{"id":691304,"date":"2026-04-01T05:47:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/691304\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T05:47:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:47:26","slug":"dismissive-wembanyama-criticism-comes-off-as-sour-grapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/691304\/","title":{"rendered":"Dismissive Wembanyama criticism comes off as sour grapes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wait a second. We\u2019re still doing this thing where people look at a 7’5″ alien <\/a>and say, \u201cWell\u2026 yeah, he\u2019s supposed to do that,\u201d like the NBA hasn\u2019t spent decades disproving that exact logic? This is a common sentiment expressed about the San Antonio Spurs’ star since his rookie season, and you still hear it. As recently as last week, one of ESPN’s GetUp panelists said something similar. It’s tired.<\/p>\n

That argument collapses the moment you apply even a little bit of historical context in the same way the minutes argument did when we peeled back the hidden layers <\/a>critics didn’t want us to find. There is no shortage of 7-footers in NBA history. There is a shortage of 7-footers who can actually do anything remotely similar to what the Alien has been doing.<\/p>\n

Wembanyama is nicknamed “The Alien” for a reason<\/p>\n

Start with scoring. People act like putting up big numbers at that height is automatic. It\u2019s not. The league has seen players like Rudy Gobert (7’1″), Tyson Chandler (7’0″), Dikembe Mutombo (7’2″), and Mark Eaton (7’0″) build entire careers without even sniffing 20 points per game. <\/p>\n

These are not scrubs. These are Defensive Player of the Year-level anchors. And still, the offensive ceiling never came close. So no. Height doesn\u2019t hand you buckets. It never has. Then there\u2019s rebounding, which is supposed to be the \u201ceasy\u201d one. Just be tall and grab the ball, right? Wrong again.<\/p>\n

Dirk Nowitzki (7’0″), Kristaps Porzingis (7’2″), and even Yao Ming (7’6″) never averaged 10 rebounds for a career. That\u2019s three completely different archetypes\u2014an all-time scorer, a modern unicorn, and a humongous interior presence\u2014yet none of them hit the supposed baseline people casually expect from bigs.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because rebounding has never been about height alone. It\u2019s positioning. It\u2019s timing. It\u2019s motor. Getting boards is a skill that should be respected. Being tall doesn’t mean you’ll automatically pull down double digits in that stat. It never has. <\/p>\n

Wemby’s counting stats put him in rarified air because of his defense<\/p>\n

Same story with rim protection. People assume every tall power forward or center is automatically erasing shots at the rim. Meanwhile, players like Nowitzki (sorry to use you twice, Dirk), Nikola Jokic, and Arvydas Sabonis were all legitimately over 7’0″ or near it and never averaged 1.5 blocks per game.<\/p>\n

These are some of the most skilled big men in league history. They weren\u2019t anything near high-level shot blockers. So the idea that you can just stand there and dominate defensively because you\u2019re tall? That\u2019s not analysis. That\u2019s fiction in a poorly constructed argument to discount what we’re seeing on the floor, which is a little unsettling, considering most of us realize Vic is in unprecedented territory.<\/p>\n

But wait, there’s more! Let’s get to the part that really shuts the whole conversation down. The league’s history is full of skyscrapers who barely moved the box score at all.<\/p>\n

Hasheem Thabeet (7’3″). Sim Bhullar (7’5″). Tacko Fall (7’6″). These guys existed, and there were plenty more of them. They had the height that folks seem to believe guarantees production. However, they still averaged single digits across the board because being tall doesn\u2019t mean you can play. That\u2019s the part people keep skipping. Height gets you in the door. It doesn\u2019t keep you on the floor. <\/p>\n

What Vic is doing isn\u2019t normal for a center. It\u2019s not even normal for a superstar. You\u2019re talking about a player who can anchor a defense, generate offense with or without dominating the ball, and warp spacing on both ends at the same time. That kind of two-way gravity<\/a> doesn\u2019t just show up in the box score, but it shows up everywhere else. Mostly in the win column.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s value, and that\u2019s why trying to reduce Victor Wembanyama\u2019s production to \u201che\u2019s supposed to do that\u201d isn\u2019t just lazy; it ignores the entire history of the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wait a second. We\u2019re still doing this thing where people look at a 7’5″ alien and say, \u201cWell\u2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534],"class_list":{"0":"post-691304","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-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-spurs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116327877440160176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691304","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=691304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}