Victor Wembanyama Receiving His Second Consecutive Blocks Champion Trophy Is A Nice Reminder Of Just How Insane He Was This Season

Garrett Ellwood. Getty Images.

One of the bigger surprises of the 2024-25 NBA season came immediately following the All Star Break when we got the Shams bomb that Victor Wembanyama was going to be shut down for the remainder of the season due to blood clots. At the time, the Spurs were knocking on the Play In door, Wemby was a clear lock for the DPOY as well as either 1st or 2nd team All NBA, and then boom, it was all over.

Wemby finished the season playing in just 46 games and 1,527 minutes, which was 25 fewer games and around 600 fewer minutes than his rookie season. He also had a career high in FG%, 3P%, FT%, REB, BLKS, and PTS (24.3/11.0/3.7/3.8 on 47/35%), and as a reminder, this was only Year 2. It's only going to get better from here.

What's wild is that even in those 46 games, Wemby still finished the year as the leader in blocks. For the second straight season. Last year? 3.6 a game. This year? 3.8 a game and another trophy to his name

Watching Wemby play defense and protect the rim is one of the best parts of the entire NBA season. I know his offensive arsenal is what gets a lot of the play and what often goes the most viral, but it's the defense that will truly melt your brain. He's one of the few players in the league where he doesn't even have to contest a shot in order to prevent a paint attempt. Opposing players simply refuse to even try it, knowing he's somewhere on the floor lurking. It's incredible. So, while the blocks are impressive, the fact that Wemby can impact a defense by simply existing is what truly sets him apart as a generational defender. He can guard in space, he can block 3s, he's impossibly to score on at the rim, he can move his feet like a guard in certain situations, there's a reason as long as he hits the 65 game limit he's going to be a DPOY favorite for the rest of his career. Congrats to Evan Mobley for his DPOY win this year, but we all know that's because Wemby didn't hit 65. 

In addition to DPOYs, the next question is how many of these Blocks Champion trophies do we think Wemby finishes his career with? 15+? Will there ever be a year he doesn't lead the NBA in blocks? Here's the thing too. The NBA is weird where they determine their "league leader" by per game average and not totals. For Wemby, it didn't matter. He led the NBA in blocks per game (3.8) AND block totals (176). The next closest in totals? Brook Lopez at 148 and he played 80 games. Not even fucking close and Wemby barely played more than half the games!

Now that the Spurs have transitioned into more of a more "win now" phase of their rebuild while we enter Year 3 of Wemby and everything appears to be OK health-wise, all I'm saying is if you have hopes of your favorite team winning a title, you better get it quickly because this team is coming. We're all watching what is happening with OKC at the moment, and the Spurs are positioning themselves as a team that could follow that same model. 

Advertisement

As we're probably going to see in about 2 weeks, that model usually produces a title. Good luck!