• LUCAS SÁEZ-BRAVO

    @LucasSaezBravo

Updated Monday,6November2023 - 08:19

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A 2.24-meter guy is supposed to have movements more typical of an elephant than of Fred Astaire. This is not the case of Victor Wembanyama (Le Chesnay, France, 2004), who has burst into the NBA to pulverize all schemes. A giant with a wingspan of 2.44, like a sculpture by Giacometti, which gives the feeling that someone designed exclusively to play basketball. A physicist never seen before, but the difference, those who know him agree, is in "a privileged mind."

The first steps have confirmed all the warnings, an expectation only comparable to that aroused by LeBron James when he arrived in the best league in the world in 2003, highlights like flames coming out of a dragon's mouth. "He's unbelievable, up close he's unbelievable," enthuses Usman Garuba, who faced him with the Warriors in the offseason. "Everyone in the team was blown away. For me, he has the potential to be the best player ever. From what I've heard and from what I've been told by people close to him, he's a hard worker. So that kid has it all." He handles the ball like a point guard, throws in a jump shot with the mechanics and feel of a shooter, blocks and changes even the most open shots, runs the court with unusual coordination. In the beginning, there is a reason for all this.

But Wemby also impresses with an astonishing maturity for someone who dealt with pressure since the age of 13. "The first time we met and I interviewed him, he spent five minutes talking to me about painting, describing some paintings he had in his apartment in Lyon. He didn't tell me they're cool and that's it, he told me about their depth, the spaces, that they reminded him of the 90s and Spike Lee's films," Yann Ohnona, the L'Equipe journalist who has been Victor's shadow for the last two years, tells EL MUNDO.

This phenomenon is reflected in the book 'I Just Want to Be Me', in which Ohnona recounts the adventures of a boy who at the age of nine was already 1.90 meters tall, the son of Elodie and Felix, a former player and coach herself, a diving athlete himself, of Congolese descent. The boy who played goalkeeper and practiced judo until at the age of seven he entered the youth academy of the club in his neighborhood, on the outskirts of Paris, the Entente de Chesnay Versailles. When he was still under 11, Michael Allard, one of Nanterre's coaches, was impressed when he saw him in a match. "There's a guy so tall that I thought he was an assistant coach," he told Frederic Donnadieu, now president of the club, brother of coach Pascal, and it didn't take long for them to recruit that giant who already dreamed of being like Magic Johnson. It was in Nanterre that they insisted early on that he would not be just one more. "They were the first ones who saw that he wasn't a traditional center, that they had to take him out of the paint to develop. So he wouldn't get stuck in one role," Ohnona says.

In addition to his protective family, there are three other key people in Wembanyama's sporting environment. One is Guillaume Alquier, the fitness coach with a rather unorthodox method who has just been brought in by the Spurs. The others are Tim Martin and Karim Boubekri, who taught him how to pass with Pete Maravich videos and how to dribble with the explosiveness of Allen Iverson and the elegance of Bodiroga (it is not uncommon to see the Frenchman now using the Serbian's famous 'whip'). Wemby always played in categories above his age and his legend began to grow dizzyingly. At the age of 15 years and nine months, Donnadieu gave him his debut in the Eurocup. Less than a year later, it had already premiered at the first gala. He had also been recruited by France's youth teams, with whom he has already made his debut in the senior team. In 2019 they lost the final of the U16 European Championship against Juan Núñez's Spain.

That day in Italy, Rubén Domínguez, the team's top scorer, was facing each other. The schoolboy, on loan this season at Castellón, remembers how unique the adolescent Wembanyama already was. "He was younger, but he looked super special. You could see that he was going to go wherever he wanted. He's very different from any player I've ever seen. In addition to the size, what makes it most different is the agility to move that body. It's incredible," says the forward, who two years later crossed paths with Victor again at the U19 World Cup, this time with a French victory in the first phase. "I was already more changed, I had improved physically. He was already aware of what he was capable of doing and he did it. He was going hard to the rim, above everybody. It was almost impossible to stop him," recalls the Andalusian forward, especially amazed by "the timing and coordination he has to block".

Wembanyama, in his NBA debut. CHANDAN KHANNAAFP

Wembanyama's story was already directed towards the NBA and his steps guided him one season to ASVEL and another, last season, to the Metropolitans 92, with coach Vicent Collet on the bench. He finished the season as MVP, top scorer (21.6), rebounder (10.4), blocker (3) and, of course, best young player for the third time in a row. "I've never seen a player so special, so different in my career. It's not just the skills he has for the game. When I got there, I saw how much attention and pressure I was putting up with at just 19 years old. He's mentally prepared and he's very mature, that impressed me," said Anzejs Pasecnkis, who spent three months with Wemby last season.

The former NBA center, now at Zunder Palencia in the ACB, was paired with the Gallic pearl during many training sessions. "He can play in all five positions. Defensively it's very tough to play against him. You can try to play wide and shoot from outside, but he, with his wingspan and mobility, was able to block those shots. It may seem that we are both the same height (the Latvian is 2.16), but this is not the case... He's really very, very tall. And he's smart, he understands the game," he explains, as he tries to look for weaknesses without success. "The only thing you can do is push him with physical play, because I think he can still gain weight (since he was named No. 1 in the draft in June, Wembanyama has gained 10 kilos) and get stronger. When this happens, I don't know how we're going to be able to play against him," he reasons, and concludes: "In attack, I really think he's indefensible."

An "alien"

Wemby is aware of that apparent physical weakness – "I've been watching my whole life as opponents try to be especially physical against me. It's not something that scares me" – although Gregg Popovich's Spurs plan isn't that I gained much more weight, so it would take away from his speed. As Paul George acknowledges, "he makes plays that no one is going to stop. He's going to have all the coaches thinking about what to do with him all the time." His first few weeks in the NBA have been a kind of contest in which his rivals raised the bidding of praise for the new star.

LeBron said that Wemby isn't your typical unicorn, that Wemby "is an alien." "His parents did a great job: he's one of the most mature 19-year-olds I've ever met. He understands who he is and is comfortable in his skin. He knows there's a lot of hype around him," Popovich said these days about his pearl. "The obvious thing is that he's going to be a good player, you just have to see him. The intelligence he has is put at the service of the way he plays. It's impressive at his age how he handles pressure, he's fully aware of what's happening to him," says Ohnona, shocked by a detail. During draft days, Wemby carried a heavy book in his hands. "He told me he was reading an 800-page science fiction book translated from Chinese. He's not your typical 18-year-old. He always has something interesting to say. Spend a lot of time playing LEGOs. She also loves to paint, any activity that activates her hands and head. That explains its agility," says the L'Equipe journalist.

That, in addition to his personality ("in 20 years of journalistic career I have never seen anything like it"), highlights the dimension of the player and what he means for France. "You can compare him to Tony Parker, but also to Zinedine Zidane or Teddy Riner, to all the great athletes in the history of the country. After the draft, Macron invited him to the Elysée Palace, to tell him how important he is for France. He will be an ambassador for the Games. He goes beyond basketball," the journalist concludes.

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