SAN ANTONIO — The official media attendance at Monday morning’s San Antonio Spurs media day occasion was an excellent 100. By unofficial consensus, it was the biggest throng of media ever for the crew’s pre-training camp Q&A fest.
Not even within the 20-year, four-championship period of the crew’s Large Three — Tim Duncan, Manu Ginóbili and Tony Parker — had so many reporters, photographers, broadcasters and bloggers proven as much as quiz Spurs gamers and coaches.
Such is the draw of Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio’s prize rookie from France, for higher or worse the most-hyped NBA newcomer since LeBron James.
Right here’s one other official statistic from Monday’s session: It took coach Gregg Popovich a bit of underneath 10 minutes to pronounce he was uninterested in answering questions on “Wemby.”
To be honest, Popovich, the newly minted member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame, had been arrange for a sarcastic response by a media member, and it bought snigger. After the chuckling subsided, the league’s all-time winningest coach continued giving considerate responses to many extra questions on a young person whose outsized presence within the crew’s soon-to-be-retired observe facility at One Spurs Lane dominated the ultimate occasion the constructing ever would home.
The Spurs will open their coaching camp Tuesday morning at their model new, $500 million Victory Capital Efficiency Heart, about six-and-a-half miles northwest of their observe residence for the previous 21 years. Wembanyama was nonetheless in junior highschool when plans had been made to construct a facility so good that Popovich swore he would possibly “transfer in” and make it his residence.
The very fact essentially the most subtle and splendid “efficiency facility” within the league will lastly be absolutely full and prepared for observe the very day Wembanyama will have interaction in his first session as a member of a real NBA crew (versus a summer-league conglomeration) looks as if yet one more instance of what Popovich calls serendipity.
GO DEEPER
Spurs, Vassell comply with 5-year, $135 million extension
Popovich is aware of he’s about to start a coaching camp not like any he has performed since taking up as Spurs head coach in 1996. He is aware of hype when he sees and hears it. Popovich by no means has gotten caught up in it and gained’t now. He made the purpose shortly after he started answering questions on Monday.
“Actually we wish to watch him develop,” Popovich mentioned of Wembanyama, “but it surely’s the identical with Devin (Vassell) or Keldon (Johnson) or Zach (Collins) or anyone else. We’ve got had two questions up to now and each concerned Wemby. I perceive that, however there’s a crew on the market. He’s no completely different from anyone else. He’s bought to develop and enhance (with) data of the sport and his expertise identical to some other participant.
“Luckily for us, he’s very coachable, very clever. That’s already begun for him, from the primary day of training in summer time league, simply getting used to a special type of sport. We are going to watch him in all probability for the following couple of weeks with out saying an excessive amount of of something to him, simply so we perceive his idiosyncrasies and the best way he performs the sport, how his physique works, all that kind of factor.
“All people else, we all know their sport, we all know what they do, so we’ve to do the identical factor with him.”
Wembanyama has been an attention-getter most of his younger life and being the No. 1 NBA draft choose places him in an excellent brighter highlight. He acknowledges the potential for jealousy as he’s hailed because the savior of a crew that has not made a playoff run since 2019.
After a two-week hiatus from basketball following his transient summer-league appearances, he jumped again into conditioning and open fitness center video games together with his teammates. He has developed relationships with them and is assured they know he neither seeks consideration nor believes a lot of the hype.
“I feel fairly rapidly I realized to know my teammates and so they realized to know me,” Wembanyama mentioned. “They know I don’t care about it. I’m right here to make sacrifices for them, and I feel they’re going to make sacrifices for me when it’s wanted. They understand it’s completely different. In fact, there’s going to be lots of consideration, however on the finish of the day, we’re at observe and I’m like, ‘Yeah, what can we do right now to make this crew higher?’
“So, it’s basketball first.”
Sounds so much like “the Spurs means,” and Popovich already has addressed Wembymania with a few of his crew leaders.
“We’ve talked about it,” Popovich mentioned. “I’ve talked to gamers individually and that kind of factor. If we deal with it prefer it’s no huge deal, you (media) all are going to do what you do; followers are going to do what they do. However as a result of I do know the gamers, they’ve bought such excessive character. And, he’s used to this.
“This isn’t the primary time he has gotten consideration. Doing it organically is best than making choices forward of time. Let’s not put anyone in packing containers. Let’s simply roll with it and see what it’s like.
“If folks begin hanging off the highest of the bus, then we’ve bought to get ’em off. Wanting that, we’ll be OK.”
Spurs beginning ahead Jeremy Sochan, who attended the 2023 NBA Draft in Brooklyn and was the primary Spurs participant to welcome Wembanyama to the crew, doesn’t rule out the occasional awkward second however doesn’t assume Wembymania represents a menace to crew unity.
“I feel we’ll deal with it fairly nicely,” Sochan mentioned. “Once more, I really feel just like the Spurs and simply the PR crew and coach Pop, they know it’s not all about Wemby and that the emphasis is on the crew. That’s a very powerful factor. However I feel that for each query that’s requested we’re going to reply it in a constructive means and hopefully no unfavorable feedback come out. However, it’s what it’s on the finish of the day, so we’ll deal with it nicely.”
Wembanyama’s new teammates all have seen their share of what Sochan referred to as, “Oh, snap!” moments from Wembanyama throughout their open fitness center runs.
“Let’s simply put it this manner,” mentioned Vassell, who spent a part of his summer time figuring out with Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant, “I feel each sport he’s going to do one thing the place you flip round and say, ‘Huh?’
“It simply doesn’t make sense. Generally he simply makes the ring look so little. He’ll hit a step-back and also you’ll say, ‘Did he actually simply shoot that?’ After which he makes it. Y’all are going to have a good time watching him play this 12 months.”
And isn’t that what Wembymania is all about?
Associated listening
(Photograph of Victor Wembanyama: Timothy A. Clary / AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
