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Long before he was in the NBA, the reputation of Victor Wembanyama had grown so large that everything he did on a basketball court over in Europe was deemed “must-see.” When the San Antonio Spurs won the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery, it was as if they had just won a mega millions jackpot that had climbed to the high nine-figures. Wemby represented a change in the landscape of basketball in San Antonio. It was a guarantee that for as long as he was in San Antonio, the Spurs would be among the most watched and discussed teams in the NBA. And sure, San Antonio had been graced with lottery luck in the past, securing both David Robinson and Tim Duncan with the number one overall picks, but Wemby is different. While Duncan and Robinson collected MVP awards and NBA Titles, they didn't have the mass appeal the young French phenom does. Victor Wembanyama is a player that we've never seen before who regularly does things we've never seen before…
Victor Wembanyama’s dunk on Dec. 31 has generated 88.8M views in just 4 days on the NBA’s Instagram and is on the verge of taking the No. 1 spot as the account’s most-viewed video EVER. The @Spurs face off against the @Bucks tonight at 7:30 p.m. ET on TNT.https://t.co/4KAkwAmCH4
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) January 4, 2024
But here's the thing, though… I've seen this play before.
Actually, that's inaccurate.
The truth is, I've actually lived this play before.
Back when I was an elementary school PE teacher, every once in a while I'd hop in and play some some basketball games with the fourth and fifth graders. They loved it, and because the hoop we were playing on wasn't the regulation ten-feet tall — it was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of eight feet high — my ability to dunk with ease made me a big hit amongst the ten and eleven year olds. This is in no way meant to be a brag. I'd need another foot on either my vertical jump or my height in order to dunk on a regulation basket. Either way, the kids didn't know any better. I'd get requests to dunk every single day, so I'd oblige, getting a big round of applause every time. Every once in a while, when I hopped in one of those games, if I had a clear path to dunk — meaning I didn't have any ankle-biters unknowingly trying to take a charge as I was going hard in the paint — I'd unleash a dunk like this Wemby dunk.
But again, I was doing it on an eight-foot hoop, dunking over someone who was maybe four and a half feet tall, and I assure you it didn't look nearly as effortless for me as it does for Victor Wembanyama when he did so against Derrick White and the Celtics. So one last time, this is not a brag.
And that's the allure of Wembanyama, right? Because he's so tall, so skilled, and so long, everything he does on a basketball court looks effortless.
