The Spurs players who play with Victor Wembanyama are terrible at playing to him, or the numbers show it.
When the San Antonio Spurs won the lottery and got potential superstar Victor Wembanyama with the first pick in the draft, they chose not to rush into the playoffs.
As a 19-year-old rookie in the NBA, Wembanyama looked like he would at least be a good player.
But the Spurs intended on pushing him to the edges of his skills so that he could improve in the future and so that they could add another strong lottery pick next to himself in the 2024 NBA Draft.
The Spurs lost the NBA’s Chicago Bulls 114–95 on Thursday night, which made their slide even worse in the standings.
As of now, San Antonio has lost 23 games in a row. solely the Detroit Pistons, however, are worse, and they are about to have the NBA’s worst losing streak ever.
This season, the Spurs chose to focus on development over quick wins. This is important to remember because a lot of the team’s problems are caused by their inability to make the most of Wemby’s incredible skill.
The most interesting thing about San Antonio’s season has been their attempts to find a better point guard.
Well-known head coach Gregg Popovich has taken Tre Jones off the court to give second-year looking forward Jeremy Sochan more facilitating tasks.
Sochan is 6’9″ and was known as a good playmaker for his position when he first came into the league.
But he was never meant to be a point guard. Because of this, Wembanyama has to make most of his own offense since his partners can’t pass the ball to him.
“I don’t know how you miss a 7’4 guy,” Bulls expert Stacey King said on air. “It seems like the team doesn’t want to throw it to him.”
Since the beginning of the year, Wemby’s Spurs teammates have not been able to reliably get him the ball in good spots.
It’s gotten so serious that Wembanyama is attempting alley-oops even when the pass isn’t there. He did this in a loss to the Pelicans a few days ago.
Because he doesn’t get passed to enough, Wembanyama isn’t scoring as well as he could be. His true shot percentage of 52% this year is terrible for anyone, but it’s even worse for a 7’4″ guy.
By making 100 league averages to any given year, the number “true shooting plus” gives you an idea of how efficient your scoring is.
Basketball Reference says that Wembanayama is only hitting 90% of the time this season. At the same time, Chet Holmgren, who is also in the running for Rookie of the Year, is hitting 112 percent of the time and 64.6 percent of the time this year.
The biggest problem—but not the only one—with not getting the most out of Wembanyama yet as a play-finisher so far has been the choice to stick with Sochan and reduce Jones’s role.
Polar, an online friend, says that Wembanyama’s field goal rate is only 19.4 percent after receiving a pass from Sochan.
This year, Sochan has also passed the ball to Wembanyama more than anyone else on the team. Jones passes the ball to Wemby, who makes 55.8 percent of his shots.
However, he only plays 23 minutes per game this year, but he played more than 29 minutes per night last year.
This is just the start for the San Antonio Spurs with Victor Wembanyama. For a team that hasn’t made the NBA playoffs because 2019 and only had 22 wins last season, every game will get a lot more attention than normal.
There are a lot of hopes for the 7-foot-4, 210-pound No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft, but Wembanyama can’t have a great night every night. He can still work and put on a show, though.
The 19-year-old scored at least 20 points in each of two warmup games and had a few highlights that went viral.
As the Warriors beat the Houston Rockets 117–103 on Wednesday, he only made 3 out of 10 shots from the field.
But he made 8 out of 10 free throws and was great defensively, getting 6 rebounds and 2 blocks in 21 minutes.
Wembanyama wasn’t in every play that went viral, but he did provide a few highlights for us to think about.
One of them was nutmegging 6-foot-6 Reggie Bullock, which made the guard or forward wonder what had happened.