SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The answer came with a slight delay, as if Victor Wembanyama was deciding whether the question was rhetorical before sharing his unfiltered truth.
“Would you vote for yourself?” I asked the San Antonio Spurs phenom about the MVP race as he left the visitors’ news conference inside the Golden 1 Center on Tuesday night.
He took two more steps down the hallway, turned ever so slightly to his left, then chose to state the blatantly obvious without a hint of emotion.
“Of course,” he said before bounding on his way.
If you somehow haven’t noticed by now, the 22-year-old who has been such a bright spot in these dark NBA times is relentlessly and refreshingly competitive. He’s the 7-foot-4 (at least) antidote to all that ails the Association, a welcome distraction from the salary cap circumvention allegations, gambling controversies and tanking turmoil that have stolen so much of the spotlight this season.
If he wasn’t creating the best kind of controversy at the NBA Cup in late December, taking out the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder while planting seeds of a rivalry that has only grown more intense since, he was single-handedly saving the All-Star game in Los Angeles with his unbridled spirit two months later. Or sharing his raw emotion — in the regular season, no less — after a 25-point comeback win against the LA Clippers earlier this month. Or, to bring it back to the topic at hand, setting the stage for some wholesome awards fun down the home stretch by announcing his ambitions to win the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award (which he likely will) and the MVP honor.
That last part, which was shared during a live interview with ESPN three nights before in Charlotte, N.C., came as a surprise to anyone who had watched the Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander give his unofficial acceptance speech to Nikola Jokić and his Denver Nuggets just five nights before. Yours truly included. But the mere fact that Wembanyama, audacious and pugnacious as ever, felt compelled to remind the voters that there was still time left for him to shock the basketball world was yet another sign that he’ll be creating wonderful hoops theater for a long time to come.
Health willing, of course.
As Wembanyama discussed at length with our Jared Weiss last month, the blood clot that cut his second season short inspired a sense of appreciation that is the driving force behind every move he makes. The effect, it seems, is that this wise-beyond-his-years young man, who was already wildly driven before his health scare, is now pushing his limits on an even deeper level.
Time is finite, and the future uncertain, so why not go for it all while you have the chance? That admirable energy, born of the medical chaos he endured and his innate confidence, has created a bold agenda for the coming weeks and months that makes Wembanyama and these Spurs an absolute must-watch in all the right ways.
When the Spurs (51-18) reached the 50-win mark this week, Wembanyama wasted no time in declaring his desire for them to get to 60. When it seemed clear that DPOY was in his sights, he got greedy and started talking about pulling off an MVP upset. That sort of mindset, and messaging, has propelled this up-and-coming team into title-contender status overnight.
Truth be told, these Spurs have no business talking about titles. The historical reality is that teams with this much collective inexperience don’t do that sort of thing. Yet after all the skepticism that came their way early on, when they were widely seen as a promising group that might have its time a few years from now, here they are with the second-best record in the league — only 3 1/2 games behind the Thunder — with less than a month to go before the playoffs begin. That fact alone warrants a closer look at the MVP race.
Considering team success is always a factor in the minds of voters, there’s still a scenario in which the Spurs overtake the Thunder (55-15) for the league’s best record and force a conversation about what that might mean. Wembanyama’s desire for the Spurs to reach 60 wins is a clear sign that San Antonio will keep pushing, while the Thunder might very well coast to the finish with the bigger picture in mind. And considering the Spurs’ dominance over the Thunder in head-to-head matchups this season — four wins in five meetings, including the aforementioned NBA Cup semifinal — those optics would certainly be in Wembanyama’s favor. As it relates to the league’s 65-game eligibility rule, Wembanyama must play in at least 11 of the Spurs’ final 13 games to stay in this race, while Gilgeous-Alexander needs to play in eight of the Thunder’s final 12.
For context, Wembanyama finished fourth — behind Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić and the Detroit Pistons’ Cade Cunningham — in the most recent ESPN MVP straw poll of media members, which has typically predicted the eventual outcome. And with the Pistons falling off ever so slightly of late, while Wembanyama has surged, it’s reasonable to believe that he has cut the gap since that story was published on Feb. 20. For the record, I’m currently planning on voting for Gilgeous-Alexander but have long held a personal policy of waiting until the very end to make a final decision on that front.
At the granular level, the philosophical question of whether Gilgeous-Alexander or Wembanyama is more valuable to their respective teams is certainly debatable. In terms of net-rating swing, which is a reliable way of seeing what a team looks like with and without its best player, Wembanyama has a significant edge — the Spurs are 16 points better with him, while the Thunder are 9.6 points better with Gilgeous-Alexander.
Wembanyama’s incredible defense is the great separator here, that never-before-seen combination of size and skill that shrinks the floor in such devastating ways for opposing offenses. To that point, the swing in defensive rating between the two players isn’t even close, either. While the Thunder have actually been marginally better with Gilgeous-Alexander off the floor (105.2 points allowed per 100 possessions, compared to 106 when he plays), the Spurs have allowed nearly 10 points fewer per 100 when Wembanyama is playing (104 allowed per 100 on vs. 113.4 off).
Yet the counting stats, which certainly matter a great deal even in this age of analytics, are where Gilgeous-Alexander is still widely projected to seal the MVP deal for a second consecutive season. Especially when it comes to the disparity in scoring output.
SGA: 31.5 points (second in the league), 6.6 assists, 4.5 rebounds, 1.4 steals and 0.8 blocks per game.
Wembanyama: 24.2 points (19th), 11.1 rebounds, 2.9 assists, three blocks and one steal per game.
Regardless of who wins MVP, the beautiful reality is that this is yet another way Wembanyama is helping to fix the competitiveness issues that have plagued the NBA in recent years. If elite players like him are going to give it their all every time out, whether it’s an exhibition like the All-Star game that so many had left for dead or the late-season span during which most teams tend to cruise to the finish line, then the fans will respond in kind.
The best part of it all when it comes to Wemby? By all appearances, this is just his beginning.
He knows the organizational history here; the Spurs franchise that won five titles in 16 seasons and made the playoffs for a league-record 22 consecutive years yearns to be back on that NBA Finals stage. From 22 wins in his rookie campaign to a 38-44 mark last season to now, the progress has come quickly. With no limits in sight.
“Playoff basketball is still a dream for us,” Wembanyama said after Tuesday’s 132-104 win over the Sacramento Kings. “It’s a lot of anticipating, but we’ve still got to stay in the moment and attack 82 games of the regular season. We can’t skip steps. But it’s definitely super exciting. It feels like another step. As a kid, you know, this is also something I dreamed of, so I’m already predicting on it. But you’ve got to stay in the moment.”
It’s as if he knows that this is exactly what the basketball world needs now. Someone to push back against the unpopular norms, to revel in the competition and the creation of rivalries while daring to dream about what he can ultimately achieve in this game. Just imagine how different the conversation about the league might be this season if Wembanyama hadn’t been there to provide his remarkable series of mood-lifting moments.
He might not be the league’s most valuable player just yet, but he might already be its most valuable person.
