Victor “Wemby” Wembanyama is changing the way I view basketball.
Wembanayama can work miracles on a basketball court. His height ranges from 7 feet 3 inches to 7 feet 6 inches tall, depending on who you ask, and he has a stupidly long 8-foot wingspan that allows him to easily reach the rim without jumping. Yet, despite his size, Wembanayama moves with the fluidity and grace of someone a foot smaller than him — his elite ankle mobility and limb flexibility makes him objectively shifty as a ballhandler. He has a great shooting touch and the capacity for elite passing ability, and both of these qualities seem to improve every year.
While it is not hyperbole to say that Wembanyama possesses some of the greatest physical talent of any basketball player ever, his gifts do not stop there: His mind is as uniquely, generationally tooled for basketball success as his body. Wemby’s greatest assets are his genuine humility, ambitious curiosity and his sponge-like receptivity for learning and applying new knowledge. It’s scary hours for the league. One of the greatest physical specimens in NBA history is bestowed with tremendous poise and intelligence, mixed with an insatiable ambition for his own destiny.
What this unique combination amounts to is an ultimate drive and potential to usher in a new era for the sport.
But in his historic play, Wembanyama reminds me to be cognizant of how I feel when I engage with greatness. I have realized that my constant exposure to human talent on the internet has desensitized me to the deepest feelings of astonishment that are possible in appreciating excellence. Despite this, the experience of watching Wembanyama cuts through the noise because of the joyous awe it inspires in me — a uniquely awesome feeling — one marked by a giddy sense of disbelief at the working of what appear to be physics-defying miracles.
Yet, as I sit utterly transfixed by Wembanayama’s play, I am simultaneously and solemnly reminded that the gears of basketball history groan under the weight of his potential. In his budding greatness, Wemby rings the final bell toll for the last vestiges of my childhood basketball heroes, and, as the era of basketball which defined my childhood and youth recedes, I am mindful of the historical transfer from one era to another. Wemby reminds me that I am privileged to exist in this special moment as a basketball fan — the old-guard: LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and Mike Conley will have their last dances against the greatest player of my generation.
It is a privilege to witness this transition. When I am older, I will speak of my experience as a fan watching Victor Wembanyama ascend the same way older fans today praise the legends of their own youth — for when a player defines an era, they also become identified with a stage of life. As I watch Wembanyama’s games and highlights, through the utter transformative power of what he does on the basketball court, I bear constant witness to the seasons of my own life revolving through the medium of the game I love.
