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How Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama are growing together

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How Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama are growing together

  • Michael S. Wright, ESPN Staff WriterNovember 21, 2024, 6:30 pm

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    • Joined ESPN in 2010.
    • Previously covered Bears for ESPN.com
    • Played college football at West Texas A&M.

THIS WAS last minute of the first quarter Chris Paulthe player’s pre-season debut against the Orlando Magic, when he threw a punch at his new teammate, Victor Vembanyamawho took him home to soak him in the alley Moritz Wagner.

Naturally, the crowd of 16,952 at the Frost Bank Center lost it, hoping it would be the strongest of the forerunners.

“Those who know know that with his talent and the amount of attention he gets, there are sometimes situations where he actually becomes bait,” Paul said.

Paul would know. Name your big one. Paul has been making them better for nearly two decades. The point guard entered this season with 715 assists in his career, the most among active players. Meanwhile, Vembanyama ranked third in the league in dunks last season, according to Second Spectrum tracking data. He accomplished this feat without a general of Paul’s level.

While working with Paul, Tyson Chandler averaged a career-high 11.8 points during the 2007–08 season. DeAndre Jordan led the league in field goal percentage for five straight seasons (2012–13 to 2016–17) while playing alongside Paul. Clint Capela won the NBA field goal percentage title in 2017–18 as Paul’s Houston Rockets teammate and posted a career-high in field goal percentage the following season.

“He’s probably seen it all on the basketball court,” said Spurs interim coach Mitch Johnson, who is leading the team while Gregg Popovich recovers from what the team called a “minor stroke” suffered Nov. 2. “It’s hard as a coach because you’re trying to talk to everyone at once and the game goes on. So, to have someone like Chris, who probably has a better solution than me, can actually be on the court with ball, helping or influencing this in real time is worth its weight in gold.”

Paul has 20 years’ experience of improving big tournaments, but he has never played someone like Vembanyama, the 7ft 3in phenom once famously described by a friend of Paul’s. LeBron James like “alien”. Paul adds an obvious cross threat to Vembanyama’s game, but the game hasn’t been as smooth as many in the league expected this summer, given Vembanyama’s ability to score on the perimeter – and the way opponents defend against it – adding to the complexity of the partnership that the duo is still trying to iron it out.

“Traditional bigs switching from first to fifth?” – said Paul. “You’ve never played with a point guard like me, you know what I mean? So we do different things all the time. I’ve never played with a center for whom I set screens. This is different.”

PAUL SWIMMED A was attacking the pick-and-roll when Wembanyama hit the basket in the first quarter of a Nov. 15 game against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Clap.

Two-handed jam with Austin Reeves hopelessly trudges along.

The assist was Paul’s third of the game and the 12,000th of his 20-year career, making him the third player to reach the milestone after John Stockton and Jason Kidd. The historic handover came in the game most expected to see when Paul and Wembanyama joined forces in July.

Instead, it was the only one of Paul’s 11 passes on the night that led to a Wembanyama dunk. Meanwhile, three of Paul’s 11 assists against the Lakers set up Wembanyama’s 3-pointers.

“Our main priority is to win games,” Paul said. “A lot of people think it’s just going to be throw, throw, throw. If the shots come and we win, so be it. This will only happen because he is who he is. There will be times when we get open shots and a lot of times when we throw him he might finish, but we’ll always try to figure that out.”

Paul believes that the variety in Wembanyama’s game plays a role in delaying the process of optimizing the interaction between them.

“Sometimes it will be guarded by centers,” Paul said. “Sometimes it will be the small forwards. In this league you just have to be able to adapt. This is something he understands and learns from.”

There were other obstacles blocking this process. The 20-year-old took a short break after a tumultuous summer, and the club kept him out of three of San Antonio’s five exhibition appearances as Paul missed two preseason games.

Wembanyama, who missed the team’s last two games with a bruised right knee and was ruled out for Thursday’s game against the Utah Jazz, spent the first few contests of the regular season working his way back into shape while learning the intricacies of the game. with an elite point guard like Paul.

“We have a lot of similar views on basketball,” Vembanyama said. “The most important thing is his knowledge of the pick-and-roll. I just try to apply what he sees and experiment and tell him what I like. He tells me what he likes and what we don’t like. I think it’s a very healthy relationship because we see basketball in much the same way.”

Pair a future Hall of Fame point guard with a 7-foot generational talent and watch the dunks flow. That thought seemed easy when news spread that Paul had signed a one-year contract with San Antonio.

“On paper it looks like it should work,” Johnson admitted.

Just 13 games into the NBA season, Paul and Wembanyama admit they are still in the learning stages of a partnership that could expand endlessly as the 2024-25 season progresses. But Paul has already provided an assist for 98 of Vembanyama’s 295 points in 2024. That’s the most passes from one passer to a scorer this season, according to ESPN Research.

“The most important thing is that he is willing to tell us a lot,” Vembanyama said. “Every training session he gives us feedback on what he did before, how the defense usually played, how we can get more space. He approaches it in a very unselfish way.”

WHEN VEMBANYAMA SCORED In his first career 50-point game during a 139–130 win on November 13 over the Washington Wizards, 14 of those points came from Paul’s assists.

But none of them resulted in the French phenom making a single dunk. He scored 12 points, assisted by Paul, on four of his career-high eight 3-pointers in the contest.

“We want him to make those shots,” the forward. Julian Champagnie said. “(He’s) obviously a special, special player. For him, it won’t always be in the paint. Teams will play him differently. Tonight (he) was 3. He’s not going to post (Jonas) Valanciunas the whole game. It’s a big body. We want him to keep shooting (3s). He will get them. He’s 7-5. So there’s really no payback that’s going to get to him.”

It’s clear that opponents believe in the need to physically defend Wembanyama in or around the paint, and that strategy is reflected in his shooting pattern in San Antonio’s first 13 games. Opponents routinely beat up and harass Wembanyama near the basket, something Johnson attributes to how big players tend to handle players in the NBA.

So Vembanyama has taken his skills where they are most effective this season: on the perimeter. Given his athleticism, height and length, such an approach might seem counterintuitive. However, 62.5% of Wembanyama’s attempts in San Antonio’s first 13 games came on catch-and-shoot and pull-up opportunities, and 33.2% of his shots came less than 10 feet from the basket.

That’s it for the onslaught of lob dunks – for now.

“The lob is a dunk, an easy basket,” Vembanyama said. “And that’s one of the first things teams are going to guard. So throwing the ball is not as easy as it seems. But if there’s one guy in this league that can throw them, it’s probably (Paul).”

Fortunately for Wembanyama and Spurs, history has shown that Paul can play any pass he chooses. This has led to an interesting combination of connections between the duo, who can often be seen in the locker room after a game, chatting about what they saw minutes earlier on the court.

Paul has provided 31 assists for Vembanyama this season, including 15 on three-pointers, eight on dunks and four on shots. Pairing Paul with Wembanyama is believed to be the only combination in the NBA in which one player has an assist on at least seven three-pointers and seven dunks to one player.

And Paul’s influence is not limited to the young Frenchman. Paul was a veteran and Popovich was away from the team. And with Wembanyama on the bench Tuesday night, Paul led the Spurs to a victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the NBA’s best teams. At 7-8, the Spurs still have a lot of work to do to make the playoffs, but they are well ahead of last year’s pace when they picked up their seventh win on Jan. 12.

“I’d like you guys to see the work that goes on day in and day out,” Paul said. “You know how talented he is. But his will and desire to get better, his desire to work on something… the more games we play, the more I think we will get to know each other better.”