When you think of Victor Wembanyama’s offensive game, the prevailing area of improvement most fans mention is the number of outside shots he takes. The San Antonio Spurs’ franchise center has the potential to enter the conversations for the Greatest of All Time, but to do that, he’ll need to make some tweaks to his game.
He has a deep tool bag, and versatility is his friend, but he needs a romantic relationship with one unstoppable move. If he can fall in love with a go-to shot, he unlocks a part of basketball that most of the legends before him did. It leads to winning because he can almost always get that shot, especially with his height.
If you can reliably get a good shot off that defenses consistently struggle to stop, you have a strong weapon in clutch time. The Spurs would benefit from that greatly, and there are plenty of examples of this.
Go-to moves are a staple for the best offensive players
Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant could get space for the mid-range pull-up whenever they wanted. It didn’t matter if they were on a dribble-drive or posting up. They could get to their spots and hit that shot in their sleep. Your best hope was to crowd their space as much as possible and hope they missed because you weren’t going to bother the attempt, and you certainly weren’t blocking it.
Dirk Nowitzki was a master of the one-legged fadeaway. It was an unblockable shot for the 7’0″ German, winning the Mavericks game after game. Kevin Garnett was a pick-and-pop magician. He could always float to the perfect spot on the floor for that 18-foot jumper that analytics says is a bad shot, but they’re wrong if you’re always making it.
Dwyane Wade popularized the pump fake and-1 midrange. He was only 6’4″, so he had to add a little trickery to his bag, and it worked to perfection, frustrating opponents to no end. You see guys like SGA doing it today.
We all know about Tim Duncan’s bank shot. You couldn’t block it no matter how hard you tried because if you over-committed, he’d just rip through and attack the middle of the paint, finishing over the top of your head. That’s where developing a counter comes into play, but first, you have to get the unstoppable move down.
It makes the game easier for you. Sure, there are guys who are physical freaks. Someone like Shaq and LeBron never really had a specific go-to move. They’d just power through, run past, or out-jump you. But while Wembanyama has his share of abnormal physical tools, he doesn’t have the strength to do some of those things. It would be much simpler to use his gifts to find a reliable shot he can build off.
Do that, and the path to GOAT becomes that much easier. That’s an arduous journey, so anything he can do to ease the adventure should be considered.