Coming off a missed shot at the end of Game 2<\/a> to find his Spurs in an 0-2 hole heading back to New York, Wembanyama needed to decompress. Every player spends their downtime differently. De\u2019Aaron Fox said he just does nothing. Wembanyama seeks a plethora of ways to stimulate his mind because he ties nearly every moment to some sense of growth.<\/p>\nHe\u2019s tried his hand at pottery, sculpting and even painting, but drawing has been his artistic home. Wembanyama called it his second passion after basketball, the pursuit he\u2019d chase if he weren\u2019t so good at defense. He likes to draw medieval knights in his downtime, valiant warriors of the past who lived by a sense of honor. On this day, he observed a man dressed as Hamlet, a Danish prince whose mind was clouded by vengeance.<\/p>\n
Wembanyama said after his infamous turnover at the end of the Spurs\u2019 Game 2 loss that his mind was cloudy. The heat of the moment was a blur and the sharpness of his mind had dulled just enough for him to make a grave mistake.<\/p>\n
So, when he got to New York, he needed to hone it again. That started with taking a step back from the chaos of the game and into something simple and tangible.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally tried to relax. The Playoffs, it\u2019s like a \u2014 I don\u2019t know how to say that word \u2014 a whirlwind. It\u2019s hard to put your head out of the water,\u201d Wembanyama said after the Spurs\u2019 Game 3 win. \u201cSometimes, I don\u2019t even got to watch the game back right away. I need some time off, let my brain cool down, recover. Recover as much for the body as for the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
He found peace in the bronze face of Booth\u2019s statue, a reminder of how the world is always watching and always will be with every shot he takes. Booth\u2019s brother, John Wilkes, is known for a different kind of shot. Legacies, good or bad, live on forever.<\/p>\n
That is an incredible amount of pressure to hoist on a 22-year-old\u2019s shoulders, even if you need a ladder to put it there. He has been in a battle with his ego, to both unleash it and tame it. He is the ultimate team player in that he relies upon his teammates to be himself. He typically functions as the center of gravity, not a planet in orbit. He\u2019s had to find harmony between imposing himself and letting things come to him. He was too passive in the Game 2 loss, then he found his place in the Game 3 win.<\/p>\n
As this NBA Finals has carried on, Wembanyama has not exhibited much tension away from the floor. His shoulders appear relaxed. The sketching helps.<\/p>\n
As the video captured him perched on the park bench, he leaned closely into his sketchpad, engrossed in the moment. For someone who has to make decisions on the move in fractions of a second, there is something freeing about the stillness of this endeavor. It\u2019s just him, the pen, the paper and time.<\/p>\n
While players are doing everything from cold tubs to Normatec boots to help their bodies recover, Wembanyama spends extra time rehabbing the mind. Drawing is his brain\u2019s active recovery.<\/p>\n
Something focused, peaceful and touching the soul. When he sits with his sister and sketches the statue in the park, he balances capturing the scene and interpreting it. It asks him to consider how he sees the world, then gives him context when he looks to his left to see her interpretation as well. Just in how the world sees him. Every perspective on Wembanyama has a touch of projection. Perhaps his greatest feat this year has been to hold tight to the sense of self he\u2019s been developing his whole life.<\/p>\n
Since he was young, Wembanyama has trained the bridge between his body and mind to maximize his potential to survive the audacity of his game. He is listed at 7-foot-4 but actually stands closer to 7-foot-6, and moves across the floor in a way that defies our understanding of humanity. That\u2019s a gift that\u2019s earned as much as it is bestowed.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where proprioception comes in. It\u2019s the sixth sense of the body\u2019s existence within space, the feeling of where you are and how you are. It\u2019s how you touch your nose with your eyes closed, hopefully without a second thought. What Wembanyama does out there on the floor is at a billion on the proprioception scale. The feedback loop between his mind and body has to work at an exceptional rate to allow him not only to withstand the G forces he creates but to thrive on them.<\/p>\n
Drawing is part of an elaborate program to get every corner of his existence right. Wembanyama has always looked to cauterize weaknesses before accentuating strengths.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a kid, whether you\u2019re 10, 13, 16 years old, you\u2019re working for the future,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to develop your range of skills. I would say, long story short, play on your weaknesses, not only your strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this moment has brought a shift for Wembanyama. His view of his career comes through a different lens in this moment. The success the future can bring is no longer in the distance. This is his moment. No matter how inevitable he may seem, the NBA does not yield the throne to a prince. There is no royal decree.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, me, myself, I\u2019m working for right now,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cI don\u2019t even care about next season. We have to win Game 4.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, as he sat there, sketching Hamlet, he saw his perspective on a tragic figure. If he looked to his left to see his sister\u2019s rendition, he would\u2019ve seen a slightly different image. A reminder that every problem has different solutions, that there are so many ways he can try to handle the dilemmas the Knicks present.<\/p>\n
External perspective on the same object provides a reminder that there are always different ways to solve a problem. He found them in Game 3, a sketch of the optimized Spurs in action. Swirling guards, arcing lobs and a defensive wall, with him all in the middle of it.<\/p>\n
In the end, it went just like he drew it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 What appears on Victor Wembanyama\u2019s sketch pad is more than just a statue. It\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216,361,2116],"class_list":["post-696279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-san-antonio-spurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}