wemby

Joseph Settimi aka @wosephcantmiss on tiktok

Victor Wembanyama and his seemingly infinite ways to score the basketball provide an insane conundrum for defenses. Everybody knows that, obviously, but I think this conundrum might extend past his opponents, and also fall in the lap of himself and his teammates. During games 1 and especially 2 of these 2026 Finals, it feels like Wemby’s status as an elite scorer on and off the ball disappears for minutes or quarters at a time. He is uninvolved in many possessions, being used as a prop to set screens with the occasional fake threat of a 30 foot pick n pop. These runs of uninvolvement usually end with forced shots when the Spurs find themselves minutes (not a coincidence) into a Knicks run.

I am going to vow not to bring up defense in this entire write-up, he is uncompetitively the best defender the league has and essentially cannot have a truly ‘bad’ game because of this. This is about the areas he needs to grow offensively, and the unique challenges his skills create for himself.

I wanted to be able to visualize this in hopes of letting the game script confirm what I believed to be true: he doesn’t hunt shots at the speed and game flow (not the frequency, those numbers check out) of regular offensive superstars. Below is a plot of games 1 and 2 plotted by the Spurs lead (negative for losing, inspired by The Diff™).

HHHHHH