Victor Wembanyama: Early-Season Scouting Report
The top prospect of the 2023 NBA Draft Class has already produced mesmerizing and jaw-dropping highlights through 7 regular-season games.
Seven regular-season games. Three scrimmages or exhibitions, and two more against the G-League Ignite. That’s all it has taken for Victor Wembanyama to produce an absurd amount of highlights and posters that make him the runaway top pick in the 2023 NBA Draft Class.
Wembanyama will likely go down as the most intimately-covered draft prospect in history. The preseason hype machine took off following his massive performance in Las Vegas against the G-League Ignite, where he put up historic stat lines and outdueled fellow top-pick contender Scoot Henderson. Just last week, it was announced that Wembanyama’s games would largely be broadcast on the NBA app.
Still, a top prospect playing overseas will leave a slight gap in consumption from most NBA fans. We’re here to help fill that void. We spent our weekend watching every one of Wembanyama’s games so far this season — preseason, exhibition or LNB contest. With that, we have a video scouting report on his play (strengths and improvement areas) thus far and some written thoughts on where he can keep improving.
On The Game Theory Podcast with Sam Vecenie, he and I have discussed Victor a great deal, especially this idea of the difference between being novel and being good. While we’ve never seen a player like Wembanyama before, it’s clear that he isn’t just a novelty item. He’s winning games, single-handedly changing how his team is playing and how opponents choose to attack him.
The numbers speak for themselves to start the year. Through seven games of Jeep Elite competition, he’s averaging 21.3 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2.7 assists. He’s shooting 50.5% from the field and 33.3% from 3 on 4.7 attempts per game. He’s stuffing 2.9 blocks per game, has a positive A:TO ratio, is taking nearly six free throws a night, and has Metropolitans 92 sitting in second place at 6-1.
Those counting stats do not include the impressive performances against the G-League Ignite from early October, where he averaged 36.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 4.5 blocks across two games.
Standing 7’4” in shoes with a reported 8’0” wingspan, Wembanyama’s physical profile is the main feature of his game. Defensively he locks down the lane and alters shots everywhere — on the perimeter, at the hoop or in transition. Opponents play fearful of Victor coming out of nowhere and swatting their jumper, stuffing their pull-up attempts, and are unaware of his insane ground coverage on closeouts.
With his size and movement ability, Wembanyama’s defensive ceiling has always been incredibly high. What we’ve seen over the last few months is the major development of Wembanyama’s offensive game as a primary option, shooter from distance and polished scorer across many levels.
The highlights are absurdly laughable. Wembanyama dunks with ease, moves and covers ground like nobody we’ve ever seen before, and has the confidence to pull from anywhere on the court. It’s worth noting that this video includes footage from a dozen games — he’s barely a third of the way through the year.
Despite the ascension into elite prospect territory, Wembanyama does have a few areas to improve upon. The scouting video above hits upon two of them: his playmaking and his shooting consistency. Wembanyama has never finished a season shooting above 30% from deep. We’re seeing how many different types of shots he can hit and the deep bag of tricks he can go to from deep. However, everything he utilizes from behind the line has to level out to a positive shooting mark.
The playmaking isn’t quite there yet, though it isn’t a major concern of ours at this point. Wembanyama shows natural passing ability, he’s just a tad slow on his decision-making and is opting to take several tough shots as opposed to making the easy rotation. It very much feels like this year is about Victor exploring the space of being a top option; taking many of these shots and seeing how consistently he can be an elite scorer can bear greater long-term positivity than moving the ball whenever there’s a hint of double-teams.
Still, we’d like to see Victor get a little better at proactively picking apart how defenses play him. When he posts up, can he feel the doubles on the catch? Will he more accurately throw passes when he’s blitzed on the dribble? Is there short roll upside as a passer in addition to his freakish finishing? Somebody with as long of strides as he has needs to be quicker at making decisions between dribbles. Windows will close pretty quickly for him if he chooses to take another bounce as opposed to throwing a pass as soon as it’s open.
Regardless, Wembanyama is an elite prospect. We have little doubt about that. Withstanding any injuries, he’s a runaway to be the top pick in this draft and has a tantalizing combination of size, skill, shooting, length and intangibles. We’re blown away.