OPINION:
There’s a lot to like about Victor Wembanyama.
He has become must-watch as part of a product that is often unwatchable.
In a league infected by immaturity, he has shown to be mature beyond his 22 years.
He has exhibited tremendous respect for the game, despite the lack of respect all around him.
“In modern basketball, we see lots of brands of basketball that don’t offer much variety in dangers they propose to the opponents, “Wembanyama said earlier this season. “Lots of isolation ball and sometimes kind of forced basketball. We try to propose a brand of basketball that can be described as more old school sometimes … it’s tactically more correct basketball, in my opinion.”
But here’s what I like most of all — with performances like the one he had in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals against the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, scoring 41 points, pulling down 21 rebounds, with three assists and two blocks in the San Antonio Spurs 122-115 win — he is resurrecting a legend.
Wembanyama is turning Paul Bunyan from fable to fact. He is transforming Hercules from a God to a mortal.
He is bringing reality to the NBA career of Wilt Chamberlain for generations of basketball who dismissed the numbers as cartoonish from an era of so-called plumbers and cab drivers. (Chamberlain played against 14 Hall of Fame centers in his career).
The 7-foot-4 Wembanyama has had some jaw-dropping performances over his brief careers — 40 points, 20 rebounds, seven assists and two blocks against the Washington Wizards in 2024 among them — which has led to the comparisons to Chamberlain, the 7-foot-1 giant who made the NBA change the rules of the game and who held 72 league records when he retired in 1973, at the age of 36.
Shaquille O’Neal? Please. At 7-foot-1, O’Neal averaged just 10.9 rebounds per game. He finished 16th overall in career boards and never — not once — led the league in rebounding.
No, the template, at least for the numbers Wembanyama is putting up, is Chamberlain, who died of congestive heart failure at the age of 63 in 1999.
Yahoo Sports ran a story following Wembanyama’s 12 blocks in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Minnesota Timberwolves wondering if he truly set a new record for blocks in a playoff game, making the case that there is evidence that Chamberlain bested that number many times, but those remarkable games happened before the NBA kept official records of blocks, which started in the 1973-1974 season.
Chamberlain blocked 16 shots against the Atlanta Hawks in Game 5 of the 1969 Western Division series. There were other newspaper reports documenting similar performances. But they aren’t official.
Now, though, generations of fans who tired of the mythical tales of Chamberlain are being forced to recognize the legitimacy of those stories, because they are watching another giant who is putting up numbers that dwarf the plumbers and cab drivers of this era. And perhaps consider that their Michael Jordan and LeBron James debate about the greatest is missing the most important figure. Because if you believe, like many, that when all is said and done, Wembanyama may wind in that conversation, then Chamberlain is there as well — except he did it better.
Chamberlain was not the smooth ballhandler that Wembanyama is, and certainly was not putting up game-winning three-point shots. But there is no telling what Chamberlain was capable of. While filming “Conan the Destroyer,” Arnold Schwarzenegger called him the most naturally powerful man he ever met. He was a track star at University of Kansas, including throwing the shot put.
In a game that Wembanyama would have found more “ethical” than what he encounters in today’s NBA, Chamberlain led the league in scoring seven times; rebounding 11 times, including his final season. He led the league in total assists one season just to prove he could. He finished his career averaging 30.1 points a game — 50.4 points in one season. He averaged 22.9 rebounds per game over his career.
And that career? It could have been much more. Chamberlain didn’t enter the NBA until he was 23 years old. Freshmen weren’t allowed to play varsity those days, and Chamberlain spent his sophomore and junior seasons setting Kansas basketball records. He left school and played for the Harlem Globetrotters for a year. Then he entered the NBA with the Philadelphia Warriors in 1959.
There is little doubt that Chamberlain, had he entered the league out of Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, would have had three additional dominant seasons on his NBA resume. He played professionally in a regional league under an assumed name while in high school.
Then of course, was the 100-point game.
It all seemed mythical for generations of fans unable to wrap their heads around. Victor Wembanyama is forcing them to consider the truth of Wilt Chamberlain.
• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.
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