How good is Victor Wembanyama now!? He’s exploded in his 3rd month, and this detailed film breakdown and scouting report explores his completely unique game and skill set, how he’s used as a passer and 7-foot-4 point guard, his off ball movement, lob gravity and roll game, high motor and more.

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Two months that’s all Victor wanyama needed to take a giant leap that normal Superstars take in their second or third Seasons as we chronicled at the beginning of the year wem’s defense has been game-changing since he stepped on the court so nearly all of this rapid growth has happened on the offensive end

Where he’s already one of the most unique offensive pieces to ever lace them up if we look at estimates of his impact his first month in the NBA was solid but a little bumpy his second month showed a good amount of improvement mostly on the offensive side

And then suddenly in the last month he looks like an Allstar what is happening how good is wemi right now and is there a limit to this man’s growth let’s start with his passing where he’s actually playing some point guard in the last month at 7 fo4 running these inverted pick and rolls

Where a guard screens for him and he becomes the playmaker because he’s so tall he can find angles over the top of Defenders on these kinds of passes so even with a second opponent in front of him who is 7 feet tall he’s still able

To hit the roll man now one thing he hasn’t developed yet in pick and roll is the skip pass across the court although that’s probably coming because he Maps the floor so well knowing where other players are and with his height he can just see over everyone and snap passes

To the second side and that always leads to good offense here’s another one where he’s doubled in the post the top is open but there’s a better shooter in the corner and why not take a layup wemi already uses a ton of no look passes like this to mislead defenses because he

Sees so much in his peripheral vision and doesn’t have to direct look at his Target to slip it through he brings this one up in transition gets a screen crosses the other way then never looks at Trey Jones streaking down the Baseline for a shovel and I love his

Deliveries snatching an entry pass right out of the air and then going to the lookaway with one hand and this play should be sent to the Hall of Fame here’s some more Point guarding into another one-handed pass off a live dribble and Victor’s already a good entry passer

And he’s even busted out the baseball style Outlet pass and this one gave me flashbacks to Kareem himself who chucked these across the gym a half century ago at the beginning of the season wem’s passes weren’t as Crisp And while he still has a lot of fat to trim in this

Area the game is starting to slow down for him he doesn’t force it to this cutter then threads this audacious bounce to the second man for free throws and here’s a great example from this month of using Tempo and angles in transition then casually no looking this

Lovely dime remember he’s doing this at 7′ 4 and he just turned 20 yet he demonstrates a deep understanding of all the chess pieces on the board constantly pointing and directing teammates so you’ll already see stuff like this where a three-pointer is blocked and as the

Ball is in the air wem’s pointing to the open man to help Devon vasel make the right read and I kind of feel like Victor should get an assist on that one now the playmaking is exciting but it’s his off ball game that might be groundbreaking wanyama might have the

Largest lob radius in the history of the sport where a passer can just throw the ball up in the air and he’ll go and get it so even with other Defenders around he has a vertical Advantage no one else can defend this means that his teammates

Need to just toss it up to him and he’ll go snatch it even when a Defender is in position because he’s so big this makes him a ridiculous Target after setting a screen finishing shots in midair like this and if teams switch the pick and roll against him he turns NBA players into

Kindergarteners this really isn’t a change in wemi but in his teammates this is going to be a layup but they didn’t understand you could just throw it over the top to him yet but now they’re learning to just lob it into his airspace like he’s playing on a Nerf

Hoop and again even when he doesn’t look that open he’s the only one who can go get these passes way Above the Rim heck sometimes the pass doesn’t even have to be on Target because wemi has access access to his own personal airspace that’s like 12 ft off the floor and the

Guy barely needs to jump to dunk come on and the really scary thing is that they’re still missing him left and right on these lobs because the Spurs aren’t a great passing team just throw that toward the rim and wemi will do the rest and we know this because we’ve seen the

Possessions where it actually happens Trey Jones through that pass and moving him to the starting lineup has been a big boost for them because the Spurs started the year playing without a point guard for some reason so these passes never came in 550 minutes with Trey and wemi on the Court San Antonio’s

Outscoring teams by eight points per 100 possessions with a slightly above average offensive rating of 118 having a floor General who can pass certainly helps but the other big change is shelving Zach Collins and moving wemi to Center which opens up way more space to attack in the lane this means Victor

Can put the opposing Center in pick and roll blows by him and then Look Out Below because pulling that big man out removes the only shot blocker that can really challenge him when he turns the corner like this no Collins also creates more space for wemi to cut into away

From the ball and even at his size he’s an excellent cutter without the rock teams will often put more mobile forwards on him and he can completely shake them like this when he doesn’t have to dribble he also has a great motor so he keeps moving away from the

Ball cutting and then spinning and ducking in for a postup and quickly making a move and I don’t love this shot but he’s still experimenting out there he also just outs sprints everyone down the court sometimes forcing a smaller player to switch onto him and then you

Know the drill by now so we’re basically talking about an alien here who just bounces around like some na’vi version of Steph Curry looking for lobs it’s subtle so you might have missed it but Victor loves to screen and act like he’s popping behind the line only to back cut

The Defender as they switch back to him and this is just Ninja level movement that he’s added after only 25 games and I love how active he is on these possessions they switch so he looks for a back cut and a lob or here he starts

To set a screen floats down to the free throw line and then when the first pass never comes he immediately flashes back into open space and then does his thing on the catch all of his movement creates gravity a second Defender picks him up well Nicole okic recovers and that frees

Up the three-point shooter and as a rle man he’s so lethal that teams are already sending multiple bodies at him to slow him down which again opens teammates even if they aren’t ready to capitalize yet about 3/4 of wemi shots are assisted right now and I actually

Think this is a pathway to highlevel offense because his activity and huge catch radius are a nightmare to match up with and unlike an interior only Force like Shaquille O’Neal Victor can also go outside and do damage on the perimeter his shooting still probably has a long

Way to go but he’s been at 35% this month with moves like this and oh by the way he can also attack from the outside like a smaller guard and finish that way too and when he picks up his dribble on these inside the free throw line he

Might just be close enough to dunk it we haven’t even mentioned his defense where he’s already one of the best defenders in the game because half the league is afraid to shoot it when he’s nearby and for good reason opponents are shooting 10% worse than expected near the rim

Against wemi one of the best marks in the league what what’s really crazy is that despite averaging 25 points per game this month on 63% true shooting he still clearly has more room to grow his balance and body control are incredible for his size yet he could

Clearly get stronger and more stable in future Seasons his shot selection is improving but could still be reigned in with more experience and of course his outside shooting can improve as he learns more tricks of the trade right now Victor sort of feels like the legendary Secretariat running away from

The field at Belmont what what are we watching how far can he take this I’m personally left with a kind of analyst vertigo trying to wrap my head around just exactly where this Transcendent athlete is headed and well I don’t know the answer to that yet I’m pretty sure

Victor wanyama just authored the best month an NBA rookie has had in the last 25 years we have a full breakdown of wem’s recent match up with Chad hren on the more thinking basketball Channel if you’re interested to directly support us and access our proprietary stats check out patreon.com thinking basketball

There you can see how wemi compares to Homen and others as a Defender shooter passer and more let me know down below what you think Victor’s ceiling is otherwise thanks for watching and I hope you are having a great day

24 Comments

  1. Webanyama is a sign of the end times for the nba. Either the rim gets highlighted, or a height restriction is introduced. Either way, the nba as we know it has at best, 10 years left. Also, let's be really honest, he does not look good playing basketball, neither does the Joker, no really tall players look good playing and people pay to see players look good. It's all over.

  2. He is playing in Tim Duncan's shadow but that shadow looking pretty small right now. He may outgrow it sooner rather than later.

  3. โ€œโ€ฆIn the last 25 years.โ€ I think people forget Tim Duncan was 1st team all NBA as a rookie

  4. Moving a 6'11 guy to pointgaurd is something I did in myleague as a goof. But this is a real person at 7'4

  5. That move on Tobias Harris is unreal, the fact that a starting center can just shed a forward by just moving off ball with no help for an open dunk is ridiculous if you think about it

  6. Man if the spurs had an actual playmaker, wemby would be an allstar this year. Give him cp3, Lowry, jokic, harden, or a ball brother and he'd be getting much more scoring opportunity

  7. Finally someone talks about Wemby's off-ball game. Seriously, his off-ball game is eerily like MJ's. The jukes, the fade-outs, the v-cuts, the spin-outs, the backdoors, positioning in transition, with scoring opportunities covering every area under the 3-Pt line , and the overactivity of when he does these off-ball techniques are MJ-like.

    This also means he does a great job of helping his teammates to find him better (though it doesn't seem his teammates are taking advantage of it, he's literally doing the hard work for them and they still don't take the chance to pass him the ball);
    He can distribute his gravity to prevent their offense from stagnating and create more out-of-play scoring opportunities;
    He can also get more offensive rebounds and therefore more opportunities for second chance points;
    He doesn't need to control the offense through playmaking to help create scoring opportunities for others (I seriously hope he can get a good playmaker to compliment him);
    He doesn't need to go into isolation plays to score. Even when he does get the ball in isolation, he doesn't overextend his possession, he doesn't overdribble whenever he gets the ball, he doesn't wait for his defender to establish position against him, he just does something almost immediate whenever he gets the ball;
    Also a lot of catch-and-shoot opportunities for him;

    It still blows my mind how a 7'4" guy can even do those off-ball moves at all. I don't think anyone his size is supposed to move like him. Although being 7'4" I'm pretty sure he's going to f'ck up his knees earlier than MJ did as skillful and as active playing off-ball like this. But at least we now know even if his team is losing, he actually sacrifices his knees to get a bucket AND help prevent the team's offense from pausing. His off-ball skillset will be critical if he ever gets the chance to play for a championship. I just hope he gets that chance earlier because he's actually putting a lot of stress on his body playing the off-ball like he does.

  8. No. He didnt. The Spurs started to put him in better positions to succeed. Spurs are a disgrace. They ruined his rookie season for a pick that probably would end in a player worse than Sochan. Thanks Spurs. Thanks for wasting a year from a player we cant be sure will be healthy that long

  9. Slow down. The guy that is 60 feet tall, who has been training in basketball since he was a 6 foot newborn, is off to a great start?? No way. I don't believe it. Jokes aside, he seems like a good kid.

  10. I can't help but giggle hopelessly when I watch him catch "lobs" that would on any other team with any other players be guaranteed butter finger turnovers. Unbelievable.

  11. Love your analysis as always. It would be really interesting if you can do a retro breakdown of KDs rookie year and how it relates to Wembys

  12. Generational prospect and somehow itโ€™s still getting swept under the rug how much better heโ€™s getting in an insanely short period of time

  13. Larry Bird has the best skip pass Iโ€™ve ever seen. Wemby is showing signs at 19. Thatโ€™s wild.

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