Victor Wimbanyama may have just taken over the basketball world in the first game of the season
Late in the first half of the San Antonio Spurs’ season-opening 125-92 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday, Victor Wimpanyama faced off against P.J. Washington on the right wing. He faked a shot. Washington a little. What Wimbanyama did next, if you didn’t see it with your own eyes, was truly unbelievable.
The 7-foot-5 human took one dribble before launching into a double-pump up-and-down reverse dunk, near the double-pump…in traffic…on the other side of the rim.
“It’s a figment of our basketball imagination!” An early introduction to the Invitational of the Year came from ESPN play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco, and frankly, those are the only words that could have come close to being enough at that moment. It was a perfect call for what a perfect, honest-to-God basketball player could be.
Words like “incredible” are thrown around everywhere NBA language very easily. A true, incredible play is not usually described – at least not for athletes of this caliber. But let me tell you something, Which It was unbelievable. Honestly, the whole Wembanyama night was unbelievable. The dude had 40 points on 15-for-21 shooting, plus 15 rebounds, three blocks and a game-high plus 31 in just 29 minutes.
Of course, we’ve seen numbers like this before on their own. But all together another story. Wembanyama is the first player since the 1977–78 NBA/ABA merger to record 40 points and 15 rebounds while shooting 70% from the field without a turnover.
But forget the numbers. What we saw on Wednesday night cannot be measured on a stat sheet. This was, and continues to be, the athletic sophistication he embodies, a human skyscraper snatching shots out of the air like a fruit-picking dinosaur – reaching wide and dunking wildly on some of the biggest men on the planet as if they were schoolboys, driving the ball in transition and shooting passes without looking at the corner, all while diving into four-point-back plays, accepting one-footed off the glass and generally working with the movement and ball skills of a point guard. 6 feet long.
Before Victor Wimbanyama, there was no film like this.
I don’t even know where to start with this, but I probably should have started with the fact that he was doing it against Anthony Davis, probably the best defensive big man in the world not named Wambanyama. Davis committed four fouls in the first half while trying to keep up with Wimpanyama. He was helpless. If you watched the full trailer above, you’ve already seen this, but in case you haven’t, look at this shake that Wimpy put on Davis.
Come on, man. You couldn’t play better defense than that, and it didn’t matter at all. I have Wembanyama ranked fifth in my top 100 players list for the season, which already seems laughably low. It was always a matter of time until Wimpanyama became the best player in the world, of course, but no one thought that time would come so soon.
Maybe it didn’t happen. This was probably one game. But maybe not. Actually, I’m leaning towards the latter. Combining that level of skill with that kind of size is a lost result in basketball. I’ve never seen anything like this. Nobody has. I don’t care if you grew up with Wilt Chamberlain or if you think Ralph Sampson would have reached this level if he had appeared in this era.
No matter how you cut it, it’s brand new. And the dude is only 21 years old. incredible. literally, incredible. Victor Wimbanyama, man. The world of basketball is yours.