It’s simply the primary day within the workplace for Victor Wembanyama, however he already felt at residence being in San Antonio.
After a busy week headlined by his look within the NBA Draft as the highest general decide of this yr, Wembanyama spent his Saturday attaining the nice and cozy reception of your complete San Antonio fandom for the primary time. As such, he concluded the big day on a priceless dinner with some of the franchise’s greats in Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Manu Ginobili and Sean Elliot.
“Probably in a couple hours, I learned more about the NBA than my whole life before that,” Wembanyama informed reporters Saturday throughout his introductory press convention, according to ESPN’s Andrew Lopez. “It’s so comforting to see these people who are so important to the city of San Antonio and the franchise are such great people and generous.
“They genuinely wanted to share their experience. I feel like they’ve already started to take great care of me. It’s so important to be in a position where it’s so comfortable.”
Wembanyama accepted the torch from the Spurs’ previous icons to energy San Antonio transferring ahead, and this transfer can’t be extra daunting to contemplate in hindsight.
After cementing their place as one of the nice dynasties of the sport bannered by their 5 championships in practically 20 years, the Spurs entered a peculiar place and crashed from mediocrity. They haven’t been within the postseason within the final 4 seasons, which is an uncommon skid contemplating that they’re a constant playoff participant from 1997 to 2019.
The highway again to relevance and rivalry will actually begin from scratch, and the start with a as soon as in a lifetime expertise in Wembanyama holds a promising future.
“I wanted to say to you directly, we’re excited to grow with you, support you, challenge you — especially coach [Gregg Popovich] — on your journey through life and basketball,” Spurs GM Brian Wright stated to Wembanyama. “Your talent is obvious. But as we got to know you, the maturity, the approach, the character, it let us know how special of a young man you are.”
