2023-10-25 12:27:00
The 19-year-old Frenchman will play his first NBA match on the night of Wednesday to Thursday. Never has a player aroused so much expectation and curiosity, to the point that opposing teams are already adapting as best they can.
To prepare for the first game of their season, the Dallas Mavericks have planned a funny exercise. In a video posted by a local journalist, we see the players in full training trying, one by one, ball in hand, to reach the basket. To stop them, God Shammgod, one of the team’s assistant coaches, transformed himself. Like Inspector Gadget, the former player has equipped himself with extendable arms. Objective: try to imitate as best as possible Victor Wembanyama, his 2m22 height and 2m43 wingspan, whom the Mavericks will face on the night of Wednesday October 25 to Thursday October 26. “It’s hard to find someone 2m20 who is as talented as Victor,” Jason Kidd, Dallas coach, justified himself after training.
It’s official: Mavs are prepping for the Spurs, specifically 7-4 rookie Victor Wembanyama, with God Shammgod playing the role of Wemby. “Wemby! Wemby” he hollered while going out to defend Irving with his artificial Wemby length. pic.twitter.com/cKmgnP0M1n
— Brad Townsend (@townbrad) October 21, 2023
Viewed nearly two million times, shared by American and French accounts, but also Turkish, Brazilian and even Polish accounts, the extract illustrates the mixture of impatience, fear and curiosity that the Frenchman generates both among fans and among his future adversaries. Thursday, at 3:30 a.m. Paris time, Victor Wembanyama will officially be an NBA player. A few months after having competed in the French championship like never before or almost no one had done before him, arousing an inordinate expectation for a 19-year-old kid, the midfield of this Spurs-Mavericks will mark the moment of sending off his second career.
Wemby burger
Drafted in first position by the Spurs on June 22, Wemby entered a new dimension as soon as he set foot in the United States. The frenzy that surrounded his matches in France turned into pure madness in Texas. In several places in the streets of San Antonio, XXL drawings with his image have appeared. Since this summer, you can even eat a Wemby burger, drink a Wemby Cocktail or get a Wembanyama haircut. At the same time, the NBA shares its every move on its social networks. And the media requests are pouring in – several young French journalists have even left settle in Texas to follow the daily adventures of the giant.
Faced with this whirlwind of requests, Victor Wembanyama first needed to cut back. After two games for butter at the beginning of July with other young players like him, he disappeared. Two months without the slightest appearance in the media, shared between rest and training behind closed doors. “For the first time in my life, I felt moral fatigue. Nothing negative, but I needed to take a little vacation to continue to be mentally calm,” he explained in mid-September in a video exchange with several French journalists, in which Libé participated, on the sidelines of the -premiere of a documentary dedicated to him.
Back on the scene as the start of the NBA season approaches, the Frenchman is getting used to his new role perfectly. In a video published by the Spurs, we see him improvising as a journalist, lugging his large frame through the streets of San Antonio, cowboy hat on his head, to meet fans. Each exchange is punctuated with a little joke and a big smile. His English is perfect. You’d think you’d see a politician with forty years on the campaign trail. “From my point of view, there is no pressure. These are simply steps that are part of the life of a basketball player. Interviews, expectations, questions, intrusive people, all that is normal when you have such big goals, he explained in September. And if one day I’m not well, I can tell myself that there were people who celebrated just because I was going to live in their town.”
A successful pre-season
On the pitch too, despite the madness that surrounds him, Victor Wembanyama impresses. In pre-season, a funny ceremony where the stars only play part-time and with the handbrake to be sure not to get injured, the Frenchman showed himself. Four matches played for around twenty minutes on average and almost as many points (19.3). All accompanied by brilliant actions – a dribble between the legs of an opponent, a dunk over a defender and blocks distributed in spades – which once again give the impression of seeing an adult having fun with children. At the press conference, the journalists are all about “Wemby”. To the point that his coach, Gregg Popovich, 74 years old and five titles at the head of the Spurs, sometimes gets annoyed. When he doesn’t admit that he too fell under the Frenchman’s spell.
However, it’s difficult to imagine San Antonio racking up victories this season. Last year, the team had the second worst record in the entire NBA (22 wins and 60 losses). Wembanyama aside, the squad has changed little this summer and remains one of the least experienced in the league: all the starters are 25 years old or younger. More than playing leading roles, the idea is to develop all these young people and work for the future. The Frenchman is aware of this. Before thinking about exploits and titles, Victor Wembanyama relies on a monk’s routine – going to bed at 8:30 p.m., getting up at dawn to spend the most time training. And to the “signs […] a little mystical” that “the universe” sends him. “I have no doubts about the future. I was made as I am and I must make the most of what was given to me. The universe speaks to me from time to time and I know where it takes me,” he swore in mid-September.
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