Earlier this year, Victor Wembanyama—the 7-foot-5 player they call “The Alien”—declared he deserved to be the MVP of the NBA. There was “no debate,” he said, confidently.
Some laughed, others criticized.
Former player and current commentator Quentin Richardson cautioned Wemby, saying he shouldn’t “politic”, adding, “My era wasn’t really like that. We wouldn’t go up there and say, ‘I should be MVP!’ We would be in the locker room, like what is he doing?”
While the freakishly gifted Wembanyama had a great season, Richardson said, the MVP belonged to Denver center Nikola Jokic or guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who ultimately won the award.
Well, I ask, how would you vote if the selection occurred right now?
Jokic is out of the playoffs (bounced in the first round) and SGA, whose OKC Thunder team is facing Wemby’s Spurs in the Western Conference Finals, is flailing on the ground so often to draw a foul that he’s become the butt of countless jokes on the internet.
But while others critiqued Wemby’s declaration, I took it another way.
I saw it as the All-Star demonstrating his self-confidence, his belief in his growth. And I loved it.
I didn’t think Wemby was lobbying for a trophy. I thought he was plainly saying how he saw the NBA landscape. Not only was Wemby a dominant offensive force this season, but he was the best defender in the NBA by a country mile.
What does it matter if he says it out loud? (As I wrote in Forbes earlier this year, I saw his game improving early.)
When it comes to sports or business or life, I want people on my team like that. I want those who are willing to believe they’re the best. And I want them to back it up.
That’s what Wemby does.
Recently, ESPN reported on the Defensive Player of the Year’s trip last summer to a Shaolin Temple in the Henan province of China. He went there to get better…at everything. Yes, you read that right.
Wemby’s teacher was Master Yan’an Has, who told the Spurs center, “If you want to be great, you have to do things that other people can’t do.”
Wemby took it to heart. He climbed mountains, meditated. He dribbled a basketball over “cliffside plank paths, suspension bridges and ancient forests” and across 2,500 feet of elevated stone.
“Talent is not enough,” Master Yan’an said. “You need to put in the work, too. Victor has both. He has hard work, and he has talent.”
That’s why, when Wemby held the microphone last March, he was confident when he said he was the MVP. He’d scaled mountains to prove it to himself.
There’s an old saying in basketball: You can’t teach height. And yes Wemby does boast unbelievable height.
But there’s another thing you can’t teach in sports: Want-to. That’s within.
And I love want-to.
Instead of laying around on a beach in the French Riviera, catered to by the world, Wemby went to a Chinese temple to scale rock in the dead of summer. (He also created a reading campaign for kids in Texas, which is a whole other story.)
His example pushes us to think about our own motors and motivations. How driven are we today? Do we take on new challenges? Are we eager to scale the next cliff?
Victor Wembanyama may be changing basketball as we know it—right before our eyes.
But it’s not because of his physical gifts alone. If anything, those gifts push him to prove he’s more than just his frame.
It’s impossible not to love the guy for it.
Even if he hits you with an elbow once in a while.
Live and learn.
As a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, longtime Associate Editor for Sports Illustrated, and 13-time New York Times Best-Selling author, Don Yaeger is one of America’s most provocative thought leaders. From walking into Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen to living with football legend Walter Payton, Don has spent three decades embedded with the world’s greatest "Greats." Now a sought-after executive coach and host of the Corporate Competitor Podcast, he translates the lessons of sports and business legends into actionable strategies for building a culture of greatness.
