LeBron James on what makes Victor Wembanyama truly unique and scary
LeBron James explained the many unique qualities that make Victor Wembanyama a truly scary player.
On Friday, the San Antonio Spurs will host the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals in Texas after the two teams split the first two games. While the Thunder are the defending NBA champions and are expected by plenty to win the series, there is a sense that Victor Wembanyama has arrived and that this series will be a dogfight. Wembanyama had 41 points, 24 rebounds and three blocks in a Game 1 double-overtime victory.
From the day he entered the league in the fall of 2023, everyone knew he would be a special superstar, but now that people are seeing him for the first time on a big stage, he is starting to look truly scary. LeBron James elicited the same reactions from people when he appeared in his first conference final series in 2007 and led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals with an incredible clutch performance in Game 5 of that matchup versus the Detroit Pistons . On his "Mind the Game" podcast, he broke down what makes Wembanyama truly unique and scary, besides the fact that the 22-year-old is listed at 7-foot-4.
“He’s not the first guy in our league that’s been tall,” James said. “He’s not the first guy in our league that had length or been tall, he’s not, so we can nip that in the bud right now guys. And yes, it is a factor because his length, his size, the way he’s able to cover a lot of ground, especially defensively.
“But when we talk about what he’s able to do offensively -- his ability to put the ball on the ground, we’ve seen him iso-ing multiple Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert multiple times on the perimeter. Hitting him with snatch-backs, spins, up-and-unders, dream shakes, fadeaways. We’ve seen him cross-dribble, step-back out of the corner for 3.