When LeBron James was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers as the first pick in the draft, Victor Wembanyama was not yet born and was only a guess of what he would be. He would have come into the world on January 4, 2004. Back then LeBron had already made his debut on the NBA parquet and Kobe Bryant’s elegance was the zenith of stars and stripes basketball.
In the torrid June of 2003 LeBron had been picked up directly at the end of high school without going through college, breaking a taboo, shortening the boom times. The talent scouts who travel the length and breadth of the nation in search of the gold nugget had found it at the St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. LeBron was immediately golden, little to rough, only to polish. “The Chosen”, the chosen one was baptized. Winning, idolized, committed, all-round champion in an America that asks the stars for baskets – and LeBron has scored more than all others, surpassing Kareem Abdul Jabbar this year – but also to be an example, an inspiration until he becomes a legend, landing place for the few and immortals.
Almost a generation after the wheel of history returns to its starting point, America sees another predestined, nineteen year old no college, warm hand, boundless talent. Nickname Wemby, French from Le Chesnay, son of Felix, Congolese, long, triple, high jumper; and Elodie, basketball in her blood, player and coach. It was she who placed the little (age) in front of a basket at 4 years old. Even if up to ten the boy would have dived imitating Barthez, hero of the ’98 World Cup, and would have fought like a judoka. So tall and so good right away with rebounds, triples and blocks. When he wasn’t even 12 he was so lanky and tough that he was traded in a youth game for coaching.
If it is true that one – perhaps two – phenomena is born in a generation, then Wemby, a 2.22-metre long tall man, could even shake his legs at the comparison that experts and enthusiasts have sewn on him even before seeing him measure himself against the gods of the ball in wedges. “The Next Big Thing”, the next big thing in America’s blunt, simple and effective language, is more than a label, it is a manifesto, a program, almost a calamity if the “thing” doesn’t come true, there is no victory.
Wemby was the first foreign player since Italy’s Bargnani in 2006 to top the draft. With Bargnani it was a pleasant curiosity, an exotic excursion to an America that extended its gaze to global basketball, rather than “The Next Big Thing”. He went to Toronto. Wemby was chosen by the San Antonio Spurs, a franchise with a recent noble and victorious past in the name of Manu Ginobili and another Frenchman, Tony Parker and two first-tier Americans who came out of the draft, that democratic way in which American sport seeks to level up the competition by having weaker teams pick the best players to bring into their squad. San Antonio took Tim Duncan and before him the same fate befell David Robinson, players of the Olympic Dream Team and four NBA rings.
“They were the longest five minutes of my life”, said the young Frenchman sitting with a green cap on his head waiting for his name to finally be pronounced on the evening which at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, June 22, decreed that Wemby’s American Dream had officially begun. And the black and white Spurs shirt with number one was already there waiting for him, the apical point of a script that has already been written but which still needs to be recited to the end. Two days later he was at the AT & T arena in scorching San Antonio, his new home before a flood of kids waving Spurs-logo caps. “I want to do the best in every aspect of my job and as much as I see the fans are doing theirs, I want to be like them,” he said before going to dinner with the old glories of the team – Duncan-Robinson-Ginobili – hired to explain to him what it means to be a Spurs.
Talent scouts had been targeting him for over two years when he played for Nanterre and then Metropolitan 92 in the French league; a few appearances in international tournaments was enough to access the eyes and make ESPN Sport’s Coty Davis say that this is “the man who can break basketball”.
Victor’s first contact with America, that strange land which famous Frenchmen such as Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette defended from the British in the Revolution and are therefore honored with the gardens in front of the White House, and which Tocqueville defined as a miracle of individualism in communities (a bit like a basketball team, star players moving in sync), it was curious and anomalous.
Entrance to the Catch restaurant in Las Vegas, July 10.
A fan approaches at a brisk pace and shouts: “Sir, Sir”. She comes so close to clapping his shoulder when she is stopped by the security guards; we get a slap – involuntarily – the glasses fly away but Wemby regardless of everything goes on, he doesn’t seem to notice anything. The blonde who follows him with small and rapid steps to fill his stride is none other than the Princess of Pop, Britney Spears, 41 years old; when she sang “Baby One More Time” it was 1999, LeBron had just started high school, Clinton was in the White House, and the NBA title was won for the first time in their history which began in 1967 by Gregg’s San Antonio Spurs Popovich, the same coach today.
Wemby doesn’t see her, maybe he doesn’t even know who he is, or maybe he had the elegance to pretend when the viral videos on the web and Britney’s – digital – screams denounce the outrage.
But America has no time for the fallen Princess of Pop, she’s tuned to Las Vegas because that’s where Victor will make his debut.
The first two games are weird. The NBA circus is in the pre-season in the Nevada desert, alternating sports halls and roulette, book shooting and black jack; the debut against Charlotte at Wemby is pitiful, he loses balls, he is awkward, slow, his talent suffocates in front of the physicality of American athletes, masses of muscles and power; the second, against Portland, however is for refined palates and eyes that see ahead: 27 points, tastes of predestined play, the jump shot of which he is the master because up there at those heights where he sees the basket, the others are overwhelmed by the clouds ; 13 rebounds, the forays into the area under the basket that are light, light and lightning-fast even for a giant like him. That’s enough for now, the star refused, he has to train – he announces in the press conference – for the regular season which will start in the autumn.
Gregg Popovich, the guru and extravagant coach of the Spurs, has an ad hoc training program for him, Wemby doesn’t want to put on “chili”, or muscles, but in the NBA, admirers and skeptics alike point out, without a physique, there is only one nice idea, just a hypothesis of champions.
Olden Polynice, TV commentator and former NBA player, is ruthless: “Yao Ming was of another category”, he says, dismissing the Frenchman from the suburbs of Paris as the one around whom too high expectations have been created. He prefers Bol Manute Bol, Sudanese born in 1999, US citizen, winger of the Phoenix Suns.
However, he is not the only one to have some doubts about the French with the Congolese surname, Wembanyama. On ESPN the trick about what Wemby must do to be LeBron is staged, and then in order: “He must learn to hold balls”, “become stronger and more powerful”, “play more aggressive”, and “learn to defend against wing, which is not easy if you are 2.22 meters”. And then he is fragile, at risk of injury because he is too tall.
Meanwhile Popovich scrutinizes him, the Spurs for the jewel that came from Paris in the new 500 million dollar training center which will be fully functional in a few months, have had a hydrotherapy tub built so large as to allow him to immerse himself completely. When players enter the center they will read the famous quote from Pounding The Rock by the father of social photography, the Danish-American Jacob Riis, who imagines the stonecutter’s hammer hitting the rock a hundred times without scratching it, and then with the hundred and first blow there is a crack , the opening: “It’s not this one that split the rock, but every blow”. Testifying the tenacity and determination of a team that in the idea of its owners is something more, it is attraction, model and development. There will be a park, cinemas, a swimming area, of course all the necessary sports infrastructure, bars and restaurants. There will also be a cellar for wines, refined connoisseur, connoisseur and collector, in Popovich’s office, as is already the case now. “What is my legacy? – Popovich replied to a reporter who asked him about the final loss in 2013 against the Miami Heat of Lebron James. “Food and wine, this (basketball, ed) is just a job”.
In the office it is said that he keeps a 1994 Ornellaia, five vintages of Masseto and the legendary 1990 Chateau d’Yquem. For now, The Big Next Things is an inviting Beaujolais.
2023-07-30 04:10:50
#Basketball #Victor #Wembanyama #enters #NBA #years
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