Not even a week in the NBA, and Victor Wembanyama is already failing the French team. The brand new San Antonio Spurs player, drafted in first position on the night of Thursday to last Friday, announced Sunday evening at the team his non-participation in the World Cup with the French team this summer. “That would be unrealistic in development and not prudent in health. I hope people will understand. It’s frustrating for me too. The France team is still as central. I want to win as many titles as possible with her. But I think it’s a necessary sacrifice, ”he justified at first, before a longer interview to appear with our colleagues.
A disappointment for the supporters of the French team and the fans of Wemby, especially since he repeated that his departure to the United States was only a goodbye since he would return to the jersey of the Blues. Another missed opportunity, a year after missing the Euros due to injury, but managing to combine the NBA season and summer with the Blues is often complicated.
Few selections, but a lot of ambitions (on paper)
Victor Wembanyama has only four selections in the senior French team, but he has already played in two international youth competitions. Euro U16 in 2019, with a silver medal and a place in the best five of the competition, and the U19 World Cup in 2021, again with a silver medal and a nomination in the best five of the tournament . For several months, he has not stopped repeating the importance of the blue jersey for him, as he did again last week in the columns of the team : “I hope that soon, we will be able to see that there is a distinction between everything that happened before and everything that is starting today, for French basketball, its place on the world stage. I hope that we can, all together, establish the French reign. Not like Napoleon huh, I just want France to be the biggest basketball nation in the world, in the long term”. To finally announce his non-participation in the World Cup less than a week later, funny timing.
The World Cup superior to the Summer League?
The announcement of “Wemby” immediately caused the famous ex-commentator of Canal+, George Eddy to react to the point of letting his disappointment burst out with a “Shit! posted on Twitter. For him, “the real useless fatigue is what he is doing at the moment and possibly making the Summer League or the level is approaching the G-League. If the Spurs influenced him in this direction, they are wrong because the CDM would have made him progress faster as Collet said recently. The NBA does not resume until October, but the teams compete in the Summer League in July, a kind of pre-season match to test new players, but with few sporting stakes, as summarized by our colleagues from TrashTalk: “competition oh so exploded in terms of basketball but… so highly rated in terms of hype”. The “hype” is precisely what surrounds Wembanyama since he set foot in the USA.
The sequence of matches
In his decision, Victor Wembanyama explains that he wants to preserve his body against the accumulation of matches as he has played 62 games this season with an average of thirty-two minutes in BetClic Elite, the French first division. If he participated in the World Cup this summer, he would chain, according to him, 170 games in the space of two years, with the next NBA season and the 2024 Olympics in Paris. A number that seems important, but if we bring it back by season, we arrive at 85 games, slightly more than an NBA regular season and its 82 games. Not to mention the play-offs. We will therefore quickly have to take the fold of the intensity of an NBA season and these 170 games in two seasons are ultimately only a low average for any star in the league.
The weight of the first draft pick and the Tony Parker case
Tony Parker was also drafted by the San Antonio Spurs at the age of 19, but unlike his younger brother, he participated in the European Championships in 2001, a few weeks after being chosen in 28th position. . A position which obviously did not arouse as much expectation as the first choice of Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs did not even imagine a place of “starter” for TP at the time of his arrival. Since the 2000s, only Yao Ming, in 2002, and Anthony Davis, in 2012, have played in international competition after being chosen in first position in the draft, new proof of the weight of such a place.
The following year, the Blues were not qualified for the World Cup. But in 2003, TP started the 82 regular season games, and the 24 play-offs that allowed him to become NBA champion for the first time. The following summer, he participated again in the European championships in Sweden, being elected in the best five of the tournament. Before continuing a new season of a hundred games with the Spurs. The beginning of a very long loyalty to the blue jersey.
In August 2008, Tony Parker announced his participation in the qualifying tournament for Euro 2009, against the advice of the San Antonio Spurs who wanted to preserve him in the fall. And it was not until 2010, after his ninth NBA season and ten summers spent in the Blues (injury in 2006), that Tony Parker decided to skip the World Cup after a season plagued by injuries. Before returning in 2011 until the 2016 Olympics, just skipping an uninteresting World Cup along the way, like the vast majority of international stars of the time.
The importance of international experience, one year with the Paris Olympics
Tony Parker and Victor Wembanyama obviously do not have the same size, the first is a leader of 1.88 meters, while the other culminates at more than 2.20 meters, their physique does not claim the same attention and it is the one of the question marks about Wemby’s future in the NBA. But Tony Parker’s campaigns with the Blues have made him progress enormously, especially in terms of leadership.
This is also what the coach of the Blues, Vincent Collet, recalled a few days ago, while pushing his foot so that his former Mets 92 player would be with the Blues this summer: “The experience of a World Championship, I think that’s what would prepare him best for his entry into the NBA. It is important since he could play against the same players he will meet next year. This was not the case in Betclic Elite. And at that age, experience cannot be replaced, ”he said. One year before the 2024 Paris Olympics, this World Cup “a launching pad”, still according to Collet, would also have been the perfect opportunity to work on his relationship with Rudy Gobert, the pivot of the Timberwolves who comes, him, to announce his presence with the Blues this summer after having weighed the pros and cons for a long time.