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Victor Wembanyama Prepares to Become ‘Genuine’ Face of the N.B.A.

As the N.B.A. confronts a time without LeBron James, Stephen Curry or Kevin Durant, the Spurs star has embraced the idea that he is the league’s future.

The N.B.A. is banking on Victor Wembanyama’s international appeal to help spread its global popularity.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

The N.B.A. is banking on Victor Wembanyama’s international appeal to help spread its global popularity.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

One day last summer, Harrison Barnes, a longtime N.B.A. veteran, was finishing up an off-season workout with Victor Wembanyama, his 7-foot-4, then-20-year-old San Antonio Spurs teammate and one of the league’s most dazzling young stars.

Barnes was new to the team — he had recently been traded from the Sacramento Kings — and new to Wembanyama. But he was already beginning to understand that Wembanyama was precocious in more than one way.

In the N.B.A., many teams track shooting percentages and shots made in games and at practice as a way of gauging their players’ progress. The Spurs had a chart that tracked both, but ranked players based on makes. Barnes told Wembanyama that metric felt insufficient. Wembanyama pondered Barnes’s concern. Then he got to work.

He picked up a marker and started to sketch out some thoughts on a white board. He wondered if a graph might be better than a chart and if it should include week-to-week changes. Wembanyama plotted ideas for three theoretical players, whom he labeled A, B and C. At one point, Barnes heard the word “coefficients.”

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Author: Tania Ganguli

Source: N.Y Times

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