Victor Wembanyama finds true self in cocoon of pressure, leading Spurs to NBA Finals

OKLAHOMA CITY — Pressure can bury people. A mountain of expectations makes the burden of the moment harder to carry. Usually.

But that is where Victor Wembanyama found his comfort zone.

Jamal Crawford remembers learning that over dinner with Wembanyama two years ago. As Wembanyama cut into a piece of salmon, the former Sixth Man of the Year and current NBC commentator had a layered question that yielded a simple answer. Crawford asked him how he felt about the pressure to live up to the lineage of Tim Duncan and David Robinson, as the next great San Antonio Spurs center.

“I feel safe,” Wembanyama told him.

The pressure was a place to store, understand and channel his emotions and goals. It was the cocoon he entered after the Game 5 loss to face elimination, as the typically loose and pensive Wembanyama disappeared.

It all came out in these last two victories, when the complete Wembanyama, the ready Wembanyama, emerged. Now, after leading the Spurs to a 111-103 Game 7 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, his playoff debut has run all the way to the NBA Finals.

“This game is so hard, this team [The Thunder] is so good, that you gotta use every single emotion you got in you in order to win,” Wembanyama said on NBC’s postgame show. “Like, sometimes, these emotions (are) passion. It’s love for the game. Sometimes it’s anger. Sometimes it might even be jealousy, but I don’t wanna weigh myself down with any of these energies. I use them on the court.”

That was apparent in Game 1, when Wembanyama sat there watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander receive the MVP trophy and then went out and delivered the greatest performance of his career. It showed at various times throughout the series, when his emotions got the best of him, or he got the best of them. The series ended with the MVP meeting Wembanyama in the paint in the final minute. With the season on the line, he passed out of it, just like everyone else does.

Wemby’s magnum nope-us.

Ultimately, jealousy turned into power. Fear turned into strength. Confusion turned into determination.

But there was a moment in the early second quarter of Game 7 when he was leaning, quite literally, on Bismack Biyombo for advice. His vet gave him a speech on how he was playing and how he was carrying himself.

The what, which he knows, but more importantly, the why and how, which he’s learning.

“It’s the first time you’re facing the NBA playoffs with somebody else on the other side that won the MVP that you were supposed to win, that’s even more pressure. It brings joy,” Biyombo told The Athletic. “I think when you see all the emotions of crying, the road has been so tough. To bring so much joy into how much sacrifice that people have done in this locker room, accepting their roles, and the most important thing is that Vic has handled the pressure so well. (We) kind of started understanding that in order for him to handle it so well, we all got to help him, rather, in a small way or big way.”

As the night went on, Wembanyama figured the Thunder’s vaunted defense out and continuously manipulated the shape of the game. He tapped into every single skill in his arsenal until there were no more follow-ups to all the questions he answered. The aspiring grandmaster eventually found checkmate.

When the buzzer sounded, Wembanyama went through and hugged every single member of the Spurs organization. After the celebrations were over, he brought the Magic Johnson series MVP trophy to the Spurs fans dangling into the tunnel and let every one of them touch it.

Wembanyama has learned to deal with this pressure by leaning on everyone in his community, from his coaches to his camp to the franchise legends to Gregg Popovich. Even the support of the fans. He had to share his spoils with them. They all earned it.

“I would say what I learned is I can go through hurdles that I didn’t know those hurdles could get so high,” Wembanyama said. “It’s just pushing through. I found resources inside of me, relentlessness. I already knew that, but doing it at this level, this is the best basketball on the planet that’s being played right now.”

Now that he’s been pushed beyond his breaking point and found another Wemby on the other side of it, he’s reveling in the new world he’s unlocked for himself. The desperation he found with his back against the wall showed that there are still new Victors to discover deep down inside.

“The crazy thing is, maybe I’m crazy for that, but I want to do that 15, 20 more times,” Wembanyama said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t become an addiction. Maybe it is already.”

It clearly is. This was a place everyone who has seen Wembanyama expected him to get one day. They just didn’t see it coming this soon. Maybe Popovich did. Before Crawford agreed to work with Wembanyama after the Spurs’ 7-foot-4 positionless wonder’s rookie season, he called Popovich, then still the Spurs coach, to run it by him. Popvich embraced the idea, feeling that Crawford building up Wembanyama’s creative ball-handling would help unlock something they had come to embrace.

“He was like, ‘You know what? Honestly, I think we’ve even held him back,’” Crawford recalled Popovich saying. “‘He was ahead of where we thought he would be and he’s so unique. We didn’t know exactly how to use him and we kind of figured it out.’”

This game showed all those various ways they figured it out, and how coach Mitch Johnson and his staff have successfully carried on the plan first laid by Popovich. His successor proved to be a worthy apprentice in a series shaped by constantly clashing adjustments and counters.

But when Wembanyama finished his tearful parade of hugs, he had to leave without an embrace from Pop. He couldn’t wait to talk to him, to share this moment, to revel in how far he’s come since Popovich first recognized he needed to be set free to find his greatness.

“I need to call him. I need to see him. I need to talk to him because there’s no way I can understand right now how he feels,” Wembanyama said. “I don’t know if he’s going to do an interview about it or if we can get one. Yeah, I figured he’s not going to. So when I talk to him, it’s going to be only stored in my head, except if I record in secret, but I need to talk to him so quick.”

Popovich will undoubtedly be proud, thrilled, and probably not too surprised. Crawford isn’t.

When he and Wembanyama finished their dinner and hit the court the next day, he couldn’t get over how quickly the future Western Conference Finals MVP could download every bit of data Crawford fed him. Wembanyama is the basketball hive mind, a bundle of knowledge of the game.

It was clear to Crawford that if he could imagine it, Wembanyama could do it. So Crawford showed him the handles, the step back, everything that made Crawford so hard to contain. He knew that, eventually, whatever he gave to Wembanyama that day would be a part of history. All of those who support Wembanyama are a part of it.

In the fourth quarter came Wembanyama’s final basket of the series, a step back in isolation, one that Crawford foreshadowed on the broadcast the second he saw Wembanyama look Jaylin Williams in the eyes. He knew the look. And he knew the result that was coming.

“I saw it coming!” Crawford said. “I saw it coming!”

Now, it’s here.