VW = ? (Rookie Season Thread)

[tsherkin]

…basically same take as me, it’s his league now. There is no comparison point, GOAT is on the table of outcomes.

The potential is there. He needs to get a LOT better on O before substantive GOAT conversation happens, but he's already an excellent rebounder and defender and he is showing lots of good signs on O. This year is exciting enough; seeing him in his second season and once San Antonio starts actively trying to win will be quite interesting.

[rk2023]

10 block triple double for Vic tonight. That’s some rare air statistically.

[WestGOAT]

10 blocks is crazy, but those were some really low IQ shots the Raptors were taking.

Wemby's playmaking has some crazy potential though, those no-look passes were genuinely impressive.

If he becomes a legit playmaker that might really be no way stopping him. Just needs to take care of those bad live turnovers:

[Clyde Frazier]

Some of the blocks were comical but my other takeaway is he might be the biggest lob threat ever. The lobs he catches are so off balance/out of place sometimes. The way he can finish them without dunks with ease.

Last 22 games: 26.6 MPG, 22.9 PPG, 9.5 RPG, 3.5 APG, .9 SPG, 3.4 BPG, 3.7 TOV

50.8% FG, 36.7% 3PT (on 5 3PA!), 84.9% FT, 61.6% TS

His average raw +/- in that span is +0.1. Sky is truly the limit for Wemby.

[The Master]

Some historic stuff by Wembanyama in his shotblocking/stealing in the last couple of games, but his passing looks so so fantastic in some games that is probably the biggest surprise this season and something that is the most entertaining to follow in my eyes:

Watch on YouTube

Cross-court outlet pass (1:03), assists as a perimeter ballhandler (1:37; 1:45; 2:27), inverted pnr ballhandler (1:23; 2:09; 2:36), cross-court pass (3:00), with fantastic court awareness (these assists to Sochan) - I can realistically imagine him being the 2nd-best passing center ever besides Jokic, he has much bigger upside as a ballhandler than Sabonis and will be so much better than Dray (considering him as a smallball C) as a scoring threat-iso player (these passes to open shooters - imagine what will happen once he gets decent shooting around him). He's obviously as for now very turnover-prone, but basically half of his tovs are just rookie mistakes of him being too flashy / loose handles etc., it will be quite easy to eliminate with some experience.

As a rookie, only Sengun had higher assists/100 possessions (5.9 vs 5.5) than Wemby among centers (and in his 3rd season he's already at 5.0 APG), but again - Wembanyama playing point center gives him much bigger upside in this regard (and he'll be obviously easily much better scorer with different gravity, so that will be helpful).

This is actually insane how his shooting/passing projection in comparison to other 20yo bigs look like, if you combine that with his scoring potential and him being modern D GOAT-level talent.

[tsherkin]

This is actually insane how his shooting/passing projection in comparison to other 20yo bigs look like, if you combine that with his scoring potential and him being modern D GOAT-level talent.

The passing has been pretty eye-opening these past couple months. He has a lot of work to put in as far as scoring, but more support and spacing and so forth will help that, plus time. Seeing that vision, those technical skills and his creativity this early is very impressive and opens a lot of doors to change up how the defense has to account for him, which is pretty sweet.

[The Master]

Defensive metrics:



Holmgren without SGA:



Wembanyama as a center/as a power forward



Wembanyama with regular point guard (Tre Jones):

Update, as I was wondering at that time whether he'll be able to keep up his crazy splits as a center/with Tre as a point guard:

Defensive metrics:



Wembanyama as a center:



Wembanyama with regular point guard (Tre Jones):



Nothing to see here, actually: Spurs got more difficult schedule recently, so his defensive numbers (DFG%, DFG% at rim) are down, so is his net rating with Tre on a court - most importantly, his boxscore production is steady while 1069 minutes as a center is ~35 games sample, so it's almost half of the season for Wemby as a center. So yeah, as a rookie center he's definitely already 23-11-4-4, +6-7 BPM type of a player in 29-30 minutes, that's crazy.

Next thing to update at the end of the season will be his shooting:

Per30:



I couldn't get specific splits of his shooting as a center/power forward on pbpstats.com, so I went through nba.com splits to/since his first game as a starting C (12/08/2023), 3 pointers:



Damn, his pull-up %s are crazy - he's 41% on a sample of 98 attempts already in the full season.

Read on Twitter

His shooting projection may be even better than I thought (right now: 82%FT, 32% 3PT on big volume, over 40% 3PT from pull ups). Wemby is 35% from 3pt line since his first game as a starting center, so that's something to follow once we get additional 20 game sample. If his reference value from 3pt line before the offseason will be actually 35%, then I'd expect borderline MVP-type of production next year already.

On negative note - Spurs are so disastrous talent wise right now considering they're 6-19 with Tre as a starting point guard / 7-27 with Wemby as a center, so they're still ~20W team even when Pop ended his experiments with Sochan as a starting PG / Wemby as a PF.

[tsherkin]

Fun little graphic from an AlexHoops video from 2 days ago.

Watch on YouTube

[tsherkin]

On negative note - Spurs are so disastrous talent wise right now considering they're 6-19 with Tre as a starting point guard / 7-27 with Wemby as a center, so they're still ~20W team even when Pop ended his experiments with Sochan as a starting PG / Wemby as a PF.

Yeah, but... they're literally the 4th-worst offense in the league on the season and 24th on D even with Wemby. They lack talent, point blank. It isn't even a negative; at this point, they're just getting a better pick in the upcoming draft to hopefully stack more youth with VW. Or perhaps to parlay into a quality starter or whatever.

They have nothing of consequence on that team. Wemby and Devin Vassall are literally the only 2 guys on the team with 1000+ minutes and a +0 or better OBPM. Of course, Zack Collins is the only guy on that list over 24 as well, so they've got a great deal of youth, just not a ton of high-end talent beyond Victor. The results are predictable.

[rk2023]

Crazy game tonight against fellow rookie Chet and the 1 seed Thunder. He did so many things well, but the passing stands out to me the most

[Colbinii]

One thing that is often forget and underrated [I did undervalue this in my evaluation of Wemby pre-draft] is accounting for just how big his gravity is and how easy he can manufacture assists out of his gravity. His feel and passing looks so easy.

[SNPA]

I apologize. I was early on the Wemby hype train calling him the greatest prospect since James. I made many posts in this thread like that.

I was wrong.

He is the GOAT prospect. James who? I undersold VW. My bad.

Won’t happen again.

Carry on.

[AdagioPace]

Crazy game tonight against fellow rookie Chet and the 1 seed Thunder. He did so many things well, but the passing stands out to me the most

Luckily his 3p% seem to have stabilized itself to a decent level and his understanding of the game is already excellent. If he becomes a sort of prime KG with better volume shooting/scoring, welp for the league....

[Heej]

This is actually insane how his shooting/passing projection in comparison to other 20yo bigs look like, if you combine that with his scoring potential and him being modern D GOAT-level talent.

The passing has been pretty eye-opening these past couple months. He has a lot of work to put in as far as scoring, but more support and spacing and so forth will help that, plus time. Seeing that vision, those technical skills and his creativity this early is very impressive and opens a lot of doors to change up how the defense has to account for him, which is pretty sweet.

I think the most impressive part about his passing ability is how it's kinda proven to scale with defensive IQ and deflections. Kid's already got a good head on his shoulders in regards to that, just the mental ceiling he projects to reach alone is impressive. Let alone everything else. Very cool to see man, this is awesome. Kid is like the goddamn basketball Avatar or some s***

[tsherkin]

This is actually insane how his shooting/passing projection in comparison to other 20yo bigs look like, if you combine that with his scoring potential and him being modern D GOAT-level talent.

The passing has been pretty eye-opening these past couple months. He has a lot of work to put in as far as scoring, but more support and spacing and so forth will help that, plus time. Seeing that vision, those technical skills and his creativity this early is very impressive and opens a lot of doors to change up how the defense has to account for him, which is pretty sweet.

I think the most impressive part about his passing ability is how it's kinda proven to scale with defensive IQ and deflections. Kid's already got a good head on his shoulders in regards to that, just the mental ceiling he projects to reach alone is impressive. Let alone everything else. Very cool to see man, this is awesome. Kid is like the goddamn basketball Avatar or some s***

He is fun to watch, no doubt.

[RSCD3_]

Another spectacular game

Watch on YouTube

I hear he's shooting 41% on pull up 3's and 27% on catch and shoot 3's, always interesting shot profile when a player has that

[rk2023]

Another spectacular game

Watch on YouTube

I hear he's shooting 41% on pull up 3's and 27% on catch and shoot 3's, always interesting shot profile when a player has that

It kind of makes sense when watching those attempts on film too, Tbfh

[Cavsfansince84]

I think Victor should have people rethinking what a young Kareem would be like in today's league. I made a thread about 6 months ago or so saying to me he almost answers the question of what Kareem might be like if he were 19/20 and drafted today and a lot of people thought I was way off but he may be better(which isn't to say he'd be better in the 70's) because he may be a naturally better outside shooter with even more length. I think they are pretty close in terms of baseline talent.

[tsherkin]

I think Victor should have people rethinking what a young Kareem would be like in today's league. I made a thread about 6 months ago or so saying to me he almost answers the question of what Kareem might be like if he were 19/20 and drafted today and a lot of people thought I was way off but he may be better(which isn't to say he'd be better in the 70's) because he may be a naturally better outside shooter with even more length. I think they are pretty close in terms of baseline talent.

Depends on how Kareem would have developed in the contemporary environment. In reality, he didn't showcase much range past about 14, 15 feet and it took him a while to add counters to the skyhook. He was quite mobile, though, and did used to face up more as a Buck and a younger Laker. Definitely not a better outside shooter than Wemby by nature, leastwise not in his actual career. Loads of talent, though, so again, I guess it comes down to how he'd develop in a different formative environment.

[PooledSilver]

Talent wise Victor and Kareem aren’t close, Victor is the most fluid player we’ve ever seen at that size it’s absurd