazing as a new part of the Spurs. The (Jackals) are there having their fun, and everybody wants to be a part of that.”
Over the course of the next few days, Romo’s platelet levels dropped to normal ranges, and she was finally discharged. She managed to make it home in time for Thanksgiving with her family, free to sleep in her own bed and watch her Spurs.
When Wembanyama was informed of Romo’s story, he paused for a moment to remember his own moment back in the hospital.
“What I’ve seen is only a short glimpse of what (she has experienced). It’s not even comparable,” Wembanyama says. “But of course, it is great because I know that the hospital is the worst place in the world to be at.”
The Spurs are intertwined with the city’s identity at a level few professional franchises can be. Wembanyama and his Jackals are trying to make anyone in San Antonio feel like they deserve their own fan section.
When he interviewed candidates at tryouts, he noticed many of them were passionate about community service. Big Red spends downtime assisting cleanup efforts in the Hill Country from last July’s tragic floods, near where he went to summer camp as a kid. The Spursbarian, Moreno, has spent years actively involved with the regional leadership at his church.
“Everybody has their own story, and everybody is the hero of their own story,” Moreno says. “I knew deep down, we all had something in common that Victor saw.”
The Jackals have become more than a fan section. They’ve also helped lift up the San Antonio community. (Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Spurs)
The Jackals recently began tapping into those sensibilities, evolving into more than just a loud arena section. Sterling organized a toy drive for underprivileged San Antonio children ahead of the holidays. The Jackals pulled up to the San Antonio marathon to hand runners orange slices while howling in their faces.
When fellow Jackal Javier Maldonado jogged by in the actual race, he made sure to howl right back. The Jackals are running with Wembanyama’s validation and will cheer for, with or at anyone in San Antonio, especially their own.
“I’m a fan of (Wembanyama’s), and now he’s a fan of me,” Moreno says. “That means the world to me. He trusts us with his vision.”
The group’s goal is to eventually start randomly showing up to local youth sports events and bring the energy to every event they can around the city. Not everyone can afford Spurs tickets, so the Jackals want to at least make sure the kids around the city can get the Jackals experience.
That thrilled Wembanyama, to see his project grow faster and have an impact beyond what he expected.
“They’re not just saying they’re loving it, they’re saying it’s basically their new life outside of work, obviously, and they’re having an impact in the community, and they’re going out of their way to have a positive impact in the world,” Wembanyama says of the Jackals. “So it’s not just something for the cameras, and it’s not just something to push a commercial or whatever. It’s something real, and it’s their thing. They exceed my expectations.”
Wembanyama says he struggled with the notion that everything in his hyper-ambitious life was never quite enough. He looks to last February as a line in the sand, a transition that forced him to evolve his perspective on his outsized place in the world.
Often referred to as the biggest piece of the Spurs’ puzzle, Wembanyama’s Jackals journey has allowed him to become a piece of another.
As he’s watched the San Antonio community water the seed of an idea he planted during his darkest hours, he feels a different type of fulfillment. The kind he thought could be robbed from him by a tiny clot in his shoulder.
“It’s an incredible chance in a human life.”
