Veteran Jokic schools rookie Wemby
On Sunday night, the Denver Nuggets defeated the San Antonio Spurs 132-120. Nikola Jokic, the NBA’s two-time MVP, led the Nuggets with 39 points. But all eyes were on the Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama. He, of course, is the league’s most-celebrated rookie since LeBron James.
He played well, except that nobody was more impressed with his losing performance than Wemby himself:
Wembanyama, the top pick in the June draft, finished with 22 points, 11 rebounds, six steals and four blocks in 24 minutes to become the first rookie with those stats. ‘I like bringing something new to the game,’ he said. ‘I’m glad I can already put my name in history a little bit. It’s a good feeling.’
(The Associated Press, November 27, 2023)
Winning is everything
Even if you’re losing, you’d better convince your teammates that you want to win. But he’s not even doing that.
Wemby led his team to their 12th straight loss on Sunday. Yet he couldn’t have been in better spirits. Granted, that’s not as embarrassing as the record-setting 16 straight losses the Spurs suffered last year. But the hype was that they drafted Wemby to make even 6 straight losses unthinkable this season.
More to the point, can you imagine Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James ever saying, “It’s a good feeling,” during a similar losing streak? I can’t, even if they were posting better stats.
They would’ve been frustrated that their play wasn’t leading to wins. And, instead of marveling at their stats, they would’ve been figuring out how to use those defeats to fuel their drive to victories. But here’s Wembanyama, hailing his stats while his team loses.
That makes it seem like he’s not a team player. And that’s bad enough. But it also makes it seem like he lacks the competitive spirit to win. Hell, even I know that the only history anyone in the NBA cares about is the number of championship rings they can win.
Is Wembanyama already a bust?
In my June 22 post, “Victor Wembanyama: The Next LeBron James or Ralph Sampson?,” My own scouting report convinced me that the Wemby hype was bound to go bust. It seems my crystal ball was working just fine.
There’s no denying his impressive stats and flashes of freakish skills. But these stats and skills are not leading to wins. And, unless he does, Wemby will have no greater impact on the NBA than Sampson. Who? Exactly.
But he is just a rookie, on a bad team. No less a person than Jordan was on a Chicago Bulls team that sucked for seven years before he brought them to their first of six NBA championships. LeBron was on a Cleveland Cavaliers team that sucked for seven too. But he was so determined to win that he took his talents to Miami. There, he finally won his first championship in his 9th year.
The difference is that neither Jordan nor LeBron ever gave anyone any reason to question their desire to win. Arguably, Wemby could develop this desire. But I suspect a player either has it or not. And he has already convinced me that he does not have it.
NOTE: I issued an equally prescient warning about sports analysts, like ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, hailing Coach Prime as the second coming of Coach Saban. It turns out I was right about that too.