San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Building on ‘an amazing feeling’
Having ended a club-record 18-game skid, team looks to put together a winning streak As Wembanyama expands a ‘low-key’ vocabulary, his game speaks volumes
The final seconds ticked off the clock at the Frost Bank Center on Friday, and Victor Wembanyama walked off the floor with his 8 feet of arms held aloft in triumph.
V for Victor. V for victory. F for freaking finally.
After suffering through a Spurs franchise-record 18 consecutive losses, Wembanyama felt the relief of winning again with a 129-115 drubbing of LeBron James and the Los Ange
les Lakers. The look on his face translated the same in French and in English.
“It’s not like I forgot about that feeling,” the Spurs’ 19-yearold rookie said. “But I’m addicted to winning. This is what I love and it’s what live for. So I have to show it.”
If Wembanyama is a winning junkie, the past six weeks must have been the worst kind of cold turkey.
He acknowledged it had “been a minute” since the Spurs
Victor Wembanyama lifted his chin and scrunched his eyebrows together, the way he often does when something piques his interest. He politely interrupted the question with one of his own.
“Did you say ‘starstruck?’ ” Wembanyama asked, in his second language. “I did not know that word.”
He smiled and nodded as the definition was given to him — “like people feel when they meet you,” the interrogator explained — and you could see him mentally file the information away for later.
“Starstruck.”
No, he did not feel that way playing against LeBron James, Wembanyama said. But he learned something from the experience, just as he learned something from the interview afterwards.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget what an education all of this must be for him. The kid is 19 years old, living in a strange country where the locals work themselves into a frenzy over a commercial in which he doesn’t say a word but threads his arms through a bunch of grocery bags, and on the same night he ends an 18-game losing