There's never just *one* face of the NBA. But Victor Wembanyama may soon be the biggest

If Big Vic keeps this up, he'll be very well known all across the world.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

---

At the Café-Concert: The Song of the Dog; Edgar Degas; 1875-77

The interesting thing about the arguments about who is or is not capable of being “the face of the NBA” is that rarely is there just one personality who singlehandedly dominates the NBA fandom. For the past decade, LeBron James and Stephen Curry have been the faces of the league. Before Steph, Kobe Bryant was at a similar level of fame to LeBron. In the Aughts, as LeBron’s fame was rising you had a diverse set of legitimate faces of the league: Kobe, Shaq, Allen Iverson, Steve Nash and Yao Ming.

The ‘90s were dominated by Michael Jordan, of course, but Shaq reached unbelievable levels of fame in his shadow. The era preceding that is famously tied to two faces of the league: Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. The era before that is tricky as the nadir of the league’s popular acceptance as an equal to pro football, baseball or hockey, but arguably Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving were co-faces of the league. (Or leagues, with respect to Dr. J’s time in the ABA.) Before that, you had Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain reigning in tandem (one capturing the rings, one capturing the lore and individual records). Before that, you just barely had a league.

There have always been multiple faces of the league, so the discourse-driven search of the next holder of the title seems, at times, useless. After all, who would have ever pegged Curry to be one of the world’s most famous athletes in the world for this long at any point before, say 2015? He was in the 2009 NBA Draft after three years at a small college. These things are not always predictable.

What is predictable at this point is that, barring injury or other disqualifying event, among the faces of the league for the next decade or two, there will be a 7’4 Frenchman named Victor.

Chet Holmgren (another potential face of the league, frankly) had a nice game. It felt, though, like every time Chet scored on Victor Wembanyama, Big Vic insisted on scoring on him. And in the dagger moments, the script flipped: Wembanyama hit the huge wing three, then got the dagger block on Chet. A dagger block on a stepback by a 7’2 opponent, as it were.

The thing about Big Vic is that while he’s clearly an amazing player who could very well lead the Spurs to five more championships like his spiritual ancestor Tim Duncan, he also has a ton of juice. His game is exciting and alluring and he wears his emotion on his sleeve on the court. He also has an innate (or well-learned) knack for incredible public moments outside of the game itself. Look at him heralding Spurs fans after the win, leading a chant. HE’S 20.