The Spurs Are the Most Exciting Team in the N.B.A.
Last June, Victor Wembanyama, a young center for the San Antonio Spurs, traveled to Zhengzhou, China, to study martial arts and meditation. Wembanyama, twenty-one at the time, was already known for his unconventional training methods. Even at seven-foot-four with an eight-foot wingspan, he did a handstand. He played speed chess between cardio workouts to hone his pattern recognition and decision-making while under intense physical stress. He performed (really) high kicks, surprising his teammates. Wembanyama surprised people easily and often. He could dunk without jumping, and he blocked shots so easily that it was soon enough to stop an opposing ball carrier with an intimidating look. But he could also dribble the ball down the court and drain step-back shots, or throw elegant little lobs to his high-flying teammates — not the sort of thing associated with seven-footers. When he arrived in the NBA, in 2023, he was the most heralded rookie in recent memory, and what was important about him wasn’t his size. It was his audacity.
But last February, a little more than halfway through his second year in the league, he was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis in his shoulder, and missed the rest of the season. The narrow, specialized life of a professional basketball player had put a strain on his body. Wembanyama therefore decided to expand these limits, by all means possible. In June of that year, he quietly traveled to Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of the ancient discipline of Shaolin kung fu, for ten days to see what he could learn. His first question to the monk overseeing his stay was whether he should shave his head to become “a true kung fu practitioner.” Yes, replied the monk. So Wembanyama sat down on the stone steps of the temple, and the monk took a razor and shaved the soft brown curls from the center. “There was no ritual, no audience,” the monk later wrote, in an account of Wembanyama’s time in Shaolin. The monk was struck by the seriousness of his commitment. “When it was done, he touched his head and smiled.”
Without Wembanyama last spring, the Spurs collapsed, losing nineteen of their remaining thirty games. Once a model of consistent excellence – from the late ’90s to the late ’20s, the Spurs made the playoffs every year, twenty-two seasons in a row – the team now seemed looking toward the future, toward Wembanyama’s heyday. But Wembanyama was not one to wait.
The Spurs started this season 5-0, and even thrived for a time without Wembanyama, who missed twelve games in November and early December with a strained calf. Things seemed different in San Antonio. The team’s longtime coach, Gregg Popovich, the winningest coach in NBA history, had retired and was replaced by Mitch Johnson, who was in his 30s. Two smooth, explosive players, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper, had been selected in back-to-back first drafts, and a third promising young player, Carter Bryant, drafted last year, possessed, like them, seemingly limitless athleticism. Shooting guard Devin Vassell did a myriad of things on the court that made life easier for the other players on the court. Julian Champagnie was on his way to leaving the fringes of the league to become one of its best three-point shooters. Forward Keldon Johnson made up for his relative lack of size with his fearlessness. And so on. Last season, the team traded for De’Aaron Fox, an All-Star guard in his prime, which struck some as odd: Wasn’t he too old to be on Wembanyama’s timeline? Now it seemed like a stroke of genius. Fox was a seasoned field general, capable of controlling a match or, on occasion, even taking charge of it. Luke Kornet, a backup center from Boston, held down the fort when Wembanyama was injured or on the bench. And when Wembanyama was on the field, the entire geometry of the game changed, due to his unique reach, skill range and gravity.
