You know the thing that the truly great rim protectors do in basketball, where they learn they can alter shots by aura alone? The area under the basket becomes a Sarlacc pit, the remote and terrifying domain of a very large, patient, and hungry creature. The great ones are happy, thrilled even, to welcome a meal. They learn to stop jumping out and using their body to cut off ball-handlers and take charges, because they’ve seen the advantages they can sometimes gain by inviting drives, by baiting some fool into taking another dribble, into dreaming of scoring at the basket.
Victor Wembanyama has advanced to another plane, to what his opponents will have to hope is the ultimate stage of rim-protection dominance: He appears to be developing the no-look shot-block. He had an eye-popping one of these Wednesday, in a road win over the Toronto Raptors. Wembanyama refused to leave a darting and cutting Collin Murray-Boyles, down in the dunker spot, in order to deter a drive from Scottie Barnes, who was isolating against a size mismatch. Barnes is Toronto’s best player; Murray-Boyles, God love him, is just some guy, some well-meaning rookie fella. The book is pretty clear on this matter: Go ahead and leave Collin Murray-Boyles, send help at Barnes, zone up the weak side, and force the Raptors away from the basket.
Wembanyama has his own damn book, a grimoire containing secrets of the darkest defensive magic. Instead of leaving Murray-Boyles, Wembanyama fully turned his head and back to the court and faced into the stands, showing no sign of even noticing Barnes’s attempted dunk until the Raptors forward was already in the air. Then, whoa hey, suddenly a huge hand was flying in and slapping the ball out of there. Wembanyama looked almost irritated at Barnes, like he’d rudely interrupted something, as if what the Frenchman really did want to do on that possession was closely observe the movement patterns of his undersized counterpart. The ball raced back the other way, and the Spurs jogged into an open transition three-pointer.
Wembanyama did not otherwise put up great numbers against Toronto. No matter: San Antonio’s handful of zippy guards scored efficiently, their team defense was stout and forced the Raptors into a bunch of uncomfortable shots, and the Spurs dominated the fourth quarter, erased a 12-point lead, and held off the home team for the 110–107 win. The Spurs have now won 10 straight. Don’t look now—don’t you fucking do it—but San Antonio is only two games back of the wounded and sagging Oklahoma City Thunder in the West standings. The Spurs are 4–1 against the Thunder this season, with an average margin in their wins of over 12 points. On their current run they’ve crushed four Western Conference playoff contenders and convincingly dumped the NBA-leading Pistons, in Detroit. They are good as shit now.
I have been preparing myself all along for Wembanyama to be the NBA’s best player, and for the Spurs to be a title contender. This is too soon! Even when they jumped out to a hot start this season, I assumed it was just a preview of what they’d get up to more seriously in future campaigns. Even when they went 9–3 with Wembanyama out of the lineup in late November into December, I considered it merely a nice story, a relief, permission to continue daydreaming. This morning the editor-in-chief of this website prompted me to consider the Spurs as “real serious guys,” and I am realizing now that I am not ready for this moment. I’m flinging papers around on my desk; my glasses are bent and steamed over; my hair is in a state. How did this happen?
It’s not just Wembanyama, although it is a lot of Wembanyama. De’Aaron Fox gives the Spurs dependable, veteran-grade playmaking and shot creation, and has proved the sagacity of adding an expensive player in his athletic prime to a core otherwise formed of rascally youths. Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson pretty gracefully dropped back from the star gigs they were allowed to audition for during the gruesome stretch of San Antonio’s rebuild, and have become useful role players. Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper are cool as hell, slick ball-handlers and crafty finishers who fit in Wembanyama’s orbit despite styles and profiles that broadly overlap, both with each other and with Fox. More importantly, they provide the Spurs with a strong physical presence at the guard position, something that has become increasingly important in an era where so many of the league’s best defenses succeed by relentlessly pressuring and harassing the other team’s little dribblers. The Pistons deploy one such defense to great effect, but on Monday night it was Castle, with the ball in his hands, doing all the overpowering.
The Spurs have managed to get helpful production out of Luke Kornet, Kelly Olynyk, and heroic multi-tool Julian Champagnie. They had to cut loose positionless oddity Jeremy Sochan, which was a bummer, but the sides at least arrived there in good faith: A roster recently tilted toward experimentation has now clicked into shape as one of the league’s best, and Sochan was simply squeezed out of regular playing time.
It might not look like a championship-grade roster. Hell, I am willing to say that it is in fact not a championship-grade roster, except that Wembanyama really is that good. The Spurs are an astounding 14.4 points better by net rating when he is on the floor; when he is not, they are less than half a point better than their opposition per 100 possessions. Their 104 defensive rating with Wembanyama in the lineup is more than two points better than the league’s best defense. The Spurs also score about three points more per 100 possessions with Wemby in the mix, per Cleaning the Glass: They aren’t quite a buzzsaw on that end, but even with middling shooting and a somewhat déclassé offense, the Spurs manage to post the league’s seventh-best offensive rating.
What’s truly fucked up about all of this—and I think we are just going to have to continue saying this for the next half-decade—is that Wembanyama really is still developing as a player, particularly on offense. A couple times a week he will do freakish atomic superman-type shit, but he has not yet filled out his frame, he has not yet refined his natural shooting talent or midrange footwork, and he has only just begun to develop his dark artistry. He still falls over a lot, a la Joel Embiid, when there is a perfectly foreseeable future for him on the Kevin Durant pathway, where by the time he is in his late 20s he almost never has to lay his body on the line for a bucket, or a foul. For that matter, Castle and Harper are only beginning to establish themselves as lead ball-handlers and solo creators. For more of that matter, the Spurs control each of the next two first-round draft picks of the middling and starless Atlanta Hawks.
Look at what has happened to my blog! I am now once again casting my sight off into the future and drooling about what’s to come for the Spurs and Victor Wembanyama, only now in a discussion about how this team is a real-deal title contender this very moment, today, as I sit here. By the end of their current road swing through the Eastern Conference, the Spurs might realistically have the league’s best record, two-thirds of the way through Wembanyama’s third NBA season, and less than two years removed from the second of consecutive 22-win campaigns. It’s fucked up. I am going to go pace around a little bit, and then do some breathing exercises.
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