There may not be a player in the NBA more intimately familiar with Victor Wembanyama's ongoing development than Rudy Gobert. The Minnesota Timberwolves star has known his San Antonio Spurs counterpart since Wembanyama was just 13 years old, and has had a front-row seat to his growth into one of the best prospects in basketball history due to their shared French roots.
Some NBA peers have been left shocked by the immediate impact Wembanyama's made in his debut campaign despite his generational reputation. Gobert isn't among them given his personal experience playing and training with Wembanyama in France, but is nevertheless “impressed” by just how quickly the Rookie of the Year shoo-in has improved throughout his first NBA go-around.
“He’s way ahead of where I thought he’d be in year one. And he got better every month,” Gobert said of Wembanyama on The Old Man and the Three. “You could see early in the season he knew he had to adapt to the physicality of the NBA game, and also the scheduling, the traveling. I think the Spurs did an amazing job of protecting him, keeping him on a limitation early on, gradually raising his minutes but the level of comfort he has now, the level of understanding of the game he shows now, I thought that was going to be there in year two or three. I’ve been so proud and so impressed with the things he’s been doing and it’s exciting.”
It bears stressing just how closely Gobert has been able to track Wembanyama's development. Both members of the French national team, there's even footage of a 16-year-old Wembanyama getting buckets on the three-time Defensive Player of the Year during a casual game of one-on-one battle back in 2020.
Victor Wembanyama's DPOY case since moving to center
Wembanyama has emerged as a legitimate threat over the second half of 2023-24 to challenge Gobert for Defensive Player of the Year. While the Stifle Tower is still a rightful favorite to win his fourth Hakeem Olajuwon Trophy given Minnesota's historically dominant defense and superior play-by-play, season-long consistency, it seems only a matter of time until Wembanyama is recognized as basketball's best defender.
Gobert seems set to join Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace as the only players in league history to win Defensive Player of the Year four times. Would anyone be at all surprised if Wembanyama owns more DPOY awards than that by the time his career is finished?
Just because the Spurs' alien will likely fall short of that honor this season doesn't mean he lacks a case as the most impactful defender in basketball over the past several months. Wembanyama began his NBA debut starting at power forward alongside Zach Collins in San Antonio's frontcourt, positioning him as more of a roaming help defender than primary back0line rim-protector.
At 7'4 with a cartoonish eight-foot wingspan and movement skills of a forward, Wembanyama was still plenty disruptive defensively playing next to a traditional center. But his influence both on that end specifically and overall reached new heights once Gregg Popovich shifted him to the five full-time in early December.
Only Brook Lopez and Joel Embiid have contested more shots at the rim per game than Wembanyama's 9.0 over that timeframe, per NBA.com/stats. The 52.4% shooting he's allowed on those attempts not only ranks fourth behind Embiid, Kristaps Porzingis and Chet Holmgren among the 35 players who have faced at least five such shots per game, but is a full percentage point stingier than Gobert's similarly elite mark.
Counting stats like steals and blocks do Wembanyama's Defensive Player of the Year case even more favors. He's averaging 1.2 steals and 4.0 blocks per game since moving to center on a permanent basis, numbers normally reserved for video games that are somehow supported by the eye test.
More importantly? San Antonio's defensive rating with Wembanyama on the floor during that stretch is an extremely impressive 109.8, right between the Timberwolves and Boston Celtics' top-two marks for the season at large.
It's only a matter of time until Wembanyama wins Defensive Player of the Year, basically. And if he began his career where he belongs at center, Wembanyama really might have beaten out Gobert for his first of many Hakeem Olajuwon Trophies as a rookie.
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