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Victor Wembanyama- basketball's NEXT next unicorn?

shadow_operative

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ztejas

ztejas 44236

Posted
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29 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

 

Who are these two dweebs commentating? He has the same issues as Chet. Bodies that big aren't designed to move like that. Yeah he looks nice at 18 - can he put NBA miles on that body? 

On 9/25/2022 at 1:35 AM, shadow_operative said:

the rest of the world is catching up to/passing us in basketball because of AAU. here's a look at the next next next next unicorn, and the depressing and laughable competition he faces:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ci5hVY5pIFP/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

 

 

Meh. It isn't because of AAU. The sport is becoming more popular and there are more international prospects as a result. If you want to make the NBA you're best served growing up in America and that won't change for a long time. 

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TonyTexas

TonyTexas 10783

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25 minutes ago, Fastbreak said:


Yep. But the Jazz and Rockets are the only 2 teams who have a chance for picks 1 and 2.

I’m not happy about it but the Rockets are going to surprise this year. Not playoff bound but not bottom 3 either. They have a buttload of exciting rookies and 2nd year players. 

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SilasCoade

SilasCoade 2622

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I don't think the Rockets need to be in emergency talent acquisition mode anymore. I think they hit on a star in Green and I expect to feel the same way about Smith at the end of this year. They've got solid young talent around those guys in KJ Martin and Tate. I'm not convinced they have a quality big man, but in the modern NBA that's the least important component of roster construction. They've got Gordon and Porter and future picks to use as trade bait to bring in a solid third veteran. I like Clarkson from the Jazz as a third scoring option who's probably available, but someone in that range. Their window of opportunity is probably realistically around 2025, but they should start to be competitive the next couple of years.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32605

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Here's John Hollinger's thoughts:

 

https://theathletic.com/3667190/2022/10/07/victor-wembanyama-nba-draft-scouting/

 

Spoiler

There is nothing more amazing than an event that not only lives up to the hype, but exceeds it.

We all had high hopes for this week’s Battle Royale in the Las Vegas suburbs between the likely top two picks in the 2023 NBA draft, French big man Victor Wembanyama and G League Elite guard Scoot Henderson. But nothing could have prepared us for the show we got from both players in the first game on Tuesday, and in particular for the breathtaking performance by Wembanyama on Thursday.

Over the two games, Wembanyama scored 73 points, shot 9 of 18 on 3-pointers, drew 28 free throws, blocked nine shots … and, less commented upon, only committed three turnovers. Beyond that, It wasn’t even the statistical accumulation that was so amazing, but the breathtaking way in which he accomplished it.

Put simply, we have never seen anything like this before. Wembanyana is a basketball evolution all his own, a unicorn even among unicorns, the unholy melding of the best traits of Ralph Sampson, Kristaps Porziņģis:, and Dirk Nowitzki.

Watch here as he does a completely normal thing for a 7-foot-4 player, calling for a screen as he runs pick-and-roll (!), getting a guard switched on to him, and then, instead of trying to bulldoze the smaller player toward the rim, pulling up from the hashmark next to the sideline to splash in a 3-pointer. This is Curry range!

 

Or watch here, as he starts at the 3-point line, attacks with his weaker left hand, does a letter-perfect imitation of Hakeem Olajuwon’s Dream Shake, and makes a fading baseline jumper over a helpless defender.

 

 

In particular, Wembanyama’s ability to shoot on the move for a player of his size is something we just haven’t seen before. Porziņģis: is an awesome set shooter with crazy range, but he’s not throwing dribbles ten feet in front of himself so he can catch up to it on the move and launch into a feathery fadeaway. Yao Ming was even bigger, much stronger, and an awesome foul shooter, but he was strictly a set shooter once he got past 15 feet. You have to get down to Nowitzki’s size – a mere 7-footer – to find a real comparison.

Between the size and length and the off-the-charts skill level, calling Wembanyama a generational prospect feels somewhat like calling fire an important discovery; while true, it still comes across as a massive understatement. One can argue there hasn’t been a player who felt this “can’t miss” this young since Lew Alcindor. Look, I scouted Porziņģis: and Luka Dončić in Spain, saw Greg Oden play in the Final 4, and watched John Wall fly past overmatched opponents at the Hoop Summit. None of them had observers slobbering and guffawing like this; not even close.

That takes us to the other big piece of the discussion: This was an event. Kudos to the NBA for getting the French team over here to play these games and, in the process, massively helping to market a generational talent for next season.

While we’ve had other years where the draft class got everyone excited months ahead of the actual event – the 2003 LeBron James-led class, certainly, and the 2007 Oden-Durant draft – we’ve never had a single showdown between the probably top two picks like this since Larry Bird and Magic Johnson went head-to-head in the 1979 NCAA final.

Watching both this week’s games from courtside, as well as Wembanyama’s pre-game shooting work, I had to catch myself even as I was critiquing some of his areas for improvement. “I think he could have attacked to his left on that pick-and-roll,” I’d think, and then quickly remind myself I was picking apart a 7-foot-4 teenager running point against American pros.

What in the actual hell did I just witness?

I just want to emphasize in my loudest possible voice that THIS IS NOT NORMAL:

 

The combined impact of the two games has been to create a truly rare event in league annals: Major buzz about the draft before the NBA has even begun its season. Usually, we need the college season to get underway before that happens, but this year the likely top three picks in the draft all play outside the NCAA system. (This could be a sign of the times as well, with insurgents G League Ignite and Overtime Elite rostering the likely second and third picks, Henderson and forward Amen Thompson).

While we’re here: The competition level in this game was significantly higher than what Wembayama or Henderson might have faced in, say, the Big 10 or SEC. Actually, the fourth and fifth-best players on Wembayama’s team were recent All-Conference players in those two leagues. For those old-schoolers who wonder if the French prodigy could be doing this at Duke or Gonzaga, donnez moi une break.

We don’t know exactly what Wembayama will be, and it’s possible that it ends up being not quite everything we’ve built it up to be. We’ve seen hot prospects short out for all kinds of reasons, whether it is failure to improve, failure to stay healthy, or failure of our own evaluation. Maybe he ends up being merely “really good,” a la Sampson and Porziņģis:.

On the other hand, maybe he’s an unbelievably ridiculous superfreak who will be the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of this century. In addition to the off-the-charts skill level for a player of this size, Wenbanyama seems to check all the other boxes — he’s competitive, composed, mature, already speaks English fluently, and unlike some other hyped giants (such as Oden, notably) has no obvious movement or structural oddities in his elongated frame. There were two hundred people here looking high and low for red flags, and they didn’t find any.

So … given all that, everybody should tank, right?

Especially since the second prize (Henderson) looks to be an elite player took and several other players in this draft (such as Amen Thompson, his twin brother Ausur Thompson, and Arkansas guard Nick Smith) project as top-tier talents. Shouldn’t it be a no-brainer?

Not so fast.

First of all, there are so many layers to the tanking debate that it actually becomes a pretty complex calculation. Not just whether to tank, but what exactly we mean when we say “tanking.”

Let’s start at the top: in the wake of tanking accusations surrounding the stacked 2018 draft (who, me?) the NBA flattened out the draft lottery odds considerably. The teams with the three worst records each have the same odds of getting the top pick, at just 14 percent. Additionally, the teams with the fifth and sixth worst records don’t have appreciably worse odds of getting the top pick: 9 percent for sixth, versus 14 percent for the league’s worst ream.

This is an important distinction, because you don’t have to be that bad to give yourself a realistic shot at a generational talent. Most people think of the abject humiliation of “The Process” Sixers when they talk about tanking, but the league awards no extra bonus points for finishing 7-75. Because of that, “Quiet Quitting” works just as effectively. Finish with one of the seven worst records and you’re in the game; even at ninth or tenth worst you’re not totally out of it. (My Grizzlies, for instance, got Ja Morant in 2019 after finishing in a three-way tie for the seventh-worst record).

There are other benefits to out-tanking your opponents, of course; if you finish outside the money in the lottery drawing you’ll still pick higher than your fellow unlucky brethren, and your second-round pick will be higher too. Nonetheless, the bulk of the value distribution in any tanking scenario lies in the prospect of landing one of the top four picks in the draft, and in particular the top one.

If that’s the case, and if it’s also the case that the greater probability distribution of landing in the top four has removed the most brazen tanking scenarios, then the NBA can probably relax, right? I mean, the league’s executives already knew about Wembanyama, and by my count at least 23 of them were pretty much full speed ahead on trying to win this year.

So …. here’s the thing people forget about NBA teams and how they operate.

The decision to tank isn’t just made willy-nilly by a general manager. This is one of the big-picture moves that absolutely, positively requires buy-in from ownership to pursue.  And that adds another variable: Some owners are more than willing if the moment is right, some are dead-set against it, and some in the middle are reluctant but persuadable.

And this week, the persuadability factor just went up. Waaaaay up. A general manager’s opinion on whether to tank might not have changed, but his owner’s receptiveness to the proposal sure as hell did. Not because any owners were there watching Wemby in person, but because, like I said above, this was an event.

Put yourself in the owners’ shoes: The buzz factor is now through the roof. No longer is your team tanking for some unknown quantity playing halfway around the globe, a maybe stacked upon the maybe of winning the lottery in the first place. Forget that; now you’re tanking for the biggest whale in the ocean. Everyone is talking about him and everyone knows who he is. And all your fans badly want you to tank, including all the VIPs you hobnob with at games and around town.

For owners, tanking just became cool.

I noted the distributed probability above, but that creates another tanking incentive that we haven’t really talked about: It’s possible to tank late. We saw it last year with Indiana and, more brazenly, Portland, both of whom maneuvered into bottom-7 draft positions despite beginning the year with ambitions of a playoff run.

We’re almost certainly going to get that again. Right now I have seven teams marked as “not really interested in making the playoffs” and 23 making at least a fairly serious attempt at winning games this year. Inevitably, a couple of these 23 teams will find themselves falling out of the playoff race in February and decide to shift gears into reverse. Offloading veterans at the trade deadline, strategically shutting down key players with vague injuries, and closing with a rousing 5-31 blitz to the finish (or whatever it takes) is very much in play for the right team.

Of course, limits remain. Teams are still going to try to make the playoffs; the four teams that lose in the play-in round only have a combined 1-in-20 chance of winning the lottery. Discussing tanking is fun and all, but even the league’s worst team has an 86 percent chance of not getting Wembanyama. You better have some decent alternate plans if you punt the season.

So, getting back to the big picture, I think we’re basically okay on the tanking front. It’s not that nobody will tank, but it’s pointless for teams to outdo each other beyond a certain point. Additionally, the play-in carrot adds real costs to the decision for middling teams.

Nonetheless, here’s where I expect to see the Wembanyama Effect: Don’t be surprised if some teams go much, much earlier than they otherwise would have. Instead of waiting til February, somebody might pull the plug in December. One could easily imagine a team like, say, Charlotte or Portlandstarting the year 8-19 and figuring “to hell with this.”

Do the math: If you know landing in the bottom six or seven is the goal, and that at least three teams have basically planted their flag in the ground already, you realize there just isn’t a lot of real estate left on Tank Island. Get in early, everyone; they’re not making more.

Ultimately, that’s why the tanking incentive will never totally go away regardless of what optimizations the league makes to the lottery process. Superstars have disproportionate value in the NBA, so the potential rewards are simply too great. In the case of Wembanyama, in fact, they’ve arguably never been higher.

 

 

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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SilasCoade

SilasCoade 2622

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4 hours ago, Message Board User said:

 

Yeah, no. Derka's right. You still take Lebron. And if Lebron was coming up now he'd have spent 10 years building up the 3 ball.

1 hour ago, Slacks said:

Rik Smits is the over 7'3" GOAT.

Prove me wrong.

Rik Smits is Porzingis with a better attitude. C'mon man.

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Murfdogg21

Murfdogg21 4564

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On 8/7/2022 at 5:19 PM, ztejas said:

It could depend on how Chet looks as a rookie. 

As a Rocket fan, I hoped that Chet wasn’t the player to fall to #3 because I was scared he’d be frequently injured and may not be strong enough to match up with big 4’s and 5’s. I assumed the same position about VW until his last two outings. Now I’m all about the tank effort to land this French unicorn. Can we get John Wall and Russ Westbrook back to lead this noble effort?

I will dream to myself of a lineup of Jalen Green, Jabari Smith, Wembanyama, Sengun, Eason, TyTy, and whoever they bring in with their mega cap space. 

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Slacks

Slacks 7066

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5 hours ago, Murfdogg21 said:

Rik Smits looked like a sloth and wouldn’t have been shit if not for the extremely talented and deep roster he played with. That Pacers team in the 90s was sick. 

So...I said "Prove me wrong" and you came with Kareem and Chief are whack because they played with great players on stacked teams.

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Slacks

Slacks 7066

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8 hours ago, SilasCoade said:

Yeah, no. Derka's right. You still take Lebron. And if Lebron was coming up now he'd have spent 10 years building up the 3 ball.

Rik Smits is Porzingis with a better HEALTH. C'mon man.

Fify...  Porzingis hasn't completed a full season in 5 seasons.

Prove me wrong, I said!!

Rik Smits is to 7'3"+ players what Greg Davis is to Texas Football offensive coordinators.

ou sucks.

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Braff Zacklin

Braff Zacklin 13676

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9 hours ago, Murfdogg21 said:

Rik Smits looked like a sloth and wouldn’t have been shit if not for the extremely talented and deep roster he played with. That Pacers team in the 90s was sick. 

I dunno, man. Smits wasn't much on the defensive end but the Dunking Dutchman had one of the smoothest shots ever for a big. He was (literally) a big reason why that roster was stacked.

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SilasCoade

SilasCoade 2622

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3 hours ago, Slacks said:

Fify...  Porzingis hasn't completed a full season in 5 seasons.

Prove me wrong, I said!!

Rik Smits is to 7'3"+ players what Greg Davis is to Texas Football offensive coordinators.

ou sucks.

It's a much more apt comp than you want to believe. The Dutchman would be killing Porzi in the post but Porzingis range gives him the overall edge on offense. Defense is a wash.

Screenshot_2022-10-08_07-44-02.png

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Slacks

Slacks 7066

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13 minutes ago, SilasCoade said:

It's a much more apt comp than you want to believe. The Dutchman would be killing Porzi in the post but Porzingis range gives him the overall edge on offense. Defense is a wash.

Screenshot_2022-10-08_07-44-02.png

Look at the number of games played. 

My whole point was that Rik Smits played 12 years and actually played a lot of games...mostly full seasons +/- 10% (injuries/playoffs). Porsingis plays about half a season.

This is the same for most players over 7'3". Ralph, Yao, Bradley, Eaton.

Rik Smits could score, was 7'4",  and had Avail-ability.

He was the first Unicorn of Ultra-Big health. First was Jabbar, but he was 'only' 7'2".

VW could be next. It's time. The game is so much taller now.  There will likely be an 8' player (or two!)... In our lifetime.

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MeerkatBong

MeerkatBong 115

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On 10/8/2022 at 12:25 PM, Fastbreak said:

Ralph Sampson was fucking good

Quote

We’ve never seen a player like Wemby before. He is like Kevin Durant crossed with Rudy Gobert, making him a Gen-Z Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Ralph Sampson raised on YouTube videos. As hyperbolic as it all sounds, executives around the league already agree that Wembanyama has Hall of Fame potential with the upside to be one of the greatest players ever.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2022/10/7/23392450/victor-wembanyama-nba-draft-scouting-report

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Braff Zacklin

Braff Zacklin 13676

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Keeps his dribble surprisingly low for somebody that long. And appears he's already developed the Mailman/Dirk knee lift ...

Wonder how his tape compares to Durant at the same ages. Both are unusually skilled--precocious, even--although Wemby might have a better outside shot in addition to being a few inches taller.

Geez, what a prospect.

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Hermanator

Hermanator 7676

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I think he has a damn good chance to stay healthy since the NBA is a soft league without much contact and primarily an outside game. Defenders won't be able to muscle him around and push him off his spots like they would if he played 2 to 3 decades ago. He would be constantly injured if he played in the late 80s. 

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