After becoming the youngest Defensive Player of the Year winner in NBA history (and the first unanimous winner), Spurs center Victor Wembanyama has cemented himself as one of the game’s leading superstars. At just 22 years old, his journey is only just getting started, and there’s still plenty of time for him to take his place at the top of the hierarchy.
But after his five-game defeat in the NBA Finals this year (against the New York Knicks), the narrative is starting to shift for Wemby in ways it never has before. In a segment on the ‘Ball in the Family’ podcast, veteran NBA guard Lonzo Ball revealed that his brother, LaMelo, believes his legacy has been forever stained by the series. Lonzo disagrees and says the Spurs were overachieving anyway.
“We were talking about this the other day,” said Ball, on how the Finals loss changed his opinion of Victor. “Melo was like, ‘Now he has a stain because he lost in the Finals.’ I said, ‘But he’s in his third year, and not a lot of people are leading a team that didn’t go to the playoffs the year before to the Finals the next year.’ That’s a huge, huge jump. There’s no stain; he just has to get better. He had a great year, and the Spurs had a tremendous year. I think they overachieved, I think they are ahead of schedule, and I think they should look back at the season as a stepping stone in the right direction.”
With averages of 25.0 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 1.0 steals, and 3.5 blocks per game on 51.2% shooting and 34.9% shooting from three this season, Victor’s skills cannot be denied, and there’s no question that he’s one of the best in the game right now. But to get so close and fall short of the goal is a blemish that will forever remain on Victor’s record.
As much as he’s responsible for leading the Spurs to glory, his poor efficiency hurt them in the Finals, where he averaged 26.0 points, 11.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.0 steals, and 3.6 blocks per game on 42.3% shooting from the field. Defensively, he failed to contain the Knicks’ frontcourt and looked lost at times when making decisions on the floor.
Overall, it was a mediocre series for Victor and a disappointing showing on multiple fronts. Even so, it’s a minimal blemish on what’s been an otherwise amazing start to his career. The fact that he even made the Finals, in his first NBA playoff run, is extremely impressive and unlike what we saw for other stars. Notably, Michael Jordan didn’t have his first Finals series until he was 27, after multiple playoff defeats were already in the books. LeBron James, meanwhile, lost his first Finals series in 2007, at the same age Victor is now.
Ultimately, Victor and the Spurs should feel proud about the progress they made this year. To go from 13th in the West (34-48) to second in the West (62-20) in one season is amazing development, and nobody expected their rise to happen so soon. But when you constantly get compared to the greatest NBA legends, every loss carries extra weight, and not everyone will let him off so easily after such a decisive Finals defeat.
