“(The) league is cooked,” one Spurs fan wrote on social media, where the team shared video of Wembanyama receiving his trophy.
SAN ANTONIO — Basketball superstar Victor Wembanyama has been a maestro of the blocked shot to start his NBA career, tallying 430 rejections at the rim to lead the league over the last two years.
More impressive is that the San Antonio Spurs’ 7-foot-3 alien recorded 28 more blocks last season than second-place Brook Lopez of the Milwaukee Bucks despite playing in 34 fewer games following his blood clot diagnosis in February. Lopez missed just two games all season and, at his rate of 1.85 blocks per game, would have needed the regular season to be 16 games longer to catch up to Wemby.
Wembanyama finished with a monstrous 3.8 blocks per game. The runner-up in that category: Utah’s Walker Kessler, who tallied 2.4 per game but sat out 24 matchups.
Per a relatively new NBA rule, Wembanyama missed out on the major end-of-year awards after falling short of the 65-game threshold for eligibility—turning a sure-bet Defensive Player of the Year campaign into a prolonged wait for one of the league’s fiercest defenders.
The rule didn’t, however, block the 21-year-old center from being named the NBA’s blocked shots champion, no matter how many games he missed. And on Friday, the Spurs shared video of newly minted head coach Mitch Johnson surprising him with the hardware.
“We have a rule you have to play 46 games to get trophies (given) to you, so you made it,” Johnson said, joking that the league adjusted its eligibility rule, while holding a drawstring bag.
Wemby, his usual polite self, asked, “Can I open it?” before revealing his second consecutive blocks champion trophy.
“Many more to come,” Johnson said.
The stats would back him up.
Wemby sports a 3.7-block-per-game career pace that would be No. 1 in league history, besting Mark Eaton’s 3.5 blocks per game mark. Thirteen times last season, the All-STar blocked at least five shots in a game. And on Feb. 12, 2024, he became just the 48th player in league history to swat a whopping 10 shots in a single game (he did it again in December).
The Spurs faithful are confident his mantle will fill up with blocks champion trophies before long.
“He’ll have 15 of them by the time he’s done,” wrote one Instagram user.
“Played barely half the season and still won block leader… league is cooked,” offered another.