Why Victor Wembanyama is the NBA’s next big thing

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Eight days after Chicago’s NHL team won the right to draft Connor Bedard, another teen phenom touted as a generational talent is up for grabs in tonight’s NBA draft lottery. The big prize (and we mean big) is Victor Wembanyama, the 19-year-old French phenom who many call basketball’s best prospect since LeBron James turned pro two decades ago.

Wembanyama’s exact height remains a mystery after he failed to attend the Draft Combine. But he is listed between 7-foot-3 and 7-foot-5, which would make him one of the tallest players in the NBA. Like a traditional center, Wembanyama’s height (and eight-foot wingspan) creates nightmares for opposing scorers, as he can block or alter their shots without even getting off his feet.

What really sets this big man apart, though, is that he plays offense like a guard. Wembanyama can handle the ball, create shots for himself and his teammates, shoot 3-pointers from anywhere, step back and throw standout dunks. “Kevin Durant crossed paths with Rudy Gobert,” this is how Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor described itWhich means Wembanyama is a mix between one of the most unstoppable scorers in NBA history and a three-time Defensive Player of the Year.

Wembanyama showcased his array of otherworldly abilities last fall in Las Vegas, where his French league club Metropolitans 92 played a pair of exhibition games against the NBA’s G League Ignite, a development team featuring guard Scoot Henderson, who it is expected to be number 2. in the draft. Wembanyama scored 37 points on seven 3-pointers and five blocked shots in the first game before deploying his full arsenal of moves inside the arc to score 36 in the next, all with pressure from NBA scouts, executives and players watching. from the field.

Some of the best players in the sport can hardly believe their eyes. Durant, who could be considered the inspiration for Wembanyama’s game, called the teenager “inspirational.” Steph Curry compared him to a video game character. “He’s like a [NBA] 2K create a player… code-like cheats.” LeBron summoned mythical creatures. “Everybody’s been [called] a unicorn in later years, but is more like an alien. No one has ever seen anyone as tall as him but as fluid and graceful as he is on the court.”

The best odds of winning tonight’s Wembanyama draft belong to the Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs, who each have a 14 percent chance after finishing with the three worst regular-season records.

Unlike the NHL version, all teams in the NBA draft lottery can win the first pick. The group of 14 includes the Toronto Raptors, who have the second-lowest odds in only 1 percent. It’s a long shot, sure, but teams in that range win the lottery every once in a while. More recently, Cleveland had just a 1.6 percent chance in 2014 when it won the right to select Canadian Andrew Wiggins first overall.

While Wembanyama won’t make his NBA debut until the fall, we may see him at this summer’s Basketball World Cup in Asia, where France and Canada meet in the group stage. Although it is not certain that Wembanyama will participate in the tournament, there are good signs: he played in the European qualifiers last fall and winter, and the head coach of the French team is also Wembanyama’s manager at Metropolitans 92.

The draft lottery takes place tonight at 8 pm ET, just before Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals between Denver and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Eastern final, with Boston and Miami, begins on Wednesday night.

In other NBA news, the Philadelphia 76ers fired head coach Doc Rivers today after losing Game 7 of their second-round series against Boston.