Victor Wembanyama is on his way to being the greatest of all time—and it’s not a speculation, it’s a fact.
Last night, the Dallas Mavericks faced the San Antonio Spurs to tip off the new 2025-26 NBA season. It was a headline-grabber—the first official NBA game for the Mavs’ first overall draft pick, Cooper Flagg. Normally, the first overall pick would have been the story of opening night, especially considering the highly controversial Luka Dončić trade that transpired last season. But no one’s talking about him, and everyone’s talking about Victor Wembanyama.
You were probably busy while the game happened, but you’ve seen the highlights. If you haven’t, take a couple of minutes to witness it.
Done? Good, because you’ve just witnessed one of the greatest individual performances of all time.
It sounds like an overreaction, but what we’re watching might be a player on his way to eclipsing Michael Jordan and LeBron James…and it might not even be close.
To start with the obvious, the 21-year-old French is officially listed at 7’4”, but no one actually believes that. The grapevine that is NBA social media is riddled with eyewitnesses claiming he’s closer to 7’6” — maybe even 7’7”.
So when we see him dribbling the ball like a young Kevin Durant from OKC, bulldozing through players for a dunk like Giannis Antetokounmpo (the latest addition to his repertoire), and shooting with the efficiency of 2011 Dirk Nowitzki—our brain struggles to fully comprehend the absurdity of it all. It’s kind of like how we use time to scale and put into perspective how much a billion dollars is actually worth.
Biologically speaking, there is a reason why we don’t see people of Wemby’s height dominating more basketball courts. And that reason is simple, just existing normally and comfortably at that height is a challenge. Joint degeneration, cardiovascular strain, and connective tissue disorders are common conditions that plague the extremely tall. Humans are simply not meant to function at that height, but of course, there are a few exceptions to the rule.
Think 7’6” Yao Ming and 7’7” Manute Bol. For them to even step on a high-octane basketball court, running and keeping up with the world’s elite athletes is an extraordinary feat in and of itself. For them to be all-stars and win defensive accolades? It’s a miracle.
Now imagine them sprinting like track athletes and performing step-back threes like Damian Lillard—and you have Victor Wembanyama. A man who is not just a basketball prodigy, but an anatomical anomaly pushing the boundaries of what a human body is capable of.
When was the last time you saw an athlete give a breakdown of the particle physics of dark matter? During a media press conference, no less. Well, Wembanyama has.
Described as being “smart”, “polite”, and having a “calming influence”, Wembanyama’s character is as fluid and dynamic as he is on the court. But don’t hear it from me.
“I think his best skill is his intelligence,” said Joakim Noah, former Chicago Bulls All-Star and Defensive Player of the Year.
“He is so intentional on the variety of ways that he tries to improve as a player and a person,” said Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson. “It’s really something I’ve never witnessed or experienced in my time.”
Usually, you can tell when praise is PR fluff. But this feels different, and it’s evident in the way he spent his off-season.
He famously trained with all-time great center Hakeem Olajuwon to refine his footwork, then spent time with Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett—who was infamous for his on-court intensity (and sometimes insanity)—to fortify his mental grip on the game. He contrasted this with a trip to a fifth-century Shaolin temple to practice kung fu and meditate with the monks. For good measure, he even shaved off his braids, going skinhead bald in case you were questioning his commitment.
All of it leading up to…
There are a few teams in the NBA that boast a more defensively imposing big man frontcourt than the Mavericks. Anthony Davis has been in the running for Defensive Player of the Year award for years now. Dereck Lively is one of the league’s most promising young defensive anchors. Simply put, the Mavericks are an ideal team built to stop a player like Wemby.
Yet, he managed to drop 40 points on hyper-efficient 71.4 per cent shooting, sending Davis into foul trouble and fouling out Lively after just ten minutes. But it wasn’t just his efficiency; it was how he scored those points. Contested fadeaways, between-the-legs before a stepback threes, reverse cradle dunks—these are shots coaches would sneer at for their inefficiency, but when you’re 7’7” and can move like a guard, you simply become unguardable.
But wait, we haven’t reached the best part yet. Remember when I said Wemby’s game is historically great? I invite you to look beyond the statistics, eye tests and into analytics.
When Wemby was on the court last night, the Spurs had an offensive rating of 126.6. To put this into perspective, the 2023-24 NBA champions, The Boston Celtics, posted a historically high offensive rating of 123.2, good for the greatest of all time.
On the defensive side, where the lower the rating, the better a team is defensively—there hasn’t been a team since the early 2000s that has earned a rating less than 100. In fact, no team has ever boasted a defensive rating of less than 90. However, when Wembanyama was on the hardwood last night, the Spurs had a staggering rating of 80.6.
Analytically speaking, Wembanyama brought his team to historic heights, both offensively and defensively, singlehandedly stretching the limits of how much one player can carry their team.
Say you handed a six-year-old a pen and paper and told them to draw what they think the greatest basketball player of all time looks like. They’d probably sketch someone impossibly tall—draining shots from half court, dunking from the three-point line, and blocking shots without even leaving the ground.
Well, we have that fictional player now. And he’s only 21.
Look, I get that it's only one game, and it definitely sounds like I'm overreacting, but do you not trust the man whom analysts already deem a top-10 player in the NBA to stay consistently great? How many perennial all-stars must he embarrass? How many more records must he break?
If this is any indication of what’s ahead, we might one day look back at the GOAT debate between Jordan and LeBron the way people in the ’70s argued over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain. We’d think back to those debates fondly, but those thoughts would ultimately end with a chuckle.
