Victor Wembanyama’s résumé already carries a painful pattern: close, but not quite there. The 22-year-old has not won a championship at any professional level, and each near miss has ended the same way - with him watching somebody else celebrate.
In his final season in the French League, his Metropolitans 92 fell in the Finals. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, he settled for silver. Then came his first NBA Finals trip, where the San Antonio Spurs lost in five games to the New York Knicks.
For a player who puts winning above everything else, the lack of hardware stands out. But it also helps explain why so many around the league think the next version of Wembanyama could be even scarier.
At 22, he is already part of the conversation for best player in the world. Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are in that same top tier, and Wembanyama’s defense and edge are a big reason he keeps pushing into the center of that debate.
The image that stuck with many fans came in Paris, when he watched Team USA get the gold medals and was visibly crying. After that loss, he said, "I'm learning, and I'm worried for the opponents in a couple of years," he warned.
Now, two years after that second-place finish, the expectation is that the warning is starting to come true. He has already broadened his game and, by all accounts, looks like an NBA veteran - maybe even more than that.
On The Athletic NBA Daily, Zena Keita said, "He's figuring out what works for him," said Zena Keita on The Athletic NBA Daily. "He's figuring out how to move his body.
You know, he's a big boy. He's got to figure out how he plays in open space.
And he's also figuring this out with the crew around him, which is only going to continue to propel him. So he's got the right mix of folks around him, and he's got the right mentality to continue to get better."
Keita also pointed to the way those setbacks can sharpen a player. "It feels like he's also had the right amount of heartbreaks and the right type of heartbreaks that are going to make him lock in in a different way that we've never seen before," she added. "So the fact that we can't see the ceiling-it's a galaxy-type situation at this point-that, to me, makes him number one."
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For San Antonio, Basseys name still carries a familiar what-could-have-been feel. The Spurs once saw enough promise to keep him in the mix, but a long injury history quickly changed that conversation, and his career has since been defined as much by recovery as by opportunity. Golden State appears willing to take one more swing, which makes his next stretch of health and availability the real storyline. [Read more 🡒]
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Victor Wembanyama is heading into the new season with the kind of spotlight most young stars spend years trying to earn, and ESPNs preseason panel has only turned the volume up. The national view is no longer just that he is the face of San Antonios future, but that he is already the front-runner in the leagues most prestigious individual race, a leap that says as much about the expectations around him as it does about his game.
For the Spurs, that attention comes with a broader kind of pressure. ESPNs panel also sees San Antonio as a serious contender to get back to the NBA Finals, which means Wembanyama is carrying franchise hopes on top of the usual supernova hype that follows a generational talent. Comparisons to other stars have only sharpened the standard, and how he handles that burden is becoming part of the story as much as what he does on the floor. [Read more 🡒]