Victor Wembanyama on Anthony Edwards saying he’ll try and dunk on him one day: “Over the years, I will try and block him more than he dunks on me.”
I’m not sure if Wemby is the villain we deserve, but he’s definitely the villain we need right now.
His attitude to compete, create rivalries (he feels some way about Chet 😂), say things bluntly, and never shy from the challenge or truth is amazing.
As an NBA fan for nearly 3 decades, I love seeing this new group of two way superstars with a real attitude and old school competitiveness. Wemby is ofc is much better on defense while ant is better on offense slightly and for the time being
Exactly! NBA became way too sanitized in the last twenty years. I came of age as an NBA fan in the 90s too and miss all those old rivalries that felt so huge. Wemby and Haliburton both seem to get it and relish being heels for the good of the sport (and the fact that they’re both so charismatic makes it work for them).
Nowadays we have Ant vs birth control, Ballmer vs Pablo Torres, and Nico Harrison vs Luka Doncic
And it’s a BLOWOUT against birth control
On one hand, his answers are always measured and thoughtful.
On the other hand, he’s on that Jordan level of pettiness, and this is before he even made the playoffs.
Man’s just manufacturing rivalries because he’s competitive and petty af, it’s awesome.
I think that’s just being French, lol
He’s definitely the main character. He needs to win a chip this year to restore order to the NBA
Yeah, what the NBA needs is for the Spurs to win another ring lmao that’ll balance things out.
Maybe a Celtics lakers rivalry
let’s see if Phil Jackson needs another ring these days, for balance.
How about another Warriors dynasty in a few years?
A massively overhyped #1 draft pick with very visible and detrimental flaws that are overlooked will spice things up
We really need a guard who is great on offense but just refuses to play defense. That could be interesting.
That Spurs team you’re talking about has been dead for over a decade. I see this as something completely different.
Globally the world was a much better place during those runs so yes bring back the spurs dominance
Nah Curry needs another ring for his legacy.
Most sensible Rockets fan
lol
Save it for your fanfiction boss.
Don’t you look at us like that, you certainly wouldn’t be in any danger.
lmao 10⁄10 reference
Sublime work, if I had gold I’d give you Zions weight in it
I would be shocked if he didn’t get one before he retires. Well, unless he gets hampered by injuries which is possible
i like that idea!
Dear Diary
The main character can’t win the tourney the first season he makes it, what kinda lame anime are you watching? He’s gotta overcome extreme odds to put up a good fight against an eternal rival only to fall short at the end and get a power up from the off screen off-season training for next season.
Happy cake day
Hang on, out of Ant and Wemby you’re calling Wemby the villain?!
I call him that affectionately! Seems like he’s trying to play the heel and I love him for it.
Yeah he seems perfectly fine with the role. He wants it.
Funny because he’s kinda widely beloved right now. So he gets to talk shit like a heel but everybody likes him for it
I think you are reading into this a lot lol
Denver Nuggets fan?
Sort of, I guess. But mainly I just find it hard to understand how people still support Ant (or Kobe).
Lol I would not put Ant and Kobe on the same level if we’re discussing off-court misdeeds.
“Have you ever tried sugar, or PCP?”
How are you equating Kobe raping someone and Ant getting baby trapped by someone 15 years older than him
I didn’t equate them - you’re reading more into my comment than “they’re both unlikable people”, that’s entirely on you.
I don’t think Ant is an unlikable person. I think he’s actually very charismatic. He has done some bad things, sure, but he’s far from unlikable.
This is exactly my point. You know who else was very charismatic? Ted Bundy…
LMAOOOOO
This comment made me laugh hahah
Thank you for the laugh
Brooks might have something to say to that.
Vegeta hairline to match
Ethical villain
Villain? He is such a hero. He’s like a goku in his Buddhist philosophies! Especially compared to everyone’s favorite baby daddy Edwards!
That widows peak is killing me lol
He’s not just an alien, he’s the prince of the saiyan race.
Shit wait until he lets himself be controlled by an evil wizard just to get an extra strength boost. That M on his forehead gonna hit different.
Majin Wemby gonna be a menace
JUST PUT AN M RIGHT ON YO HEAD
YOU A LUIGI BABIDI BROTHER NOW
It’s an upside down W
Wait till the mfer draws an M on his forehead
“You’re not dealing with an ordinary French man”
“He has become the legend, the legend that you fear”
Monk type shit
Wemby the last airbender
He’s a Dustbringer
if he yells “Final Flash” on the court, I will lose it.
His hair isn’t as tall as him, it’s losing the fight with gravity
I WILL SURPASS KAKAROT
‐ Wemby, probably
He should just shave it into a v for Victor
This comment made me laugh 🤣
Didn’t notice it until you pointed it out lol
He looks like the avatar
The last yama
He turned 22 like two weeks ago how is it so bad already 😭
Widow’s peak doesn’t mean you’re balding lol
That’s what I thought at my own peril
If you don’t keep your childhood hairline your apparently balding - some people on reddit.
Developing a mature hairline is different than balding
We let them get French Tim Duncan….
The Big Fundamentaux
I think the true French translation is “Le The Big Fundamenteaux”
Look how I Americanised my boy…
Seems right tho. Would’ve been weird to see him in charlotte
When did Aang start playing with the spurs?
Petition is name change to the avatar
Or the prince of all saiyans
Wembanyavatar
Powers like Aang, built like the big blue alien…
Wemby really does give airbender vibes doesn’t he haha
And the deep widow’s peak hairline is perfect to activate the avatar state
He is the king of being respectful/humble without shying away from the challenge. Very precise
Exactly what the league needs. We are truly spoiled with the current crop of stars. I think this era is gonna be remembered fondly in the future
Only if silver will get out of the way. The era that brought back point shaving scandals and had half the stars sitting every three games is not gonna be remembered fondly regardless of how excellent these stars are
I started reading this as “Exactly what the legends…” and quickly realized it was league, then thought yeah both fit. I hate the Spurs, but man i hope he has a long healthy career.
Me too. Bro really is the protagonist especially with that arrow on his head.
He’s beaming with French arrogance. Not an insult I learned to love it with Rudy
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t call him humble lol. I know some of it is the language barrier but he has a fun level of arrogance
As a long time Arsenal fan, he reminds me a lot of Thierry Henry. Well spoken, respectful but clearly aware of his talent and place in the game.
Especially with players of his caliber. It’s why he disregards all the Chet discussion. Chet is an amazing player, but he’s not the perennial MVP candidate that Wemby or Ant are. People need to talk about Shai vs Wemby more than Chet vs Wemby.
He said he was better than Jokic, Giannis, and Shai
I dont mind but humble? Lmao
The fact that Ja, who’s significantly smaller than Ant, dunked on Wemby clean still baffles me. Utter shame it didn’t count
Kevin Johnson dunked on Hakeem. While very rare, small athletic guys will always catch an elite shot blocker at some point in their career.
Jaylen Brown has probably the nastiest dunk on Gobert.
If you contest enough dunks, you are going to get dunked on sometimes.
If you’ve never been postered in your career you’re not trying to protect the rim hard enough.
Exactly this. I think lack of understanding this sort of shit is why Rudy gets so much shit overall as they just see someone scoring in the paint and Rudy is nearby or contested it lightly and they’re like use it to therefore deduce that Shaq would (insert some french bbq chicken bullshit here) Gobert into oblivion. Yeah, Shaq bodies everyone, but I’d venture he has less success against Rudy than he does against the overwhelming majority of genuinely good rim protectors ever. It’s still a lot of success, but it’s not like him going up against, I dunno, so Sengun. Sengun is actually fine defensively but you get my point.
People will value your ability to play lockdown 1v1 post defense vs an all timer like Jokic, and being unable to stop an elite athlete like Ja or Ant leaping from a sprint at you as being unable a lesser defender than Gobert being a very, very good 1v1 defender and overall rim protector, someone who deters shots, but largely that help defence, weak side protection etc are way less important when especially in this era, they’re not.
Paradoxically they will rightfully criticize Jokic’s rim protection and ignore him and actually being good in all other aspects, and in particular act, again, like Shaq would murder him more than he would the usual C, when if anything Jokic is big and strong as hell, and while nobody stops Shaq, I actually think he holds his own better than most down low against Shaq. It’d be nimble footwork guys like Hakeem I think would really make Jokic look foolish down low, but again, that happens to anyone.
TL;DR - Hypocrisy on what constitutes good defense from a big is rampant. Personally I’d take someone who can help cover team mates weaknesses through help, communication, and versatility with at least decent 1v1 low post defence and verticality protecting against downhill threats as opposed to Lakers era Shaq (not a Shaq hate manifesto, Magic Shaq was a way better and more versatile defensive player imo and personally offensively too but thats another essay) who is dog shit in the PnR, isn’t swicthable etc, but is foolish to post up on.
i like the christian braun dunk on gobert even more
Im partial to the Wiggins one myself
Still one of the greatest dunks of all time. I had the poster on my bedroom wall of Hakeem giving KJ a piggyback ride.
I was watching that game and saw it happen in real-time, so it’s always stood out as one of the most surprising and awesome moments of NBA basketball. Did it in the playoffs too.
shit CP3 put dwight howard in a poster
Ja flies when he jumps; very few players have legitimately dunked on Wemby; the only one who really succeeded was Kai Jones.
Ja has prime DRose’s athleticism and grace combo. It’s just a shame his career has gone the way it has the last few years.
He maxed all his stats on athleticism and didn’t have any XP left for intelligence.
He maxed out his Baffling Others skill tree smh
He chose the ‘Wild Wasteland’ perk on New Vegas then got the Mysterious Stranger perk. Real ones know…
Honestly Rose was not a mature guy off court, his court-case shows he was up to some shady behavior to say the least, idk if Ja is up to anything actually as nefarious but he’s outright just a stupider version of Rose on and off the court and lacks the genuine competitiveness that Rose has. The Rose vs Rondo playoff duel was an example two flawed young PG’s with genuine absolute dawg in them like Ja would like to think he has, but doesn’t really. (Rose obviously ended up better but was a rookie at the time) while Rondo was second only to prime CP3 at the time and many argued he was actually better.
Ja’s career will be defined by idiocy and some amazing dunks. But it’s sad he abused his career as much as he did both in the aforementioned idiocy, but I remember watching Ja is the playoffs vs the Lakers just trying to dunk absolutely everything he could, but sometimes it was just objectively the wrong thing to do, was out of reach even for him, but he couldn’t resist the poster, and was constantly taking scary falls due to it. Abused his athleticism and spammed it whereas I feel Rose would have made the right decision in that situation, gone up for the dunk then switched to the layup or something. Cause that competitiveness is about winning, getting the bucket, not taking a worse option to get the dunk and think that because you did the most aggressive thing you can that makes you some Kobe-like competitor.
He’s got Jordan’s dis-attachment to gravity, and that’s about it.
He’s 2 inches shorter than Ant
And about 50 lbs lighter. Ant is built like an NFL player
It’s not like it was waved off late. It was a dead ball play. They both knew going in that it was for show
Trayce Jackson Davis, a bench warmer baby center for the warriors, dunked on Wemby
Ja sort of lives for the crazy dunks though. That missed dunk on Kevin Love is one of the most insane plays I’ve seen.
He does, spammed them and abused his athleticism imo and would have been better served taking Vince’s approach to dunking (which he was criticized for, but he got a long ass career out of it) and developing other aspects of his game.
I genuinely think guys like Rose and to a lesser extent Rondo who was never the level of athleticism Rose was (mainly vertically, they both had blurring speed) would have developed the jumpers that they ended up developing whether they tore their ACL’s or not, cause they cared about winning. It never came natural to them but they would have worked on it, knowing they can’t rely on physical gifts forever as smaller guards. To be a guard is especially unforgiving if you had athletcism then lose it, whereas 3s and 4s I feel like can transition into 4s and 5s as they slow or lose verticality.
Not really a one to one comparison but ginobili dunked on Yao Ming and it was glorious
Manu was really athletic when he was young
Manu was transcendent when he was young.
It’s like a dagger vs a longsword. Get inside with enough head of steam and just be quicker. Which nobody except for Ja and 3 other guys can probably do lol
I mean, that’s a perfectly good answer. I don’t think people should get as worked up as they seem to when someone dunks on someone. Yea it’s nice for the highlight reels and posters and stuff. But most of the time (not counting notorious shit talkers who deserve it for a particular reason) it’s really not that big of a deal.
Blocks can be every bit as impactful but rarely get the kind of coverage that a good dunk gets.
Personally I think the chase down block is my favorite play in basketball. Ant hitting his head on the backboard while blocking the pacers, Lebron in the 2016 finals…some of the most exciting things to witness
That block is legit possibly my favourite in game moment ever. Like I was going crazy the time especially the Kyrie shot and Love actually playing good defense on Steph when his reputation was that of a defensive liability and Steph felt just absolutely Thanos inevitable.
But it turned out Lebron was Thanos swooping in with the chase-down flinger-clicking the greatest season ever into dust.
He also nearly hit an insane dunk that he got fouled on, if he had hit it, it would have brought down the entire building.
Hali in particular and the Pacers generally brought an absurd amount to last years playoffs, like fairytale shit on the regular.
The thing about chasedown blocks is it’s usually the guy slowing down the offensive player that’s doing the dirty work.
That guy needs to not foul, stay out of the way for a potential chase down and doesn’t end up with any stats or highlights. Guy getting the block just needs to run and jump
But I guess that’s just defense as a whole. Weak side shot blockers who are good at rotating. Guys getting steals after it was the point of attack defender that caused a bad pass
I will never shit on a person that got dunked on, they tried to get a stop, maybe it failed and they were put on a poster, but at least they are competing.
On the other hand, I will always clown on players that, as the commentators call it, make a business decision and just get out of the way, that is a bitch move.
Joe Ingles did this just the other day. I can’t blame him for it. Dude’s 38 or whatever and only playing in garbage time to help stabilize the young guys on the team.
I personally love blocks way more than dunks and I feel it hypes the crowd up more than a dunk. Even though the Spurs lost, that block Wemby had on Giannis a couple years ago is still tops. The crowd was about to shit their pants when it happened.
Getting dunk on is just 2 points. Or at worst, it is an and-one.
But an attempt to dunk on taller players generally would create more no point in that possession.
It is all about winning games.
We almost got it last night. Collision and foul called
Unstoppable force meets immensely tall bald immovable object
immensely bald*
the visual of his hand on the mic and the way he holds it is absolutely insane
i never noticed until now, but i’ll never be able to ignore it agian lol
he holds it all French
Another one for the Wemby highlight reel
Channeling his inner Marshawn, gotta love it
https://youtu.be/E5d0KXJMRWQ?si=4TVe9weV-ImZa1Vd
The guy loves challenge and competition. League need this kind of attitude. Healthy competition and not like a friendly buddy buddy system
Wemby’s got a great attitude about it. It used to bother the hell out of me when smaller guys felt so proud for getting one over on me, as if them missing or getting stuffed wasn’t the routine outcome.
For every decent dunk someone has on Wemby, he blocks about 50 players. Let the kids ooh and ahh about the one dunk; I’ll take the blocks.
I like to think Victor has a Kill Bill style list of US players he wants to embarrass or dunk on as revenge for that gold medal game in France that he doesn’t talk about.
It’s too soon to call Wemby the next TD.
But we all want to.
Good teams accept that good perimeter shooters are going to miss 6-7 three point shots for every ten they get up. The resulting miss is a rebounding opportunity, and some teams are better than others at exploiting it,
How long til the league adjusts to Wemby interior blocking as just another rebounding opportunity. That driving into the lane and getting the shot up and blocked is better basketball than giving up.
Right now, Wemby is killing offenses just standing there. He can so easily cover the paint and the weak side corner that the Spurs are playing 5-4. Can an opponent find an advantage by pumping up Wemby’s blocks stats but keying into what happens after the block? Leaning into the need to go early because the first shot probably won’t hit the rim, but putting the Spurs into rotation?
Don’t think it’s worth because he recovers the ball on a lot of those blocked shots.
The problem is Wemby has an innate ability to not only block shots, but he also gains control of the ball (or palms to teammates) at a very high percentile.
My hairline is receding. This mans hairline is growing. Truly generational talent
Bro is legit the avatar
His power level is over 9000
Thus spake Zen-bayama
The Mourning/Dikembe mindset. I blocked them 10 times but they’ll dunk on me once. Everyone remembers the one dunk but don’t remember the 10 blocks it took them to get there. I like it. Most defenders nowadays too scared to get postered and will just move out the way.
I love it. Ant Wemby and Shai are going to have awesome battles for years to come in the west.
What happened to Wembys hair? Did he just start shaving it?
That’s the official Spurs big man cut.
Really hope this dude can stay healthy and have a decently long career.
Yeah I love this. What a rivalry this could end up being
Why does he look like an airbender
Wemby cares too much about sound bites. Dude is corny as hell.
Worry about the knicks right now bud
Love his talent, but this guy doesn’t have the conditioning to play another five years.
M day . I don’t think we should have to . , to r. KK to to. I’ll. KK so much to to to to toto to
I see.
PostingFinally? I think you needed more time.
Couldn’t have said it better myself
Not sure I agree.
Mainly because I have no idea what this means, but still.
Indubitably.
The flop tower