Victor Wembanyama said watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander receive his MVP trophy before Game 1 served as motivation.
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OKLAHOMA CITY — The first thing that went through Carter Bryant’s mind when he saw Victor Wembanyama’s shot heard around the world was the same as his teammates’ and likely any sensible person bearing witness, too.
“What the f—?”
Wembanyama put the entire Game 1 of the Western Conference finals on the line when he launched a shot from nearly 30 feet in the closing seconds of overtime Monday. The shot was from a location on the Oklahoma City Thunder’s court that marked the 3-point revolution. He pulled up right near the spot of the double bang, the legendary Steph Curry game-winner in 2016 that informed the world the sport had changed for good. A decade later, Wemby did it. Now the giants rule the perimeter, with no end in sight.
It was absurd, but the kind of absurd that he has normalized. And it was rewarded, tying the game and leading to an eventual win for the ages for the San Antonio Spurs, 122-115 in double overtime.
“I was running down the court and was like ‘Yoooo!’” teammate Julian Champagnie told The Athletic. “Then he hit that s— and I’m like, ‘Wow, he’s nice.’”
Wembanyama has earned enough trust that his team will proudly support his most audacious decisions. Much like Curry before him, there’s an expectation that he will do something that makes little sense, except that it’s him.
“He made that s—. He made that s—. Clutch. He got that clutch gene,” Champagnie said. “He’s confident in the work he puts in himself, and everybody in this room is confident that he is going to make the right choices more often than not. And I felt like in that moment, that was the right choice. We live and die by that.”
The Spurs knew what he was playing for, even beyond winning a title. This night had the juice of vengeance. Even if he wouldn’t say it, Wembanyama’s game declared that he is now the greatest player in the world. Owning a game at both ends the way he did, his time to rule the NBA is here.
“Do I feel like it right now? I feel tired,” Wembanyama said after finishing with 41 points and 24 rebounds. “But it’s not a question I’m wondering right now. We’ll see. The world is 8 billion people, so it’s 8 billion opinions.”
He watched the MVP trophy he so coveted fall into someone else’s hands. He made clear he felt the award was his back in Miami a few months ago and had a good case, just not good enough. He had only recently discovered his true form. Now the world has seen his full evolution.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander received the trophy from NBA commissioner Adam Silver in front of his adoring home crowd, a city that holds him up like a king. Wembanyama could have looked out his hotel window the night before to see the letters SGA MVP lighting up skyscrapers downtown. He was stepping into the palace of the NBA’s current throne-sitter on a path that inevitably had to run through here.
As Gilgeous-Alexander received his trophy, Wembanyama sat on the bench, fixated on the court. It was the only place he had left to make his point. He peeked over briefly during the ceremony, then locked back in on the ground. Stephon Castle tried to crack a few jokes. Nothing. Wemby was on a mission.
Then the game started, and Wembanyama did what he does best: the things that nobody else can, and maybe nobody else ever has in one package. Fueled, not by something he needs to take away from his greatest competitor, but by a recognition he will have to earn every day, starting now.
When asked if watching Gilgeous-Alexander receive the trophy he wanted felt personal, Wembanyama simply said yes, agreeing with the entirety of the premise.
“We felt like that was his trophy,” Castle said. “I’m sure he felt the same way.”
“One hundred percent,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “To see another competitor with the trophy that he deserves — (SGA was) voted the winner. But if you’re a competitor and you see another competitor get rewarded with what you want — I don’t think it had any effect on the game that didn’t make him play harder than anyone else — but that’s motivational.”
Wembanyama’s response wasn’t just an unforgettable win in one of the great games in recent memory, but a piece of history, yet again. He became the youngest player with a 40-20 game in the playoffs. He is the seventh player to do it in the conference finals or later, regardless of age. The others are most of the greatest bigs of all time. Kareem, Wilt, Baylor, Barkley, Moses, Shaq. Now Vic.
They did it all in their primes. He is 22.
To watch Wembanyama is to witness history in the making. In this game, he had a lefty Kareem skyhook and a Shaq drop step into a power dunk over his defender. He did the things that the greatest did, all in one package. He is discovering everything from his potential, the reality of pressure, to the burden of expectation. Everything a human being can experience in the pursuit of excellence, he is going after it, yet none of it seems to be holding him back.
“It feels like I still got a lot to learn,” he said. “And I want to get that trophy many times in my career.”
Game 1 wasn’t necessarily great in every moment, but it was greatness in its totality. The inevitability that SGA delivers every single night was Wembanyama’s in this moment. Maybe it will be Wembanyama’s for a long time.
But this was the latest edition of Wemby’s GOAT-astic journey, the most convincing statement to date that he is the greatest player in the NBA. He’s had some massive performances in huge moments, but this was so much bigger than what he’s faced so far. The Thunder are incredible, their arena is deafening and their defense is eviscerating. They put a guard, Alex Caruso, on him almost the entire night, and it looked like one of the hardest assignments Wembanyama has ever faced.
This game was full of unthinkable plays, like when he fell backwards into a dunk on the roll, pulled up from the logo or just swallowed up a layup to end the game in the final seconds. He keeps learning different ways to use his unprecedented body and skill set, with a fearlessness that he can figure out things that nobody else does on the fly in the biggest moments.
When the season started, Wembanyama was a mess in some ways. His nights were erratic, as in control as they were haywire. There were bits and pieces of greatness, enough cobbled together for the Spurs to start winning early. But he never stopped trying to grow. He approached every game as the big chance to put it all together, steadily improving to the point that the team was elite once he found his equilibrium. Now, he walks into every situation with his head high and his chest forward, conquering nights like this that should be brutal initiations to championship-caliber basketball.
“I think that young man has a rare desire to step into every moment that’s in front of him,” Johnson said. ”Doesn’t mean they’ll always work out for him or be exactly the outcome that he wants, but he has some rare God-given ability.”
Wembanyama’s message on this night was not one of individual glory. He sought to tell the world that it should see the Spurs as a total package.
“The message would be that we as a team are ready to go in any environment in any place against anybody,” Wembanyama said. “And even though we still got a lot to learn, our effort should be over anyone else’s and tonight, we were relentless.”
But as Castle put it when he crashed Wembanyama’s postgame interview with NBC, they feel they have the biggest advantage out there.
“The best player in the f— ing world,” Castle said. “C’mon, boy!”
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Jared Weiss is a staff writer covering the San Antonio Spurs and Victor Wembanyama for The Athletic. He has covered the Celtics since 2011, co-founding CLNS Media Network while in college before covering the team for SB Nation’s CelticsBlog and USA Today. Before coming to The Athletic, Weiss spent a decade working for the government, primarily as a compliance bank regulator.
