A sobering thought that I could not quite keep at bay while otherwise enjoying NBA Coast 2 Coast Tuesdays on Peacock was that this might just be something we need to get used to. Victor Wembanyama standing
on the sidelines, looking like a cross between a caged animal and a confused toddler who had been told not to play with his toys. I am not talking about only this season either. I am talking about the larger idea of being fans of a team built around a 7 foot 5 French colossus who seems determined to push his body to the outer limits of what is possible on a basketball court. We are in uncharted waters and the whole thing is probably more wobbly than we are comfortable acknowledging.
We heard it over and over during his rise as a prospect, through the draft process, and again in the lead up to his Spurs debut. This guy is going to be amazing if he can stay healthy. That “if” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in there. On the surface, sure, it sounds like a generic talking point that applies to any young star. Who isn’t going to have a better career if they can manage to avoid getting injured all the time? The thing with Victor, though, is that everything about him is different. He is so tall. He is so long. He needs to put on weight to prevent injuries, but he also needs to not put on too much weight in order to prevent getting injured. His elaborate stretching routine has to be carried out every day with the precision of a bomb technician. It all just feels more precarious than you want it to be.
I swear I am not trying to Chicken Little this situation and tell you the sky is falling just because his calf is a little sore. I just think this is a reality we need to get comfortable with. The risk of Victor Wembanyama getting hurt is greater than it is for a lot of other players. His anatomy is unique. It puts strain on his joints and muscles and knees and ankles and bones in ways that no one else really has to deal with. The chances of him suffering something that keeps him out for a two month stretch or a season or, knock on wood, even longer feel high. Higher than most. Look at Bill Walton, Yao Ming, or Greg Oden in the past or, shoot, look at Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis right now. Big men in this league staying healthy one hundred percent of the time is not something that happens and Victor Wembanyama is one of the biggest men we have. If you cannot see the pieces of that puzzle sitting on the board then you are being willfully ignorant at this point.
Now let me pull back from the hysteria for a second and restate that, yes, this is all conjecture. Victor is hurt right now, but he will be back soon. We are good. We are fine. We are okay.
I just want to acknowledge that the Spurs, as a team and a franchise and a business, have a lot riding on the long term health of Victor Wembanyama. He is central to everything. They are going to exercise extreme caution whenever they can. That means he is going to miss a week or two or three. Regularly. If he wakes up with a cramp in his foot he is going to sit. If he slept funny on his arm he is going to sit. If he has an eyelash stuck in his eye then he is going to sit. The priority is never going to be you or me or NBA Coast 2 Coast Tuesdays on Peacock. He is going to sit. He is going to sit a lot.
Tim Duncan was not immune to this either and that turned out pretty great, right? I mean, for better or worse, the Spurs practically invented the concept of “DNP – We Don’t Care About This Game.” This is in our blood! He sat all the time and the team was better for it. He was fresher for the playoffs and other guys developed over the course of the season. These Spurs are going to be better because of this too and that’s something we should celebrate. There is a middle ground here and none of this is the end of the world.
It is just a bit of a bummer.
Takeaways
- One last injury thing then I promise we can talk about the part where guys actually played basketball. Tom Haberstroh over at Yahoo Sports had an article yesterday basically outlining an alarming “star availability crisis.” It’s a really sharp look at how often the league’s biggest names are in street clothes and why it feels like every marquee matchup, like, for example, “Grizzlies vs Spurs on NBA Coast 2 Coast Tuesdays,” keeps falling apart before tipoff. Go read it. Tom is a better writer than me and actually knows what he is talking about! At the very least, look at this graph and despair with me just a little.
- Anyway! The game! The one we learned something from last night! (sorry). It was actually a pretty fun little game. A very uptempo, back and forth affair that I genuinely enjoyed hanging out with. Harrison Barnes looked like the best player in the league for a stretch here and there which, I have to be honest, is not something I expected to type this season. De’Aaron Fox kept everything nice and controlled and seemed more than capable of running this team on his own for a while which I found very reassuring. Kelly Olynyk checked into the game and said, “you want stars? I’ll give you stars,” and then proceeded to execute a really cool little score, steal the inbound pass, get fouled combo that got the people (me) extremely fired up. Yea man, nice little win for the Spurs. We will take any and all wins we can get.
- Seems like our boys have a little work to do remembering how to rebound without having Wembanyama around to just hoover the ball up constantly. I seriously felt like I could see them instinctively waiting around for those giant limbs to pop over and grab a defensive rebound and then being shocked every time it ended up back in the hands of a Grizzly. You are definitely not supposed to win when you get out-rebounded to that degree but, thankfully, the Spurs employ the best player in the league on their roster and Harrison Barnes was available to save our hides.
- I seriously can’t get over the Barnes thing. Like, what are we watching here? At one point in the fourth he scored like seven points in ninety seconds. He is hitting hook shots and floaters. He feels automatic from three. Are we… are we going to just cruise through this injury crisis on the strength of Harrison Barnes? Maybe!
- I do think it is going to be interesting to watch how this team continues to execute on its identity as a fast paced, defensive minded group in the absence of some of the dudes who are crucial to that plan. Even without Wemby, Harper, and Castle, we still have guys who can work quickly and we still have, you know, some tall dudes, right? There is no reason they cannot be aggressive pressuring the ball and closing out on shooters and staying sharp on their rotations. The results do not have to be elite, but the effort should still be coming across. You could feel our guys tighten up defensively down the fourth and really shut the door on a Grizzlies team who was determined not to go away quietly. It’s cool. It’s something to monitor while we are all pretending not to be stressed. Focus on the defensive rotations! Do it!
WWL Post Game Press Conference
– If you want to write something about the Wembanyama injury stuff, you should just write something about the injury stuff. This space is designed to be a recap of the game that happened. You’re ignoring the purpose of this place!
– Well, speaking of ignoring the purpose of this place, this is supposed to be a press conference and I didn’t see a single question in there.
– *sigh* Why did you choose to focus on the long term injury availability of Wembanyama instead of what actually took place on the court?
– Look, I wish that what happened on the court felt more important than the fact that Vic was just chilling on the sidelines. Truly, I do. But it wasn’t! The most important thing that stood out to me about watching this game is that it felt like a reality setting in that this is what a lot of Spurs games are probably going to look like, not just in the near term, but in the future as well. It’s not just Wemby either, the idea of seeing long stretches of play where every member of the Spurs is available to play during the regular season seems almost quaint at this point! I’m tired of watching games and discounting what I see based on the fact that the teams weren’t at full strength. No one is ever at full strength! Why should that be the standard?
– Do you think the NBA is in danger of rendering the regular season meaningless?
– It can’t be meaningless. You have to win some games, right? Like it has to matter a little bit otherwise…I mean I don’t even have an “otherwise.” The whole thing can’t be playoffs can it?
– That’s how it works in soccer. The whole season is just a cumulative accruement of points and every game matters the same and whoever has the most points wins the league.
– What happens if one team just clearly has the most points and is obviously going to have the most points half way through the season?
– Then it get s a bit boring.
– Feels like sports maybe have more of a capacity to be a bit boring than we give them credit for.
– It’s almost like we shouldn’t have a round the clock, 24 hour news cycle covering them.
– Hold your horses there partner, next thing you know you’re going to be saying we shouldn’t have robust coverage of specific teams on internet based fan sites featuring dashing, complicated, and respected writers delivering diatribes and comedic bits in the guise of a column about learning things.
– Never, the people would riot without that.
– Exactly.
