Victor Wembanyama’s NBA debut: a night of dizzying hype and limitless promise

IIn October 2003, I flew to Sacramento, California, to watch LeBron James play his first professional basketball game. Even at the age of 18, his physical presence was incredibly impressive. I wrote at the time (for this article) that most tall men look impoverished, as if the normal amount of human material has been stretched too thin. LeBron, on the other hand, looked like a statue of a normal person – not just taller, but considerably sturdier. The scouting report suggested his jump shot was still shaky, and I noticed he fell short in pre-game warmups. There seemed to be a hitch in his stroke, a kind of hesitation; he leaned back a little as he let go. Then the game started and this teenager playing with grown men waved his first three mid-range jumpers without any hesitation.

Twenty years later, I flew to San Antonio, Texas, to watch the most hyped teen prospect since…Lebron James, even though LeBron himself remains one of the handful of best players in the NBA. (It helps, as Michael Jordan once quipped, to start “while (you) are young.”) Victor Wembanyama is the etiolated kind of tall man. Even the way he runs reminds you of the kind of long-limbed light-footedness that might not break the surface tension of a body of water. Tall basketball players sometimes act like they are shorter than they are. I’ve heard it anywhere from 8 feet to 8 feet. He is 19 years old. He may still be growing.

I saw him warm up an hour before the game on Wednesday night. One of the things that sets him apart from previous giants is that he is determined to utilize all his basketball skills – in other words, he doesn’t want to play with the greats all the time. And most of what he worked on in pre-game was wing skills, quick crossovers, two-ball dribbling, three-point shots, dribbling, give and go’s… only occasionally venturing into the low post to practice his links – and right-handed baby hooks. He had a clean stroke, but clearly became exhausted as the session progressed. Strokes of misses began to replace the strokes of marks.

One of the questions you always want to ask super tall basketball players is: Would they still be good if they were shorter? (This is why they lie about their height.) I’m not sure how meaningful it is. What counts as shorter? Six feet, the average height of an NBA player? But part of what gets people excited about Wembanyama is the feeling that, yes, he could be very good if he weren’t extraordinarily tall. For starters, he moves like a basketball player: he stops well, shifts his weight from foot to foot, and quickly transitions from lazy to sudden. Coaches taught him to dribble low, despite his height; he has a mean crossover. But he also has the kind of physical control that allows him to spin in the lane, get up, avoid defenses in the air and finish left-handed across his body. There are a lot of NBA players who can take that step, but they’ve never been this big.

The truth is, no one knows what to make of Wemby’s height yet. We know the difference between a six-one guard and a six-five guard. The way it changes, like who they can defend, but not quite how much it matters if you’re 6-foot-4 or 6-foot-4.

I’m curious what he thinks of his new office. Outside the Frost Bank Center are what appear to be airport hangars or sheds, which house livestock. And high in the rafters of the arena, at the corner of the Spurs’ five championship banners, hangs a series of banners honoring the hosts of the “big indoor rodeo of the year.” An NBA game is as much a vaudeville act as it is a sporting event. Before tip-off, there is a light show and the game is constantly interrupted by commercial breaks, with the live audience being entertained by, among other things, a man in a coyote suit.

Then the game started and this teenager playing with grown men looked like a teenager. He grabbed a rebound and led the fast break alone, drove beyond the three-point line… and missed. At times he looked lost in defence. Part of his tremendous potential is his ability to chase outside shooters from the key, but it also makes him susceptible to header forgeries. Maybe he was getting a little tired. On offense, he seemed most comfortable making jump shots. The comfort of a jump shot is that you don’t have to feel your way into the flow of the game; you just stand up and shoot. But he also allowed himself to be pushed to the three-point line instead of fighting for the inside position – instead of clashing with the bigs.

He became frustrated in the second half and picked up several cheap fouls in an attempt to establish a more physical presence. It looked like the entire opening night was going to turn into a damp sob. His opponents, the Dallas Mavericks, took the lead, while Wemby watched from the sidelines with five fouls. But he was just the backdrop. With a few minutes to go, he re-entered the game, and Spurs deliberately played a set play for him, which ended with Wemby reaching over an aerial bunch of very tall men and simply squeezing an alley-oop into the basket. That got him going. It was followed by a rebound, a brave I-shoot-it-because-I-want-to three-pointer, a fast-break dunk and then… with his team down by two, Wemby again called for the ball in the post, caught it over the six-foot Grant Williams (who had been pushing him around all night), turned around and hit a 15-footer in the face to level the game. The teenager was now enjoying himself and 19,000 people had something to cheer about.

It did not take long. The Mavericks’ Luka Dončić was by far the best player on the floor and took over at the end to seal the game. Does it matter? Not really. LeBron also lost his first game in Sacramento. But those last five minutes gave the entire evening a sense of occasion, something that was delivered. It’s a long season.

The competition and the sport have changed a lot in twenty years. When LeBron joined the NBA, no team of American professionals had ever lost in the Olympics. Until the next summer in Athens, when they won the bronze medal and LeBron came off the bench. As Wembanyama enters the league, there is a reasonable argument that the four best players in the world are all non-American, a list that includes the last five winners of the Most Valuable Player of the Season award (Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid ) and Dončić himself, who is only 24. Wemby could join at some point, and there are reasonable people who think that if he doesn’t, something must have gone wrong. That’s a lot of pressure for a 19-year-old boy who has just finished his first day at work. He has another match on Friday evening.

• Benjamin Markovits’ latest novel, The Sidekick, about the complicated friendship between an NBA star and one of the reporters who covers him, is now available in paperback