Victor Wembanyama sat dispiritedly in his chair on the sidelines. It looked all the sadder because the NBA only has folding chairs the size of ordinary mortals; The 2.24 meter tall Frenchman could have rested his hanging head on his knees. The game between his San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks was evenly matched in the final quarter – but Wembanyama had collected five fouls in the three periods beforehand and was therefore placed in this chair on the bench by coach Gregg Popovich. Should it actually end like this, Wembanyama’s first NBA game, which they had stylized as the arrival of the great chosen one in basketball? Until then he had only sunk two throws.
If there’s one thing they can do in US sports, it’s this: create hype around an event (Super Bowl, for example) or an athlete – with the advantage that it can then be debated euphorically when the prophecy has come true. Or about the disappointment that it didn’t turn out that way. Wembanyama had been weighed and measured, he was not only found to be heavy enough, but was declared the future of an entire sport and was named “The Extraterrestrial”, an extraterrestrial, by the sporting goods manufacturer Nike. The interest was as huge as it hasn’t been since LeBron James’ first professional game 20 years ago – it’s well known what kind of career the man from the Los Angeles Lakers has had (and is still having). But it is also known that Zion Williamson, no matter how highly praised he is, has still not really established himself in the NBA after more than four years.
So there he sat – and then he started. Popovich substituted him seven minutes before the end with an old basketball coaching adage: “You play until you subtract yourself from the field with the sixth foul.” It was 103:108, Wembanyama’s first action: alley-oop dunking. Then: rebound, successful three-pointer, rebound, dunking, successful throw while falling backwards. Suddenly it was 115:115, suddenly the values (15 points, five rebounds and two assists) looked decent, suddenly the spectators in San Antonio went crazy as if they had seen something truly amazing.
“Nothing,” Popovich replied during the break before the final quarter when asked by a reporter what he had said to his new giant in view of his sometimes very mundane fouls: “I think he knows exactly what happened.” When dealing with celebrities, Popovich follows an unforgettable Hermann Gerland rule: “If someone wants to take off, I’ll hang on to their legs – at my weight, they won’t get far.” For years, one of the old coaching master’s psychological tricks was to whistle at deserving veterans like David Robinson, Tim Duncan and Tony Parker at the start of the season so that all the new players could see: If he treats them like that, I’d better be good.
Wembanyama’s trainer Gregg Popovich tries to protect the newcomer from the hype with all his tricks
“The hype is immense. But he is very mature and has both feet on the ground,” said Popovich after the game, which San Antonio lost 119:126 because the Mavericks had Luka Doncic (33 points, 13 rebounds, ten assists ) also have someone who is capable of unusual performances – and showed this in the decisive phase by being involved in every single one of the last eleven Mavericks counters. “It was the first game of an 82-game season plus playoffs, and hopefully he will play many seasons in the NBA,” Popovich said. So: let him arrive first. On Earth, in the NBA, with the San Antonio Spurs.