Centre stage
Centre stage
The many standout qualities of NBA Draft prospect Victor Wembanyama
Welcome to the 23rd edition of Plot the Ball for 2023.
Height isn’t everything in the NBA — but, in a league where the average player stands at just under 6ft 7in, it certainly helps you get a foot in the door. And there aren’t too many in professional basketball bigger than Victor Wembanyama, the 19-year-old French international who is all but certain to be selected first overall by the San Antonio Spurs in tonight’s 2023 NBA Draft. Really, though, it’s what Wembanyama can do in spite of his size which makes him a prospect unlike any other in the history of the league.
The many standout qualities of NBA Draft prospect Victor Wembanyama
One of my favourite recurring bits on Twitter comes from New York Times journalist Jane Coaston. There is, as she is fond of saying, “no form of tall quite like NBA tall”.
Victor Wembanyama — soon to be a San Antonio Spur — might actually qualify as something else entirely.
At 221cm — or 7ft 3in — he will immediately be one of the tallest players in the league when he sets foot on an NBA court for the first time later this year.
In the French domestic league — the LNB Pro A — where Wembanyama has been playing this past season, there are no other regular contributors1 who stand within 8cm of his height, and only 24 others in total who are at least 200cm tall2.
That fact isn’t all that surprising, though: most exceptionally tall players with reasonable skill levels are already in the NBA — even if they are just role-players — because height is such a scarce asset.
But the important thing to remember about Wembanyama is that his skill levels project much — much — higher than ‘reasonable’. One look at The Athletic’s latest NBA Mock Draft tells you all you need to know:
Wembanyama does the things players his size are supposed to do — and things he has no business doing on top of those.
Blocking opponents’ shots is perhaps the skill most typically associated with players standing above 7ft tall — and Wembanyama averaged one block per 36 minutes more than any other LNB Pro A player last season.
Singular, however, is his ability to be — as Sam Vecenie of The Athletic put it — “a legitimate shot creator at center who can score off the bounce”.
He attempted 5.6 three-point field goals per 36 in the French league in 2022-23 — a rate that was comfortably above-average for regular contributors3, let alone those in the competition with NBA size.
Before we get too carried away, he did convert those attempts at a markedly below-average clip4. But the fact he was even put in the position5 to take so many shots as a teenager in one of the top basketball leagues outside of North America is an extremely positive indicator.
And NBA scouts are clearly bullish on Wembanyama improving this conversion rate as he grows into his body, develops his skills further and takes higher-quality shots as a consequence of playing with better teammates.
There is some data to back up this optimism too.
The rate at a which a player successfully converts their free throws is thought to be a good indicator of their ‘touch’ when shooting the ball — and a study published by the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective in 2020 found that among US college players “free throw percentage was more than 1.5 times as important as college 3-point percentage in predicting NBA 3-point success”.
Wembanyama’s FT% during the 2022-23 season was 83%. This is well above the LNB Pro A league-average rate of 75% — and right in line with tall college players from recent draft classes like Karl-Anthony Towns and Myles Turner, who HSAC highlighted as having considerably improved their three-point shooting percentage after jumping to the NBA.
There’s too much good sport being played all across the world to keep a close eye on all codes and leagues at all times — and my own interest levels in the NBA have definitely dropped off since the peak years6 of the Golden State Warriors dynasty in the mid 2010s.
But I’ll definitely be making a point of watching Wembanyama closely when the 2023-24 season tips off in October.
Whether or not you’re a regular consumer of NBA basketball, San Antonio Spurs games will be ones to change the TV channel and tune in for when you notice them on the schedule.
Even on a court of giants, it will be hard to miss their next French superstar.
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Defined here as players who played at least 700 minutes in the 2022-23 regular season — equivalent to around 20 minutes per game.
Around 6ft 7in — the NBA’s league-average height, as referenced above.
Again, those with at least 700 minutes played; the median rate among this group of 66 players was 4.6 3PA per 36.
His 3P% was 28%, compared to a league average of 36%.
ESPN has covered extensively the ways in which his club — Metropolitans 92 — “created an environment that catered specifically to his growth” last season.