Victor Wembanyama returned home this summer at the Paris Olympics to claim the France national team as his own and remind the NBA he’s got next, stealing the starting center spot from a future Basketball Hall of Famer and leading France to silver. But while Wembanyama’s absurd physical feats and well-aged game reminded hoops heads just how otherworldly he is at age 20, in total Wembanyama’s run in Paris was far more a reminder that he is in fact human.
Heading into the men’s basketball tournament at the Paris Olympics, Les Bleus were in a transitional period. The hometown squad got dumped early in last year’s FIBA World Cup as its aging core ran out of gas. As that group looked towards its likely final Olympics as key pieces of the team, the question was not if, but how fast, Wembanyama would make the team his own. It happened in a blink.
By the knockout round of the tournament, Wembanyama had surpassed Gobert as starting center, and rendered Gobert nearly irrelevant on the team. He was the team’s closer on offense and the glue of its improved defense. Head coach Vincent Collet reached back in his memory and built a rotation around Wembanyama that looked as much like the Euroleague finals squad they led together at Mets 92 as possible. Rather than slow guards and plodding size, Collet deployed a modern team with Wembanyama as the head of the snake. With rangy forwards like Guerschon Yabusele empowered to take over games with his physicality and nobody dominating the ball, Collet maximized his hardwood extraterrestrial once again.
Wembanyama averaged nearly 4 “stocks” per game in under 30 minutes. Once he took over for Gobert, France held the top two finishers at last year’s FIBA World Cup under 75 points. The reigning NBA Rookie of the Year turned the Paris court into his own planet, where the rules of physics were unrecognizable to the rest of us. When Wembanyama is around, the ball is always is. Everyone else is just borrowing it.
Victor Wembanyama’s TOP highlights from Paris Olympics basketball competition | NBC Sports
Wembanyama erases the basket and slithers out on switches with equal menace. At 7-3 with that otherworldly 8-foot wingspan, he takes up space more smoothly than any basketball player ever. Every defense becomes almost a zone with him on the floor, because he can literally be in two places at once. There is nothing of this Earth that a gameplan can use to account for what Wembanyama is physically.
For now, the only thing that can slow the man is when rhythm eludes him. Where Wembanyama appears fully in control of his powers getting stops, getting buckets doesn’t come as smoothly yet. Wembanyama is, in essence, a heat check scorer right now. He will gobble up rebounds and finish plays like his Earthly elders at the center spot, but the game-breaking offense that earned Wembanyama comps to Kevin Durant as a teenager appears only in flashes. He was 3-5 from deep against Japan in group play on his way to 18 points, but a combined 1-14 in the quarterfinal and semifinal, shorter FIBA money line be damned. When that shot goes in, especially when he finds his touch off the bounce, the Earth creatures he’s up against stand no chance. Without it, Wembanyama looks like a lot of other young bigs.
The offensive end makes Wembanyama look human. He can be stripped of the ball when he tries to get too creative, and isn’t really efficient from anywhere beside the corners yet. Wembanyama suffers from the disease of versatility -- special enough to try anything but not polished enough to be great at it yet. Even on a French team with (slightly) better spacing than he has in San Antonio, Wembanyama still struggled to spread his wings and make the most of his talents, shooting just 42 percent from the field in Paris.
For now, Wembanyama is best operating in the high post or at the nail. With his high release and heads-up passing, he can draw help and orchestrate from a more threatening spot. After posting a 21.5 percent assist rate as an NBA rookie, Wembanyama averaged more than 3 per game in his first Olympics. In the short term, his NBA future might look more like young Dirk Nowitzki than prime Kevin Durant.
When KD and Team USA beat Wembanyama in the final, the French star spared no emotion. After the gold medal game, Wembanyama said, “I’m going to let it all soak in” before warning the world that he was “worried” for them at the next Olympics. Given that this is a young man who openly proclaims he can be basketball’s GOAT when it’s all said and done, that first part was more surprising than the second. Wembanyama wept on the court as it hit him that he had come up short of the gold for his countrymen and himself. He wanted it, let himself believe he could get it.
Wembanyama also knew it would never line up so perfectly again. He would never have that golden generation together, in their homeland, going down to the wire against the best American team ever assembled. Wembanyama has a full career, a full life ahead, but he appreciated the opportunity and the letdown of that moment anyway.
In sum, Wembanyama was impressive in his first Olympics but not mind-bending. France making it as far as they did without a major impact from the vets was special, but we can’t give all that credit to Wembanyama alone. Yet fans flocked to him anyway, through social media highlights and viral quotes.
From South Texas to the City of Light, fans flock to Wembanyama because he is human. The version of Wembanyama who could have landed here and taken over our world as a teeanger -- locking up every NBA superstar, bombing threes and breaking ankles -- would be a thrill. This one, the one who is human, has our attention even more.
This is the kid whose dimensions and abilities are unseen in the history of sports, but who brings a wisdom of seemingly equal measure. The way he was in Paris this summer is the way he is: capable of the spectacular and grounded in the ordinary. He wants to talk about human consciousness and the peculiarity of Las Vegas just as much as his rim protection technique. His body does things we’ve never seen, but his mind yearns for personal connection.
Wembanyama flew to Paris this year to test the boundaries of his greatness, showing us why we call him an alien while reminding us of all the ways he’s human.
