76ers Star Joel Embiid Critiques Victor Wembanyama's NBA Start

Joel Embiid offers his thoughts on Spurs star Victor Wembanyama.

Over the last few seasons, Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid has established himself as one of the NBA’s most prominent centers. Just last season, the Sixers’ big man collected the league’s MVP award. In the two years prior, he was the runner-up to Denver Nuggets center, Nikola Jokic.

With Embiid and Jokic being some of the league’s seasoned superstars, they have their eyes on a new wave of young and talented bigs entering the league. This year, one of the NBA’s most-hyped prospects in recent memories has Embiid’s attention as they possess similar qualities.

When French center Victor Wembanyama made it known he was headed to the big leagues in the USA, he was guaranteed a first-pick selection. Sure enough, Wembanyama was headed to the San Antonio Spurs to play under Gregg Popovich.

Like many rookies — especially ones with sky-high expectations — Wembanyama has experienced growing pains through the first stretch of his rookie season. 

Embiid, who’s admittedly watched enough Spurs games to form an opinion on Wembanyama’s progress, recently critiqued the big man’s performance so far in a sit-down with The Athletic’s David Aldridge.

“Not trying to be too critical. Obviously, extremely talented. Right now, there’s so much hype around him, I think he’s trying to live up to the hype. That’s what I see. And I watch a lot of games. I think, first of all, he has to figure out where he wants to play, whether he wants to be a guard or a big or whatever. It’s not necessarily whether he wants to be a guard or a big; it’s what he wants to become. Do you want to become KD, or do you want to become me? Not KD, or like a version of those guys — you want to combine everything. Right now, I just feel like everything kind of feels a little forced, in the way that he’s playing. Which is not bad. Because the only way to get better is to play through it and learn. That’s the only way. You make a lot of mistakes, and you learn.

At this point in the season, Wembanyama has a 25-game sample size in the books. Spending an average of 30 minutes on the court, he’s averaged 19 points per game, making 44 percent of his shots from the field. 

Being a versatile offensive threat, Webanyama possesses the shooting skills to be a reliable stretch-five. However, he’s currently struggling to average more than 30 percent from beyond the arc on nearly five threes per game. In the mid-range, he’s hitting on just 32 percent of his shots.

Embiid sees the kinks in the Spurs center’s game, but he likes that the leash is long enough to let Wembanyama play through it. “The one thing that I’m happy about is they’re allowing him to make those mistakes and learn from it,” Embiid added, per Aldridge. “But I just think there’s a good and bad in that. The good of it is you learn through your mistakes. But then again, the bad of it is, you know, it just feels a little forced.”

With the expectations of becoming a future Hall of Famer attached to him after getting drafted, Wembanyama has a ton of pressure placed on him, which has put him under a microscope early on. There have been flashes of a great player so far, but Embiid and many others can see that the league’s first-overall pick has a lot of work to do to reach his significant expectations.