Victor Wembanyama aka Wemby aka The Extraterrestrial

you know who I feel a little bad for is Pop, I mean the guy was fairly vocal about wanting to hang it up someday soon and suddenly this absolute freak just lands in his lap

lol no way, wemby just added like ten years to pops life. hes set

I mean its a good problem to have but I kinda feel like Pop was finally letting himself think about fucking off for a while and spening all day fishing

I assume pop is having the time of his life with this kid

its his karmic payout for being one of the first nba guys to take european basketball players seriously

most nba coaches are overworked type-A nervous wrecks. pop strikes me as about the most mentally healthy coach out there. he'll quit whenever he wants to.

well yeah he seems like the one dude who might like a life outside of basketball

dont get me wrong when the Spurs got the pick the first thing I thought was that I was happy for Pop, I love when coaches like that can go out on a high note

The question now might be how soon does he become the best player in the league.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Friday, November 3, 2023 1:31 PM (two hours ago)

you have guys like jokic, tatum, luka who are still just into or haven't even entered their prime years so i think i'd peg it at like 3 years until victor is indisputably the best player in the league

i think the more interesting question is how much better will he be than the second best player of his wave of guys? like if you put luka, tatum, shai etc to the side -- they're all 24/25 -- and focus just on the 22/23 year olds and under you have guys like: paolo, ant edwards, cade, halliburton, chet, franz, barnes... it feels like victor could be 2x better than them even as most if not all of those guys will be all NBA players

if hes the best player in the league at 22 well boy howdy, not usually how it works but could happen

hard not to get ahead of ourselves here after witnessing last night... but yeah. please just stay healthy

im sure hell have some injuries as his alien body adjusts to earth life, just hopefully nothing too serious

since we're getting ahead of ourselves in this thread after seeing some of those plays last night my reaction wasn't just "he could be the best player in the league in 3 years" but also "they may have to change the rules for this guy"

will this guy even have to box out? he gumbied a pass last night with his arm bent like 90 degrees over the defenders head lol

Need E-40 to say victor wembanyama one time

— no bells (@nobellsblog) November 3, 2023

lmao

haha id be surprised if he wasnt working up a song right now

Mr Wembanyama Mr Vic Wembanyama

I've been singing "Wembanyama Mama" to myself since ums posted that.

Been singing his name to the tune of Mistadobalina myself

genuinely would be terrified if I saw this out in the wild. like my only thought would be "that better fucking be Wemby"

Happy HalloWemby!

📺 Spurs/Suns, 10pm/et on TNT pic.twitter.com/ZCNU1f5oBh

— NBA (@NBA) October 31, 2023

He's apparently working on a skyhook, if he ever gets that down RIP NBA.

Sorry but kool Keith

Chilling with wembanyama
Stroking llamas

hey his album earlier this year has a song about old Supersonics players so anything is possible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krorxO_fHEI

I love it when he raps about basketball. The Baldwin hills spacemen would be my fantasy basketball team name if I played

def periodically new people or words appear that make me think i want to hear kool keith say that

It's like he's doing this on an 8-foot rim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiLbtU_GTSM

nerf rim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgkxajrQArJ

Let's try that again.

is pop cooked?

i didn’t think so until this year

like im really starting to wince watching them play, i get that they wanted to experiment to see how everyone fits with wemby, but i feel like the experiment has lost the plot when you lose 12 games in a row. sochan is never gonna be pre-playoff freakout ben simmons and i worry that pop will break him trying to make it happen. giving wemby no direction means he plays like a 19-year-old, no shit he's gonna try to do too much and get a bunch of turnovers. this team feels rudderless without competent point guard play and their defensive woes are compounded by the turnovers and missed shots. tre jones isnt a world-beater but he's a capable pg whose on-off numbers and netrtg with wemby are fuckin good. they should experiment with winning even at the expense of some theoretical all-switching all-the-time defensive lineup.

im not terribly worried in the long run bc its not like pop was given a loaded roster to begin with. there are several good pg prospects in this draft (i like collier and topic rn but who knows) and some servicable bigs that can upgrade charles bassey pretty quickly.

the approach they’re taking may have worked more 10 or 15 years ago….the overall talent in the league means that there aren’t any easy games early in the season. so if you’re openly fucking around while everyone else is trying to win the results are going to hurt.

i also wonder if, even for a player as unique as wemby, a more traditional development approach where you ask him to focus on a few fundamentals and gradually expand his responsibilities over time, just works better.

cant help but think theyre just tanking

if you were just running jones-wemby pick and rolls all game you might win too much

meanwhile letting wemby and sochan get some reps doing whatever prob has some value, its like everyone else is playing basketball and youre playing 21 lol

idk Pop taking the mic to tell people not to boo Kawhi kinda made me feel like his heart isn't really in it anymore. its just a weird thing for a coach to do and I think maybe Pop just can't suppress his inner human anymore the way being a head coach requires you to do. but I dunno maybe they are just tanking.

i would tank if i were them, go back to the well one more time

you can tank and be better is the thing

what why

would they be winning that many more games if they were actually trying to play sound basketball? not many but probably a few, and this particular nba season has some fierce competition for being crappy, lotta crappy teams. not so easy to get those ping pong balls. otoh even once you pick up another couple pieces, how much are you setting wemby's timeline back playing like this now

i dont think youre setting him back particularly, at this stage in career letting him try stuff might even be the best choice, and of course if its a tough tanking year then tanking harder is of great benefit, i dont know that its a tough tanking year but regardless yeah tanking harder will produce better results if youre tanking lol

one problem with sucking this year is that it's supposed to a weak draft, top pick might not have any value

fwiw:

The men’s college basketball season is upon us, which means it’s time to update my NBA mock draft. So far, we’ve already received quite a bit of information on college players, as well as a lot of tape on prospects playing overseas.

What does that intel say? That this class is as wide open for players to emerge into as any iteration I’ve come across since I began covering the NBA Draft over the last decade. While this mock draft is supposed to provide a snapshot of where league and team sources generally stand on the prospects at this exact moment, it’s hard to get a read on where scouts sit on this class and even how interested many of the key players are in participating in this draft at all. There are a significant number of polarizing players this season. That starts at the top, even if scouts believe this class could potentially offer some intriguing depth.

It’s worth laying out how questionable the top of this class is. While we are still in the early stages of identifying prospects with the potential to be the No. 1 overall pick in 2024, I do not currently have a player rated as a Tier One or Tier Two prospect.

I wouldn’t say I’m especially stingy with such grades. Over the last four drafts, I have listed the following players in either of those categories:

2020: LaMelo Ball, Anthony Edwards.
2021: Cade Cunningham, Jalen Suggs, Evan Mobley, Jalen Green.
2022: Chet Holmgren, Jabari Smith Jr., Paolo Banchero, Jaden Ivey.
2023: Victor Wembanyama, Scoot Henderson, Brandon Miller, Cam Whitmore, Amen Thompson.
That’s 15 players in four classes. Some of those players have hit, and some of them look like misses, so I’m far from perfect. No evaluator is. But 14 of those 15 players were taken in the top five, with only Whitmore falling to 20th last season due to myriad factors.

As of now, I have not yet seen a player in this class with the look of a typical top-three pick in an NBA Draft. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone in this class who looks like an average top-five selection.

https://theathletic.com/5009208/2023/11/13/nba-mock-draft-2024-alexandre-sarr/

i mean obvs youd like the draft to be "stronger" but this is the year that makes sense for them to tank, tankers cant be choosers

spurs dont need to hit a homerun in this draft imo and there are plenty of pg's who would be at minimum solid starters to complement wemby. they have their own pick and toronto's if it stays out of the top 6 (and charlotte if they somehow make the playoffs). 2025 gets fun bc they own the hawks picks for 3 years and they get a bulls 1st rounder (probably, unless they go nuclear tanking for 3 years)

the other thing i need to remember is that this team that won 22 games last year had some actual nba rotation players in jakob poeltl and josh richardson for most of the year, so take the leftovers of that team and add wemby and put sochan in the hardest position that he's never played and...12 game losing streak makes sense

yeah it's just that finishing bottom 3 might not be much better draftwise than finishing bottom 10

maybe finishing 15th will be the best lol

?pic.twitter.com/CVrzswHcAm

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) January 5, 2024

Jeremy Sochan, was cuuut todaaaaaaaay

in your best Eddie Vedder obv

lol

clearly I remember when he tried to run the point / seemed a harmless little experiment

my polish prince, first spur ever in history to wear an aphex twin hoodie on the court

so basically a lot of the pre-wemby, post-kawhi guys (lonnie, keldon, luka samanic, vassell, pr*mo, sochan, branham, wesley) were upside swings/projecty guys who had flaws they thought they could coach up. other than a bargain like keldon (#29 pick!) and a solid starter like devo, they whiffed on these guys hard in large part bc none of them were developing nba-level skillsets that would guarantee them minutes. lonnie is talented but a defensive liability and too limited on offense, and now he's playing in europe. samanic was a total nothing, just didn't have the work ethic or attitude and athleticism to justify a roster spot. primo is a sex pest and out of the league, branham and wesley were trade fodder. branham will be out of the league next year, wesley is holding on by a thread.

so i think on the one hand sochan was a bust because they were a team without an identity trying to fish for gold. sochan had very little offensive skills coming in, but his size and athleticism and defensive versatility meant they could see him operating as a draymond type of player. when they were not trying to win, giving him a lot of play to figure what he does made sense. he was really effective with chris paul who got him easy looks at the rim which was the only space he could effectively score from.

this year he came in a little banged up, but he was coming into a team that was actually winning and had veterans taking his minutes. he just had not grown at all during his time here, and his shortcomings were impossible to cover. couldnt shoot, couldnt make plays effectively, just a 4 on 5 situation offensively.

once wemby arrived, it became very clear that everyone on the team at that time was on borrowed time if they couldnt figure out how to fit around him. devo and keldon are the only guys left from that pre-wemby roster. castle, harper, and bryant's arrivals the last couple of years only accelerated this timeline for him, especially bryant who looks like he's figuring out the nba game the last couple of weeks.

yeah sochan was a fun young player for a couple of years but kind of a classic "the dynasty starts after you" guy

yeah its just the nature of the nba, once the young star arrives, the team can start planning around a real person rather than a concept of one

my polish prince, first spur ever in history to wear an aphex twin hoodie on the court

Wuut I love him now

https://scontent-hou1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/623211507_10163253105114718_87493136080715344_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_s1080x2048_tt6&_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=6wuOSknOmCIQ7kNvwGQ-TQg&_nc_oc=Adn9IwSisRVM_NYrOyVwwOYZoRwXZmMqEa597c4mIqM6LlwUZrt1Fw5oz1Rs8E4Zz_E&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-hou1-1.xx&_nc_gid=ClBcC6Y-HRqlfEOmjIUbXw&oh=00_AfsA8YWmJHwJxaRaudjClv8Zfe9s0vtxoxDTwWtTHcU0cQ&oe=699311DD

by epm, compared to the best players right now, wemby got to their level in 3 seasons 😭

shai took some time but caught up, currently #1.

jokic been an impact demon for a while now and is just behind at #2

and luka #4 after starting so high and slowly getting better pic.twitter.com/lBAMDEYKNb

— Automatic (@automaticnba) March 19, 2026

😬

line go up

if i remember how this works from my statistics course, by the time he hits his late 20s it will be in the triple digits

btw wembys game winner last night was an instant classic

RIP king you had a good run
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HIYnl6OXoAAq7OZ?format=jpg&name=medium

this is what happens when you can't buy your clothes off-the-rack