Victor Wembanyama

Based on Wikipedia: Victor Wembanyama

The Alien Has Landed

In October 2022, two exhibition basketball games in Las Vegas drew over 200 scouts and NBA executives to watch a teenager most Americans had never heard of. By halftime of the first game, the basketball world had collectively lost its mind. The French kid with the impossible wingspan had just dropped 37 points against professional competition, moving with a fluidity that seemed to violate the laws of physics for someone standing seven feet four inches tall.

Victor Wembanyama wasn't just good. He was something that shouldn't exist.

His nickname tells you everything: "the Alien." Not because he's strange or awkward, but because his combination of height, agility, and skill seems to have arrived from somewhere else entirely—a place where the normal trade-offs of basketball don't apply.

The Family Blueprint

Wembanyama's athletic gifts weren't an accident. His father, Félix, is of Congolese origin and competed in track and field as a high jumper, long jumper, and triple jumper. His mother, Élodie de Fautereau, played professional basketball and now coaches youth teams. His father stands six feet six inches. His mother is six feet three.

But the basketball lineage runs even deeper. His maternal grandfather, Michel de Fautereau, played professional basketball. His grandmother played the sport too. His older sister, Ève, plays professionally. His younger brother Oscar has competed in both basketball and handball at the youth level.

This is a family engineered for sport.

Born on January 4, 2004, in Le Chesnay—a commune in the Paris region—Victor didn't immediately gravitate toward basketball. He played football as a goalkeeper, where his length would have been an obvious advantage. He practiced judo. But basketball was always there, woven into the fabric of his childhood. His mother taught him to play while coaching her youth teams.

Spotted at Age Ten

The moment that set Wembanyama's career in motion came in 2013 at an under-11 basketball game. A youth coach named Michaël Allard, who worked for the professional club Nanterre 92, noticed a boy sitting on the bench. Allard initially thought the child was a coach—the boy stood nearly five feet eleven inches tall at age ten.

He wasn't a coach. He was a player. And Allard had just discovered perhaps the most remarkable basketball prospect in history.

Wembanyama joined Nanterre's youth system that year. By February 2018, at just fourteen, he was talented enough that FC Barcelona borrowed him for the Minicopa del Rey, a prestigious under-14 tournament in Spain. He led his team to third place. Barcelona offered him a spot in their academy.

He said no.

The reason reveals something essential about Wembanyama's character: he felt the coaches weren't willing to challenge him enough. At fourteen, he was already demanding to be pushed harder.

Professional at Fifteen

In the 2019-20 season, Wembanyama joined Nanterre 92's senior professional team. He was fifteen years old.

To put this in perspective: most American basketball players are finishing their sophomore year of high school at fifteen. They're playing against other teenagers in gyms with a few hundred spectators. Wembanyama was playing against grown men who had dedicated their entire adult lives to professional basketball.

His debut came on October 29, 2019, against the Italian team Brescia in the EuroCup, a major European basketball competition. He played 31 seconds. It didn't matter. At fifteen years, nine months, and 25 days old, he became the second-youngest player ever to appear in the EuroCup.

That season, he primarily competed in LNB Espoirs—the French under-21 league—while occasionally getting minutes with the senior team. But even against players six years his senior, he dominated. He averaged 10.2 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 3.3 blocks per game, mostly coming off the bench.

The blocks especially stood out. Blocking shots requires a combination of timing, anticipation, length, and athleticism that's extraordinarily difficult to teach. Wembanyama seemed to have been born with it.

Growing Pains

The challenge with extremely tall athletes is that their bodies often struggle to keep pace with their growth. Bones, tendons, and muscles develop at different rates, creating vulnerabilities. The history of basketball is littered with seven-footers who could have been transcendent but whose bodies betrayed them.

Wembanyama has had his share of injuries. In December 2020, he suffered a stress fracture in his fibula—the smaller of the two bones in the lower leg—during an Espoirs game. He missed two and a half months. But when he returned, something had shifted. He started receiving more playing time with the senior team, and on May 25, 2021, he recorded his first professional double-double: 14 points and 10 rebounds in a victory over Orléans.

He finished that season with averages of 6.8 points and 4.7 rebounds per game in France's top professional league. He was seventeen. He was named the league's Best Young Player. And then he made his next move.

The EuroLeague and More Setbacks

In June 2021, Wembanyama signed a three-year contract with ASVEL, one of France's most prestigious basketball clubs. ASVEL competed not only in France's Pro A league but also in the EuroLeague—the highest level of club basketball outside the National Basketball Association. The EuroLeague features the best teams from across Europe, including powerhouses from Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Russia. The competition is fierce, the travel is grueling, and the players are elite.

Wembanyama was seventeen. He would be competing against seasoned professionals in their late twenties and early thirties.

His EuroLeague debut came on October 1, 2021, against Žalgiris, a Lithuanian club with a passionate fanbase and decades of basketball tradition. He recorded one block in three minutes during an ASVEL victory.

Then the injuries came again. A fractured finger in November. A bone bruise in his right shoulder in December. A psoas muscle injury—the psoas being a deep hip flexor that's crucial for explosive movement—in June that ended his season entirely.

He missed the Pro A championship finals. ASVEL won their third consecutive title anyway, but Wembanyama watched from the sideline.

Despite the injury-plagued season, he was again named the league's Best Young Player. He finished second in voting for the EuroLeague Rising Star award. And then, despite ASVEL's president Tony Parker—a four-time NBA champion with the San Antonio Spurs—promising to build the entire team around him, Wembanyama opted out of his contract.

He had other plans.

The Exhibition That Changed Everything

Wembanyama signed with Metropolitans 92, a Pro A team coached by Vincent Collet, who had a reputation for developing young talent. But the real turning point came in October 2022, when the team traveled to Las Vegas for two exhibition games against the NBA G League Ignite.

The Ignite was essentially a developmental squad for elite NBA prospects, and their roster featured Scoot Henderson, widely projected as the second pick in the upcoming 2023 NBA draft. The games were designed as a showcase—a chance for NBA executives to compare the two best prospects in the world head-to-head.

What happened exceeded everyone's expectations.

In the first game, Wembanyama scored 37 points with five blocks and four rebounds. His team lost, but nobody cared about the final score. Scouts were texting each other in disbelief. Social media exploded. Here was a seven-foot-four teenager shooting three-pointers off the dribble, blocking shots at the rim, and moving laterally like a guard.

In the second game, he put up 36 points and 11 rebounds, leading Metropolitans 92 to victory.

The NBA immediately announced it would stream all of Metropolitans 92's remaining games on its app. An entire American sports league had essentially become a promotional vehicle for a single French teenager.

Dominance in France

The 2022-23 season confirmed what the Las Vegas exhibitions had suggested: Wembanyama was operating on a different level. On November 4, 2022, he posted a career-high 33 points with 12 rebounds, four assists, and three blocks against Limoges. By December, he had strung together four consecutive 30-point games.

At the LNB All-Star Game in late December, he was named captain of the France team at eighteen years old. He scored 27 points with 12 rebounds and four assists, leading his squad to victory and becoming the youngest Most Valuable Player in the game's history.

On April 21, 2023, he officially declared for the NBA draft. By then, there was no suspense about who would go first overall.

He finished the Pro A season averaging 21.6 points, 10.4 rebounds, and 3.1 blocks per game—leading the league in all three categories. He won the MVP award, becoming the youngest player ever to do so. He was named Best Defender. Best Scorer. Best Young Player. Best Blocker. The awards seemed almost redundant, an attempt to capture in accolades what was obvious to anyone watching: this was a generational talent.

Metropolitans 92 reached the Pro A Finals, where they lost to AS Monaco in a three-game sweep. It didn't matter for Wembanyama's future. On June 22, 2023, the San Antonio Spurs selected him with the first overall pick in the NBA draft.

A San Antonio Tradition

The Spurs have a history with transformative big men. David Robinson, known as "the Admiral," was selected first overall in 1987 and became one of the greatest centers in NBA history. Tim Duncan, widely considered the best power forward of all time, went first overall in 1997. Together, Robinson and Duncan won the 1999 NBA championship and established San Antonio as one of the league's model franchises.

Wembanyama became the third first-overall pick in Spurs history. He was also the first French player ever selected first overall, and only the second European player to achieve the distinction—following the Italian Andrea Bargnani, who went first to Toronto in 2006.

The expectations were enormous. And Wembanyama met them almost immediately.

A Rookie Season for the History Books

Wembanyama's NBA debut came on October 25, 2023, against the Dallas Mavericks. He scored 15 points with five rebounds, two assists, and two blocks in a loss. His three made three-pointers set a Spurs record for a rookie in his debut.

Eight days later, he exploded for 38 points and 10 rebounds against the Phoenix Suns. At nineteen years old, he had joined LeBron James and Kevin Durant as the only teenagers in NBA history to record at least 35 points, 10 rebounds, and two blocks in a single game.

The records kept falling. On December 8, against the Chicago Bulls, he put up 21 points and 20 rebounds, becoming the youngest player ever to achieve a 20-20 game. The previous record holder was Dwight Howard, another dominant big man who had entered the league as a teenager.

By mid-December, Wembanyama had broken Howard's record for most consecutive games with a double-double by a teenager. On December 28, he became the first teenager ever to record at least 20 points, five rebounds, five assists, and five blocks in a game.

The statistics were staggering, but the manner in which he achieved them was equally remarkable. Unlike most rim-protecting big men, Wembanyama could shoot three-pointers. Unlike most shooters, he could block shots at an elite rate. The combination was unprecedented.

Triple-Doubles and Five-by-Fives

A triple-double in basketball means reaching double figures—ten or more—in three statistical categories in a single game. Usually this involves points, rebounds, and assists. It's considered a sign of all-around excellence, the kind of performance that affects every aspect of the game.

Wembanyama's first triple-double came on January 10, 2024, against the Detroit Pistons: 16 points, 12 rebounds, and 10 assists. His second, on February 12 against Toronto, was something rarer: 27 points, 14 rebounds, and 10 blocks. A triple-double with blocks is extraordinarily unusual. The last player to achieve one had been Clint Capela, three years earlier.

But Wembanyama wasn't done. He became the first player in NBA history to record a 20-point, 10-block triple-double while playing fewer than 30 minutes. The efficiency was almost absurd—he was dominating games without even playing full minutes.

Eleven days later, against the Los Angeles Lakers, he achieved a statistical feat called a five-by-five: reaching at least five in five different statistical categories. His line: 27 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists, five steals, and five blocks. He became the youngest player ever to record a five-by-five, and he did it in just 30 minutes of playing time—the fewest minutes ever for such an accomplishment.

A five-by-five demonstrates complete basketball mastery. You're scoring, rebounding, facilitating for teammates, disrupting passing lanes, and protecting the rim. Most players can do two or three of these things well. Almost no one can do all five at an elite level in the same game.

Breaking the Mold

On March 15, 2024, Wembanyama made his 100th three-pointer of the season while also surpassing 200 blocks. He joined Raef LaFrentz, a journeyman stretch big from the early 2000s, as the only players in NBA history to achieve both milestones in the same season.

Think about what that means. The players who block 200 shots are typically rim-dwelling giants who rarely venture to the three-point line. The players who make 100 three-pointers are typically guards or forwards who stay away from the basket. Wembanyama was doing both, collapsing traditional positional categories into something new.

He finished the season as the first player in NBA history with at least 1,500 points, 250 blocks, and 100 made three-pointers. He led the league in blocks per game at 3.6, becoming the youngest player ever to lead the NBA in that category.

On May 6, 2024, he was named NBA Rookie of the Year by a unanimous vote—only the sixth rookie in history to receive every single ballot. He joined Manute Bol, a seven-foot-seven Sudanese center who played in the 1980s, as the only rookies ever to lead the league in both blocks per game and total blocks.

He also finished second in voting for Defensive Player of the Year—to Rudy Gobert, his French national team compatriot. And he became the first rookie in NBA history to be named to the All-Defensive First Team, an honor typically reserved for the league's most established defenders.

The National Team

Wembanyama's accomplishments extend beyond club basketball. He has represented France at multiple levels, establishing himself as a cornerstone of the national program.

At the 2021 FIBA Under-19 World Cup, when he was just seventeen, he set the FIBA record for blocks per game in a single tournament. France won the silver medal, with Wembanyama anchoring the defense.

At the 2024 Paris Olympics—a home Games for France—he helped lead the senior national team to a silver medal. The final against the United States, featuring a roster of NBA superstars including LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant, showcased Wembanyama's ability to compete against the best players on the planet.

The silver medal marked another milestone in what has become a continuous ascent. At twenty years old, Wembanyama had already accumulated more hardware and broken more records than most players achieve in entire careers.

What Makes Him Different

Height alone doesn't explain Wembanyama. The NBA has had plenty of seven-footers who couldn't move, couldn't shoot, couldn't think the game at high speed. What separates Wembanyama is the combination—and the combinations within the combination.

His wingspan—the distance from fingertip to fingertip with arms extended—measures approximately eight feet. This gives him a reach that allows him to contest shots other tall players can't reach and to shoot over defenders who might otherwise bother smaller players.

But wingspan without mobility is just length. Wembanyama moves laterally like a player six inches shorter. He can switch onto guards on the perimeter—something most centers can't do—and still recover to protect the rim. He can initiate fast breaks off rebounds, pushing the ball up the court himself rather than handing off to a guard.

And then there's the skill development. His shooting form is textbook. His ball-handling is advanced for any player, let alone one his size. His court vision allows him to make passes that surprise even teammates who should know better by now.

The "Alien" nickname captures something real. Basketball has seen tall players. It has seen skilled players. It has seen athletic players. It has rarely seen all three at this level in the same body.

The Road Ahead

Wembanyama turned twenty in January 2024, which means he's likely a decade or more away from the typical peak of an NBA player's career. The records he's already broken—youngest to achieve this, first rookie to accomplish that—may eventually seem like mere prelude.

The San Antonio Spurs are building their franchise around him, hoping to recapture the championship glory they achieved with Robinson and Duncan. The French national team views him as the centerpiece of their basketball future. Sneaker companies and sponsors see him as a global marketing phenomenon.

For now, though, what matters is what happens on the court. Every game offers another chance to do something no one has done before. Given his first twenty years, that's not an unreasonable expectation.

The Alien has landed. And he's just getting started.