SAN ANTONIO — The entirety of South Texas let out a giant sigh of relief on Monday when Victor Wembanyama, healthy and happy, boarded a flight from Las Vegas to San Antonio to begin, finally, spending a little time by himself with his inner circle in his new basketball home.
Most relieved?
Take your pick between Wembanyama and Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.
After a morning meeting with Popovich confirmed that the best course for the top pick would be a return to San Antonio, Wembanyama fulfilled a final obligation in Las Vegas by attending a Rookie Transition Program with his fellow Spurs newbies. Then it was time to leave Sin City for The Alamo City and some well-earned rest and relaxation.
Before departing, the new Spurs centerpiece described his feelings about getting away from the attention that has followed him everywhere since concluding his play for Metropolitans 92 in the French League playoffs in June, quickly followed by his arrival in Brooklyn for the NBA draft.
In the past month, I think basketball wasn’t even 50 percent of my schedule,” he told reporters in Las Vegas after a breakout Summer League game against Portland on Sunday night. “I can’t stand it. I know it is a special time in my life, but I am glad it’s over, honestly. I just want to hoop, work out, lift, because this is my life.”
Popovich’s relief at Wembanyama’s departure from Las Vegas likely related more to the scary moment that occurred in Sunday’s game, when Portland’s 7-foot-1 Ibou Badji closed out hard as Wembanyama attempted a 3-pointer. The players’ feet were briefly entangled and Wembanyama fell backward to the court before getting up with a limp.
It was far too reminiscent of a similar play that had a long-lasting impact on the Spurs: Zaza Pachulia’s closeout on Kawhi Leonard’s 3-point attempt during Game 1 of the Spurs-Warriors’ Western Conference finals in 2017. Leonard never returned to that series, and his relationship with the Spurs went downhill from there. He played only nine games the next season and virtually forced the Spurs to trade him in the summer of 2018.
Rest assured, for a fleeting second on Sunday, Popovich had a flashback to that consequential game. For the next couple of months, the NBA’s winningest coach need not worry that his prize rookie will suffer a season-ending injury in a meaningless summer game. Without question, Popovich was happy to see Wembanyama leaving Las Vegas.
So now, the next phase of ‘Wembymania’ begins in San Antonio, but entirely under the radar. For one thing, the city’s best-known celebrities – Tommy Lee Jones, Jesse Borrego, Bruce McGill, George Strait – seem to be every bit as protective of their privacy as Wembanyama surely is after his encounter with Britney Spears in Las Vegas that went viral. None are apt to bother Wembanyama if they should see him anywhere in Bexar County.
Somehow, the Spears incident — the less said about it, the better — followed Wembanyama into his first summer league game and continued afterwards because of his underwhelming performance. Some of Spears’ thousands of social media followers taunted Wembanyama online.
Taken together — the Spears’ incident and Wembanyama’s bummer of a debut against Charlotte — Spurs fans experienced a collective clenching. Mostly, though, it was not seeing the basketball savior everyone expected that bothered them. Wembanyama missed 11 of 13 shots. His ballyhooed ballhandling wasn’t evidenced. He seemed lost on the court, both pushed around by smaller players and clearly fatigued.
Most distressing was his horrid shooting, including a pair of airballs.
This brought to mind the first Las Vegas Summer League game I ever covered for the San Antonio Express-News in 2008. The Spurs had made George Hill, a little-known shooting guard out of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indiana (IUPUI), the 26th selection of the first round of the 2008 NBA draft. Matched up against shooting guard O.J. Mayo, the No. 3 pick of Minnesota Timberwolves, Hill went 0 of 9 from the floor. Nobody seemed to care that he had all but taken Mayo out of the game when Minnesota had the ball.
Afterward, then-Spurs assistant coach Mike Budenholzer raved about Hill’s defense and completely discounted all those missed shots.
“Nobody cares about missed shots in Summer League,” Budenholzer said then. “We can work on that.”
After 14 seasons, Hill remains in the NBA, still a standout defender. And, yes, he worked on that shooting. In 915 regular season games, he has made 45.7 percent of his field goals and 38.0 percent of his 3s.
First impressions can be deceiving, especially when combined with great expectations. But the sort of expectations that attached to Wembanyama can become a burden that skews objectivity and helps explain most of the tough shots taken at “Wemby” by the media.
This is also when institutional knowledge becomes useful. Longtime Spurs followers recalled Tim Duncan’s first Summer League games in 1997. Then, Portland’s Jermaine O’Neal and Utah’s Greg Ostertag both outplayed him before he found himself and finished his summer league with dominant play.
Of course, Duncan had the last laugh on both O’Neal and Ostertag. Those two big men had fine careers. Duncan earned five championship rings and a spot in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Shouldn’t it be possible for Wembanyama to approximate The Big Fundamental’s path, particularly since Duncan will soon be one of his occasional tutors?
A Duncan-like career arc seemed a lot more possible after summer league game No. 2 for Wembanyama. Against the Trail Blazers on Sunday night, he allowed all of his fans, in San Antonio and elsewhere, to relax just 48 hours after his debut dud. All it took was one day of rest and a bit more time with his new teammates at a morning shootaround. He concluded his brief stay in Vegas by showing bits and pieces of the skills that had basketball experts using terms like “unicorn” and “alien” to summarize the 7-foot-4 French teenager. His 27 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks and 9-of-14 shooting (2 of 4 from deep) in just 27 minutes against Portland made his Friday flop utterly forgettable.
Now, Wembanyama has the rest of the summer to forget it himself.