Victor Wembanyama was only in his third year in the league when he led the San Antonio Spurs to the NBA Finals last season, but that didn’t stop him from being labeled as the villain in the series against the New York Knicks. <\/p>\n
Reflecting on that label, Wembanyama said he didn’t give it any attention at the time. <\/p>\n
“No, it didn’t because I’m not paying attention to this when you’re in the Finals,” he said on 60 Minutes. “I don’t think any player on either team really is.” <\/p>\n
Wembanyama said playing in the Finals also helped him learn more about himself as a player. <\/p>\n
“It showed my limits more than anything else,” he said. “Going out there, you need to play basketball; you don’t need to beat the s–t out of people.” <\/p>\n
His blood clot diagnosis in 2025 helped him reflect on things off the court. <\/p>\n
Wembanyama’s passion and intensity are second to none, and that perhaps sometimes comes out in ways that lead to him earning a villain label. Whether he’ll continue to embrace it remains to be seen. <\/p>\n
But while Wembanyama might be the villain in the eyes of other teams, he said his favorite play is one that requires great connection with his teammates. <\/p>\n
“I think alley-oops in particular,” he said. “Alley-oop is a team play and also a dunk. I like alley-oops.” <\/p>\n
Wembanyama is a rare player for many reasons, but the biggest is his combination of size and skill. The league has never seen someone at his height who can handle the ball and shoot like a guard. <\/p>\n
It also means he doesn’t have a player he can look to as the model for how to succeed. <\/p>\n
“I am comfortable not knowing my answers. I am comfortable walking through the fog,” Wembanyama said. <\/p>\n
While he can’t turn to former players as mentors the way some players can, he’s managed to find inspiration in other ways, like a trip to China last offseason. <\/p>\n
Wembanyama, who became the league’s first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year last season, is off to a great start this year, putting up 28.0 points, 10.7 rebounds, 4.2 blocks and 1.3 steals per game. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama was only in his third year in the league when he led the San Antonio Spurs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-949503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}