---

http://psce.pw/4w7utm

作者:Sam Vecenie

Here’s everything you need to know about Victor Wembanyama, the 19-year-old
French phenom expected to go No. 1 overall in this June’s NBA Draft.

這裡是你對於Victor Wembanyama這名19歲現象級且應該能成為六月NBA選秀狀元的潛力球
員所有應該知道的事情。

Background
背景

Wembanyama has long been considered one of the best prospects in his age
group. His father, Felix, was a 6-foot-6 high-level long jumper. His mother,
Elodie, was 6-foot-3 and played basketball and helped teach Victor the game.
He has two siblings, both of whom play basketball, and grew up in the
Parisian suburbs and joined the Nanterre 92 developmental team at a young age.



Wembanyama emerged as an elite prospect for NBA teams at the U16 European
Championships in 2019, where he averaged nine points, 10 rebounds and five
blocks per game as a 15-year-old. He continued to ride wave of momentum while
playing for Nanterre’s developmental Espoirs team and got his first taste of
professional basketball in early 2020 for Nanterre. Then he quickly emerged
as a first-team player for Nanterre in 2020-21, starting 10 games in the
French League and winning the Pro A league’s Best Shot Blocker award as well
as its Rising Star award. That summer, he went to the U19 World Cup as an
underage 17-year-old and dominated again. He averaged 14 points, seven
rebounds and five blocks, putting up a dominant 22-point, eight-rebound,
eight-block game in the championship against the United States team led by
Chet Holmgren, with France losing by just two points. He continued his ascent
as a 17-year-old, moving to French power ASVEL and earning starting minutes
both in EuroLeague and French League play. He led the EuroLeague in blocked
shots as a teenager, an absurd accomplishment, and largely held his own and
showcased flashes of elite play mixed with some inefficiency as a young
player exploring the boundaries of his game. He won the French League Best
Young Player award again but lost EuroLeague Rising Star award to Knicks’
pick Rokas Jokubaitis. He decided to leave ASVEL at the end of the season,
signing a contract with Metropolitans 92 in Paris, where he would play for
French national team coach Vincent Collet.



Wembanyama exploded in his season with Metropolitans, going from surefire No.
1 overall player to truly generational talent due to his improvement in terms
of offensive shot creation. The NBA put together a showcase game for
Wembanyama and potential No. 2 overall pick Scoot Henderson in September
2022. Wembanyama left scouts salivating and in awe, scoring 37 points in the
first game and then scoring 36 points and grabbing 11 rebounds in the second.
He went on to carry Metropolitans toward the top of the French League and
currently leads the French League in scoring, rebounds and blocks.
Metropolitans is third at the moment behind only EuroLeague powerhouses
Monaco and ASVEL.

Wembanyama於他在大都會時開始爆發並藉由進攻上的進步從唯一狀元變成了真正的改變世
代的天賦。NBA替他與可能是榜眼的Scoot Henderson於2022年9月安排了一場表演賽。


It is worth briefly noting that Wembanyama has had a history of injuries. In
December 2020, he suffered a stress fracture in his leg. In November 2021, he
broke a finger that forced him to miss one month. In December 2021, he
suffered a right shoulder blade bone bruise that forced him to miss over a
month. In June 2022, he suffered a muscle injury that forced him to miss the
rest of the French League season. None of these are recurrent, but scouts
have taken notice that he continues to miss time. He has not missed a single
game for Metropolitans in his pre-draft year and is considered to have a very
professional personality and demeanor.



Strengths
優勢

Wembanyama has elite length for a center. He stands over 7-foot-4 in shoes
with a near-8-foot wingspan and will be among the longest centers in the NBA
from day one. Beyond that, Wembanyama has a relatively skinny yet
well-proportioned frame that should continue to be able to add weight. He’s
already over 230 pounds and has retained a large amount of the coordination
and athleticism that has made him special as an offensive player. He’s not
an elite run-and-jump athlete, but he’s good and more than anything
possesses terrific hand-eye coordination and fluidity for his size. He gets
off the ground quickly as a jumper, even if his vertical leap likely isn’t
massive. His balance is unlike that of any “super giant” who has entered
the NBA previously.




Wembanyama’s superpower is his ability to defend in the paint. He is the
best shot-blocking prospect to enter the NBA in a long time. He led
EuroLeague in blocked shots as a 17-/18-year-old and blocked twice as many
shots as any player in the French League in 2022-23. He possesses a terrific
sense of timing and positioning and has clearly been taught well. His length
and ability to move changes the geometry of the game both vertically and on
the ground. He pairs this with strong anticipation. He’ll crash down from
the elbows or rotate over from the weak side quickly and can bait potential
shooters to try to go up without realizing how quickly he can cover the
ground. Vertically, he’s enormous, and his length ends up covering the top
of the rim. On the floor in the paint, he swallows up drivers and covers an
enormous amount of ground due to how mobile and balanced he is. Also, he doesn
’t really need to elevate to impact shots at the rim, which stops him from
fouling. He averaged just two fouls per game this season and is an impediment
just by sticking his arms up.


Wembanyama is a strong defender across the court as well. His instincts and
awareness in drop coverage are strong, and he has elite potential there.
Because of his length and understanding of angles, he plays the gap between
the ballhandler and roller well. He can both play in retreat where he cedes
space or more aggressively closer to the level of the screen. He keeps almost
everything in front of him, but when he does get beat, he has terrific
recovery skills due to his length. This causes real hesitancy from
ballhandlers. It’s hard for them to feel comfortable pulling up because of
how capable he is getting out to the perimeter even when he’s dropping to
the foul line. You can also feel this in closeouts, where he can speed up
shooters. Moreover, he plays with a reasonable amount of bend and can slide
to cut off players in space. He’s not the quickest guy in the world, but he
keeps his feet active and uses his length and angles well and plays on
balance.



Offensively, Wembanyama took a significant leap in 2022-23, actualizing the
talent that has existed in scouts’ eyes for a long time. He’s a ridiculous
shot creator for someone this big. The threat is immediate because he’ll
grab and go and pressure the defense off the glass. He’s very good in
transition because of how quickly he covers ground, and his handle is
ridiculously tight for a 7-4 center. He looks like a wing out there with how
he sets up defenders then strings together moves to attack the top foot. He
loves the isolation pull-up and is a big fan of the right-foot jab step into
the left-hand dribble stepback to the left. He developed the ability to hit
side-step pull-ups this year and does it to both his left and his right, and
he can string together multiple moves to separate to get to his stepback as
well. He loves the hesitation crossover into a pull-up and uses his stride
length to really extend out and create feet of separation on stepbacks. He
has counters for days to how defenders attempt to play him. He’ll hit
inside-out dribbles into spinning turnarounds, fake spin-shimmies into
midrange pull-ups, mid-post face-up fadeaways, etc.



Wembanyama also is a creative ballhandler when loading into his shot. He has
superb balance and touch combination and made multiple running floaters from
behind the 3-point line earlier this season that I don’t think I’ve ever
seen anyone else attempt. There isn’t really a way to contest him because of
how high his release point is. He does a good job of using it to its utmost
advantage too. He’ll catch and keep the ball high while gathering and doesn’
t need a ball dip to load into the shot, which is important as it refers to
catching-and-shooting and taking advantage of potential mid-post shots. He
also hits shots off movement and made 47 percent of his shots from the field
this season despite taking over two-thirds of them from outside of 5 feet
away from the basket. It’s very easy to imagine him as a primary
end-of-shot-clock option in the NBA. He can always create a reasonable look
and makes an obscene number of contested shots. He made 38 percent of his
shots between 9 and 20 feet, but that’s a strong number given how absurdly
contested these shots were and what the degree of difficulty was in creating
them. He’ll have more space to operate in the NBA.



Wembanyama also has real driving capabilities because of how long his strides
are and how much ground he covers. He combines the threat of his pull-up shot
with drives off hesitation dribbles well. He doesn’t have a great first
step, but once he gets defenders leaning, it’s hard for them to stay in
front because he can gather into a shot off a drive from the 3-point line due
to his length. He can do it out of isolations if he gets someone off-balance
or out of spot-ups if a heavy closeout comes due to the respect defenders
give his shot. He’s very similar to a younger Giannis Antetokounmpo in that
way but doesn’t yet have the same level of strength Giannis developed.
Still, Wembanyama does a good job of playing through contact once he gets
that downhill first step. In the NBA, he’ll have even more open driving
lanes due to the spacing of the court, which should allow him to continue to
be impactful as a finishing driver. He can also occasionally post his man and
bully him to the rim purely due to his stride length or ability to shoot over
the top. If you try to play him tight and get physical with him, he’ll go up
and under and extend his way to the rim.



Unsurprisingly, Wembanyama also is an awesome finisher at the rim. Per
Synergy, he made 73.1 percent at the basket this season and was at 68.3
percent in the half court, a very strong number given that he self-created a
ton of these looks off drives. A lot of his finishes came off putbacks, where
Wembanyama averaged about 2.5 points per game, fourth-most in the French
League behind only fellow 7-foot-3 supergiant Youssoupha Fall. He’s a
constant lob threat if he’s in the dunker spot and has good touch with both
hands. He maintains contact balance well as a finisher and has very easy lift
as a finisher. He has very high-level potential as a pick-and-roll finisher
due to his balance and hand-eye coordination and poses the pick-and-pop
threat as well. He’s so multi-faceted and versatile as a scorer that it’s
hard to find ways to completely shut him down.


弱點

There are a few, but not many. Wembanyama has a higher center of gravity,
which means he can be moved around a bit more often than you’d expect. He
does have strength and should fill out well physically as he ages, but right
now, he can have some issues getting knocked off his line. That high center
of gravity can sometimes come into play when he’s moving laterally in space.
He can sometimes get out-leveraged and beaten by a guard who gets lower than
he does. He’s excellent in recovery, but those spaces become more and more
open at the next level. He’s great with his angles but will need to keep
improving upon always having the right ones.



Wembanyama sometimes struggles to see open passing reads and make plays when
he’s on the move and sometimes gets a bit too focused on scoring as a
driver. He does a great job of drawing defenders and forcing help but doesn’
t always take the best advantage of bending the defense. He sometimes makes
his passing reads in set plays way too obvious. Metropolitans often ran plays
where he was out high and would try to find cutters, but he’d completely
telegraph what he was doing. Anecdotally, more of his turnovers come via the
pass as opposed to ballhandling turnovers. Teams can frustrate him with late
digs and weakside doubles. I would expect teams try to aggressively
double-team him early in his career and force him to learn these passing
reads. He can get a bit too sped up.



Wembanyama’s shooting can also be a bit inconsistent. He goes through spurts
where he just can’t find the bucket. A lot of the percentage issues have to
do with shot selection, as he often ends up taking a ton of absurdly tough
ones that others can’t even create. But it’s worth noting that his numbers
aren’t great. In total, he made 32.5 percent of his jumpers and 32.4 percent
of his catch-and-shoot 3s and only 20.7 percent of his 3s off the bounce. The
highlights look great, but the results aren’t always there. I don’t think
he engages his lower half enough with good shot prep off the catch right now.
Catching-and-shooting often seems like a second option when he gets the ball,
so he doesn’t always look ready to fire immediately. He has a tendency to
miss long on his shots, which I think is due to inconsistent rhythm and
engagement of his lower half. He can be a bit stiff.



All of this is eminently fixable, and there is zero reason not to buy
Wembanyama as a shooter long term. He’ll get stronger in his lower half and
work with a legitimate shooting coach who helps to improve his overall
mechanics. Wembanyama’s touch is so good that he’ll find mechanics that
work for him. But early in his career, you might see some real inconsistency
in terms of the actual result. Because he’s so efficient at the rim and will
be playing with better guards who can find him easier buckets, he should stay
above the median efficiency line even as a rookie. But he might go through
spurts where the shot doesn’t fall.




Summary
總結

Wembanyama is the highest-upside prospect to enter the NBA since LeBron
James. There are things that could go wrong here and hold him back from that
type of upside — particularly, if his body breaks down and his durability
becomes a question, or if the passing and playmaking never quite come along
to the levels they need to. But it’s hard to overemphasize how incredible
Wembanyama’s long-term potential is on both ends of the floor.



He will immediately be the biggest, longest player in the NBA, which allows
him to change the geometry of the court defensively. He has great instincts
and recovery ability on that end. But moreover, he is a legitimate shot
creator at center or even at the four who can create off the bounce and knock
down shots with ease off pull-ups or drives to the rim. He’s a terrific
finisher inside due to his length and touch and is already starting to
experiment with shots that could make him special, such as some of the
turnaround pull-ups, the fake-spin shimmies and even the weirdo floater 3s.
He is a historic prospect, one well within the tapestry of former elite big
prospects such as Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick
Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan. It remains to be seen if he can live
up to their hype, but his game fits within the modern construct of basketball
just as well as those players’ games did in their eras.


Hakeem Olajuwon、Patrick Ewing、Shaquille O'Neal與Tim Duncan這些精英長人潛力。
他是否能實現這些前輩所造成的轟動仍有待觀察，但他的打法與現代完美契合--與上述這
些傳奇們一模一樣。

Wembanyama has every chance to have the kind of storied career all those
players had as Hall of Famers. It is actually somewhat easy to envision
Wembanyama’s upside as being the best player on planet Earth someday, which
is a sentence I have never written about another prospect before.

Wembanyama有著成就如同這些傳奇球員般名人堂生涯的一切機會。事實上，我可以清楚的
預見Wembanyama的天花板有朝一日可以成為地球上最好的球員

而這，是我從未寫給任何一名新秀的句子。

--
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc), 來自: 71.232.216.168 (美國)
※ 作者: EZ78 2023-05-17 13:41:22
※ 文章代碼(AID): #1aP6a4Zh (NBA)
※ 文章網址: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/NBA/M.1684302084.A.8EB.html