Víctor Wembanyama, the promise of French basketball that will reach the NBA

The NBA celebrates this Tuesday the most anticipated Draft lottery in recent decades, which will give the lucky winning team the ticket to choose the Frenchman Víctor Wembanyama, the greatest promise of basketball since LeBron James.

‘Unicorn’, ‘alien’ or ‘video game player’ are some of the adjectives that LeBron himself or Stephen Curry have dedicated in recent months to Wembanyama, a slender 2.21m tall tower with abilities never seen in a Draft.

“It’s unbelievable. I think in 2045 every player is going to look like Victor,” said Giannis Antetokounmpo. “The way he throws, that he moves. He is extremely fast for his size, he can block“.

“He has a chance to be one of the greatest to ever play basketball, we have to be ready for this guy,” the Bucks superstar said, projecting widespread sentiment throughout the NBA.

Wembanyama, 19, will not officially know which franchise he will start his career with until the June 22 draft ceremony in Brooklyn, where the 30 teams will be handed out to the top 60 young players from US colleges and professional leagues.

However, the surprise would be huge if the French center is not chosen by the team that wins the lottery this Tuesday, an event that will be broadcast from Chicago.

Neither the NBA, which has been promoting its future star for months, nor ‘Wemby’ himself hide his conviction that for the first time a French player will be number one in the Draft.

“There are ten days left to meet my future team. It’s a real madness“, the young man wrote on Twitter on May 6.

– 20 years after LeBron –

Despite the fact that this generation offers other gems, especially point guard Scoot Henderson, the NBA has focused on generating enormous anticipation around Wembanyama’s landing.

Never has a basketball promise received so much attention since a teenager named LeBron James and nicknamed “The Chosen One,” whose high school games were broadcast nationally and was voted number one in 2003.

Twenty years later, it is the NBA itself that broadcasts on its platforms the games of the Wembanyama team, the Metropolitans 92 of the French league, an unusual gesture for a foreign player.

The NBA had been aware of the diamond that was coming for years, but Wembanyama fever broke out in the United States last October, when the Metropolitans 92 were invited to play two friendlies in Las Vegas against Scoot Henderson’s team, the Ignite from the affiliate league G-League.

The Frenchman banished any doubt about his potential with a huge average of 36.5 points, 4.5 triples, 7.5 rebounds and 4 blocks in both games.

– ‘The right place’ –

Faced with the possibility of getting hold of a jewel of this caliber, many teams this year launched into a race to finish in the bottom places of the standings.

The NBA, in an attempt to balance the championship, offers the worst teams the best options to pick at the top of the Draft, which often causes some franchises to take measures designed to lose games.

This strategy, known as ‘tanking’, was sharpened this season despite the fact that the NBA launched various threats to prevent it.

The league went so far as to fine the Mavericks $750,000 for sitting out Luka Doncic and the rest of the figures in the final stretch of the regular season to improve their options in the draw.

The 14 franchises that were left out of the ‘playoffs’ will participate in Tuesday’s lottery, each with a percentage of options to be in first position.

The Pistons, Rockets and Spurs, the three teams with the worst win-loss ratio, are the most likely to win the draft, 14 percent each.

The other teams that aspire to take number one are the Hornets (12.5%), Blazers (10.5%), Magic (9%), Pacers (6.8%), Wizards (6.7%) , Jazz (4.5%), Mavericks (3%), Bulls (1.8%), Thunder (1.7%), Raptors (1%) and Pelicans (0.5%).

While all of them dream of a talent that will transform their destiny, Wembanyama assures that he has no preference for his new kit: “I don’t care. A player destined to become a great player, no matter where he lands, will be the right place.”