Victor Wembanyama is the league\u2019s top shot-blocker, and it\u2019s not close between him and the next guys, Jay Huff (1.9) and Chet Holmgren (1.9). Wembanyama possesses physical gifts that the gods of Olympus would envy, and he is far from his final form. Yet he has a new standard to chase: Wilt Chamberlain in his final season.<\/p>\n
The NBA didn\u2019t start counting blocks and steals until 1973-74, the first season Chamberlain had retired, but now, Basketball Reference has added his block numbers for his last year. At age 36, Goliath played in all 82 games, averaging 5.4 rejections. With these numbers added, it now claims the second-highest average in NBA history (5.4) behind Mark Eaton.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind that Chamberlain\u2019s prowess was so legendary that you can find old news clippings of him after blocking shots in the teens or up to the 20s. Specifically, once when he blocked 16 shots, the LA Times scribe Mal Florence described his dominance as \u201csort of frightening- a real life Gulliver venting his rage on the little folks who played the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
He changed his game later in his career with the Los Angeles Lakers to be more of a defender and rebounder. Eaton was never much of a scorer, yet he was a towering figure at 7\u20194 and about 275 pounds; his weakness was mostly being effective as a low man.<\/p>\n
Naturally, Wemby is much closer to Chamberlain than Eaton. If he wants to set a gold standard so he never loses motivation, he will always have Chamberlain\u2019s records to chase. Yet it begs the question of how close could Wemby get to the old Dipper\u2019s \u201873 block numbers and Eaton\u2019s all-time record?<\/p>\n
With all due respect to Chamberlain and Eaton, Wembanyama can top them.<\/p>\n
First, think about how his defensive timing has made him sharper at guarding two players at once, and how he is the premier inside presence in the NBA. Notably, his 3.0 blocks per game are the lowest of his career after his rookie (3.6) and second year (3.8), but this is more about becoming a smarter defender, ensuring he doesn\u2019t give up rebounding position, and he\u2019s avoided like a cornerback who doesn\u2019t get much action on his side of the field.<\/p>\n
Thank goodness Chamberlain tapes exist, but the public doesn\u2019t have access to nearly as many as they should, like how they would if they wanted to watch the careers of LeBron James, Stephen Curry or even what we have of Wemby now. However, modern times present an endless highlight reel that lives online, and it\u2019s inescapable. One thing to consider was that many games were not recorded back in the day, so who knows how many of Chamberlain\u2018s victims were spared from embarrassment?<\/p>\n
Aside from the intimidation factor of Wembanyama\u2019s blocks, perhaps the easily accessible tapes\/highlights are a reason he isn\u2019t getting challenged more because opponents don\u2019t want the evidence to linger for eternity. He\u2019s adjusted with his snake-eyes technique to fool ball handlers by coming in as a helper, but that\u2019s probably on the scouting report now, so he\u2019ll have to take matters into his own hands further.<\/p>\n
Still, there are nights when Wembanyama has brought a little extra to the matchup, like the 16 times this season he\u2019s finished between five and nine blocks. He should do it more often because 1. it would boost his MVP case, and 2. the San Antonio Spurs are almost unbeatable with a 15-1 record on those nights.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s developed the habit over the last month of taking a step back on offense while his teammates get theirs since he knows he can go beast mode at any time. Hypothetically, if he cut down on his scoring like Chamberlain, he\u2019d have more juice in his legs and could surpass Eaton\u2019s highest block total\/average in NBA history comfortably. He may not even need to do that in his prime; one noticeable improvement he\u2019s made since his rookie year is becoming laterally faster, making him better on the perimeter.<\/p>\n
To Wembanyama\u2019s credit, he does a good job of keeping blocks in bounds and recovering them to get transition started. If he raised his block numbers it would make the Spurs faster on offense (currently fifth in tension frequency), and that\u2019s something the fans would appreciate. Basketball\u2019s beauty is mostly seen in the open court, and who doesn\u2019t want to see more of the team\u2019s high-level athletes on the runway?<\/p>\n
Catching Chamberlain and Eaton is impossible this season, but he takes a significant leap going into each new one. So it would be a huge shocker if he hasn\u2019t surpassed their marks in five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama is the league\u2019s top shot-blocker, and it\u2019s not close between him and the next guys, Jay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,12508,6,969,474,4075,4074,534,37729],"class_list":{"0":"post-681161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-every-day-is-wembsday","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","13":"tag-sanantonio","14":"tag-sanantoniospurs","15":"tag-spurs","16":"tag-spurs-analysis"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116298505252328506","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}