After a promising start to his second season in the league, the San Antonio Spurs will sideline star 7-foot center/forward Victor Wembanyama for the rest of the season.
“The condition was discovered when Wembanyama returned to San Antonio following the All-Star Game in San Francisco,” the Spurs stated.
San Antonio selected Wembanyama with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. He won Rookie of the Year last season with 21.4 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 1.2 steals per game in 71 contests.
This season, Wembanyama kept improving with 24.3 points, 11 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 1.1 steals per game in 46 contests. He also improved his shooting from .465 to .476.
Wembanyama played in his first All-Star game on Sunday, leading Chuck’s Global Stars to the final of the three-team tournament. His accolades in less than two seasons also include NBA All-Defensive First Team honors and NBA blocks leader.
San Antonio has a 23–29 record this season for 12th place in the Western Conference. Losing Wembanyama will make it difficult for the Spurs to sneak into the play-in tournament for a postseason spot.
“I think everybody understands that basketball is what we do and not who we are,” Paul said. “So life and everything is so much more important, but for us, we know losing a big part of our team like that is [made up for] by committee. And trust me, you can’t replace Vic.”
“I can’t stand on a guy’s shoulders and block every shot that comes to the rim,” Paul, a 6-foot guard, added. “Aside from his basketball ability, his charisma and what he brings into the locker room I think is what we'll miss the most.”
San Antonio will need to look elsewhere for offensive production as point guard De’Aaron Fox has the next-highest point total per game, 21.6 points, since he joined the Spurs via a trade. Defensively, no one else on the team averages at least a block per game, and forward Jeremy Sochan has the second-best defensive rebound average with 4.7 boards per game.
San Antonio loses an NBA Defensive Player of the Year front-runner in Wembanyama, and the Spurs haven’t fared well without him. The Spurs went 5–12 last season without him, and the team went 22-60 the year before he entered the league.
It’s one of two major losses for the Spurs this season. San Antonio previously lost head coach Gregg Popovich due to a stroke in November, and Mitchell Johnson has been the interim head coach since.
Wembanyama meanwhile can’t win the Defensive Player of the Year award with his season cut short, which makes Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr. the new front-runner. Jackson won it in the 2021-2022 season.
While Wembanyama’s health issue is concerning, it’s not necessarily a career-ending problem as it was for Hall of Fame forward and former Miami Heat star Chris Bosh in 2017. Bosh officially retired in 2019 after trying to come back from blood clotting issues that first appeared in 2015, but that impacted his legs and lungs.
More similar to Wembanyama’s condition, former Los Angeles Lakers forward Brandon Ingram dealt with blood clots in his arm in 2019, and he sat out the rest of the season. Ingram returned the next season with the New Orleans Pelicans, and he currently plays for the Toronto Raptors.
