It turns out there were two winners in the Wembayama sweepstakes: the French teen hailed as the best NBA prospect since LeBron James could not have handpicked a better organization to develop his craftThe NBA draft is still more than a month away, but its biggest question has already been answered. After winning Tuesday night’s draft lottery, the San Antonio Spurs are almost certain to use this year’s No 1 pick to select teenage French basketball prodigy Victor Wembanyama. “Almost certain” is no exaggeration – according to oddsmakers at time of writing, a $100 wager on the Spurs to take Wembanyama with their pick would net the bettor just 50 cents.It’s easy to see why Wembanyama is a shoo-in to...
LeBron v Steph has been the defining rivalry of my basketball life. Their latest chapter did not disappoint, but it’s clear their special rivalry is nearer to the end than the beginningThere are certain constants in our lives: north stars by which we can measure and trace the changes that occur around them as time passes us by. For the better part of the last decade, the steady fulcrum around which the NBA has revolved has been the special ongoing rivalry between future first-ballot Hall of Famers LeBron James and Stephen Curry.Some basketball fans grew up at a time when they watched Magic Johnson and Larry Bird duke it out year after year, and other fandoms were formed during the...
The center’s season should go down as a validation of The Process, a breakthrough made sweeter by the Sixers remaining undefeated through the first two rounds of the NBA playoffsFor a good chunk of the 2010s it was an open question in the NBA as to whether Joel Embiid, who was crowned the league’s Most Valuable Player this week, was even worth the bother. For a solid three years the Philadelphia 76ers tempted fate while aggressively trying to lose games just to put themselves in position to land the freshman center with the third pick in the 2014 draft, effectively reinventing the practice now known as tanking. And when the Kansas product went on to miss his first two seasons...
Refreshing response to a question from the media was unlike much of the discourse surrounding elite professional sportAlmost certainly fed up while facing the press in the media centre of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum last Wednesday night, Giannis Antetokounmpo made no attempt to disguise his utter contempt for the query he had just been asked to field. The Bucks basketball legend had fronted up before the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate after his team’s elimination by the lowly ranked Miami Heat after a five-game series, arguably one of the most seismic upsets in NBA playoff history. Antetokounmpo’s gaze was caught by Eric Nehm, the man from the Athletic on the Bucks beat, who kept his question fairly short and...
A Lakers team given only a 0.3% chance of making the playoffs a few months ago has the look of a deadly serious contender in a wide-open Western Conference after toppling the Grizzlies“Do you ever amaze – or surprise – yourself?” LeBron James was asked following the Lakers’ thrilling Game 4 overtime win in Los Angeles on Monday, which gave the team a commanding three-games-to-one lead in their first-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies. “Yup,” James replied succinctly. Indeed, recording his first ever 20-point, 20-rebound game on one fully functioning foot, at age 38 (making him the oldest player to ever do so), and in the playoffs no less, was pretty amazing.But seeing James and the rest of his...