At the start of the NBA season, the major North American basketball league, when Victor Wembanyama and Guerschon Yabusele were imagining the duels between their San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks franchises, the two leaders of the French basketball team were far from suspecting that they would not cross paths on the floor. While the first asserts himself, game after game, as the megastar of the league, the second, outside the plans of his coach, Mike Brown, no longer leaves – or almost – the sidelines. And the meeting between their two teams, Wednesday December 31 (during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, at 1 a.m. in Paris), in the Texans arena, should be no exception.
Like the two headliners of the Blues, the French under contract in the NBA – 19 in total, a record – are experiencing varying fortunes. Victor Wembanyama, who turns 22 on January 4, remains true to himself: impressive when he plays, worrying when he gets injured. After a venous thrombosis in the shoulder which forced him to cut short his previous season, the Spurs pivot won the very first “player of the week” title of this 2025-2026 financial year in October, and he panicked the statistics trackers. But a calf strain in mid-November then caused him to miss 12 games.
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