what you're about to witness was one of the rarest occurrences to happen on an NBA court 2 second the clock reset Shaquille O'Neal unbelievable 19 points in the quarter for O'Neal get off the track here comes Shaq a buzzer beating 30-footer from Shaquille O'Neal an otherwise awesome shot but in this particular case it was an absolute abnormality because throughout Shaq's 19-year career he made 11 1,330 shots the one you just watched was the one and only three-pointer but this was back in 1996 when big men lived in the paint three-pointers being virtually off limits for
them out of the 41 active seven-footers in the league That season only 12 of them hit at least a single three-pointer only seven of them hit multiple three-pointers and aridus sabonis was breaking the mold hitting a whopping 39 threes throughout the entire season more than every other seven-footer combined but the league has changed a lot since 1996 sabonis is historic shooting season getting buried over the course of three decades of basketball Evolution with players like Dirk nitzki Brook Lopez and Carl Anthony towns redefining what it means to be a shooting big the ability to shoot
the long ball transforming from essentially a cool gimmick for big men to almost a necessity in today's league but it was Lori marinan back in 2023 who set a new Benchmark for just how lethal a big man can be be from outside sinking 200 three-pointers in a single season by far the most of any seven-footer in NBA history at least it will be until the end of this season because Victor wanyama is on Pace to do this 243 pointers in a single season a Mark that completely laps even the greatest big men Shooters of all
time but Victor isn't just a seven-footer he's one of the tallest players in the history of the league if we limit the players on this graph to those at least as tall as wemi well yeah Victor wanyama is an aberration a basketball Singularity because he's doing this while also being the best defensive player on the planet and yet it's still not enough fans criticizing the big man saying that his game is too soft and that his skill set doesn't match his size playing 25 ft away from the basket almost in defiance of his size and
physical Advantage why is he all the way out there the jaw-dropping displays of skills far too refined for a player his size are cool and all but why don't you try posting somebody up for a change wemi is already a generational Talent the potential to be one of the greatest of all time but what's all that potential if you refuse to use it is wy's game falling victim to a league that has become infatuated with guard skills and the long ball or is he on the brink of completely altering the entire landscape of basketball and
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off plus free shipping on your first box now yic switches back on him crossing over yic what a bucket what in the NBA Evolution did I just witness there was a point in time not very long ago where if you told NBA fans there would be a 7' 4 in giant doing bag work and hitting crossover threes from 25 ft out no one would believe you and yet here we are Victor wanyama is really good and everyone knows it but no one even generational talents like wemi are supposed to be this good this early because
even compared to the greatest players of our lifetime wemi is on an early trajectory that we have never seen through 100 career games more points than the all-time scoring leader more blocks than the all-time blocks leader and more threes than the alltime threes leader it's like the basketball Gods wanted to play a sick game by creating an unfair player who can just do everything all at the same time and once you compare wem's impact to other players in just their second season the Gap he has on everyone is almost unbelievable here are some of the
greatest players of the last two decades and the progression through their first two seasons according to estimated plus minus now a negative one is about League average so even players who got off to a relatively slow start like Giannis shave and Westbrook were still on a positive trajectory early in their careers now in EPM of 3.5 is about an all-nba caliber season so players like LeBron ad Luca and joic were already stars in just their second season in the league and then there's wemi who isn't just a superstar but an MVP candidate in just his
second season these are the best players across multiple generations of NBA basketball and Victor wanyama is outpacing all of them by a long shot already producing at a level that even the best players don't reach until their fourth or fifth season right now Victor isn't competing to be the best young player in the league he's quickly approaching the best players in the world according to most advanced metrics so far this season Victor has been statistically a top five player in the NBA estimated plus minus for example has wemi as the third most impactful player in
the League this season only behind joic and SGA now Luca and Giannis are two of the top players of their entire generation in their Prime and wemi is already impacting games at their level in just his second season we knew wimy was going to be good if he could stay healthy and on the court we knew he could be a defensive Superstar just off of his physical tools alone but no one on God's green earth knew this was a possibility because quite frankly it probably shouldn't be here is every single player in the NBA who
has attempted at least 200 shots this season mapped out according to their average shot distance on the x axis and their height on the Y AIS and as you would expect there's a clear correlation between how big players are and how close to the hoop they tend to operate big guys usually play near the rim like goar and Gafford who live right underneath it the further out you go the less height grants an advantage and so typically you'll find the smaller players outside like Steph Curry and Peyton Pritchard of course there are outliers TJ McConnell
is just 6'1 and yet his average shot distance resembles that of a power forward Lori marinan and Brook Lopez are seven-footers but you wouldn't know it based off the fact that the average of all of their shots is near the three-point line where is wmi in all of this well he's right here about a mile away from where you would expect the tallest player in the NBA to be with shots that mirr a shooting guard so far this season wy's average shot is further out than some of the most prolific perimeter players like Harden and
Luca Anthony Edwards has attempted the most threes in the NBA this season and even he is shooting closer to the basket than wemi is Carl Anthony towns is in conversations as the best long range shooting big ever and wemi is far closer to Steph than he is to cat it is mindboggling and yet as incredible as this is there's an equal amount of concern for the future of wm's career and the consequences of this play style Victor is a part of a generation of players who are inheriting a league that has been taken over by
outside play and homogeneous guard likee skill sets we're watching this kid shatter records and bend the game in ways that we never thought were possible and yet for some fans his game isn't what it should be Victor isn't just the tallest player in the league he's one of the tallest human beings on Earth as cool as it is to see him hit step back threes and do his best impression of a combo guard it feels almost criminal that he isn't taking advantage of all of that size near the rim a 7' 4 giant with an
8ft wingspan and the potential to be unstoppable near the rim shooting just 20% of his shots within 3 ft and 50% of his shots from Beyond The Ark as one fan put it wemi took the KD route instead of the hakee route the league should be elated now getting compared to Kevin Durant isn't quite the worst thing in the world but considering who we're dealing with it doesn't feel right for Wy to be relegated to a hyper lengthy long range bucket getter in a league that continues to move further away from the basket if there's
one player we had hopes wouldn't lean into this new age of basketball it was wemi but this assessment is all wrong wmi hasn't taken the KD route and he hasn't taken the aim route either he's doing both at the same time Victor is already regarded by many as the best offensive player in the league a title that takes even the greatest defensive anchors years into their career to achieve but that was the scouting report on Victor coming into the league an era defining defensive Talent the other stuff competing three-level scoring and the potential to develop
his offensive skill set was all there but only in flashes the question being not if but when he could Elevate to a truly Elite offensive Talent of all the timelines people had in mind I'm not sure if anyone considered the possibility that he would check off those boxes just a season and a half into his NBA career for some perspective here are some of the greatest scores in NBA history on a scale of points per possession and here are the best defensive players in league history on a scale of defensive box plus minus now being
Ultra Elite on both sides of the ball is about the rarest thing in all of basketball which is why on the scoring side those defensive Superstars fall here and on the defensive side those offensive Superstars fall here it's like some sort of intangible law of the game that keeps it balanced Ben Wallace and Draymond Green could go toe-to-toe with just about anyone on defense but Lord help us if they need to get a bucket on the other hand Iverson and Steph can score at will but don't ask him to go down the other end and
get you a stop but there have been a handful of truly great two-way players like Duncan hakee Kawaii David Robinson Giannis and Michael Jordan oh and of course the giant freak of nature 21-year-old alien who is already on his way to being the best two-way weapon the game has ever seen but this is a 21-year-old wemi compare him to these superstars in just their second season and you're looking at a player who looks like a work of fiction so remind me again what exactly the problem is with wy's game earlier this season Victor was facing
criticism for some of his performances why would you ever be standing 25 ft from the basket throwing up bricks when you have the physical tools to drop the ball in the hoop without even jumping as the season has progressed so has wimy performances and turns out watching a walking giant do this is actually really entertaining but the initial criticism when be received from fans is a testament to just how far-fetched and rebellious his game is and how fans of the NBA are reluctant to change until the change works when Dirk nitzki first entered the league
and even during his rise to superstardom he was often criticized for being soft and that in a time of true dominant big men he wasn't one of them part of this was the stigma around European players at the time but a large Factor was his play style the concept of a seven-footer handling the ball facing up and living off of 15t fadeaways was just too odd for some fans to accept now looking back Dirk nitzki was nothing short of an incredible innovator ahead of his time and the criticism although some of it fair was for
the most part just a symptom of fans reluctant to accept something new and different Kevin Durant is on record saying he deliberately understated his height early on in his career because he knew if his listed height started with a seven he would be labeled as a post player regardless of his skill set sounds a bit crazy now but with how people viewed the game 20 years ago without this decision we may have never got the chance to witness this player early in his career Michael Jordan was told that ball heavy guards do not win championships
the formula for winning was rooted in the big man and history confirmed this theory around the same time magic and Isaiah Thomas were breaking the mold winning titles and laying the framework for Michael to completely dismantle these previous outdated Notions and of course no one believed three-pointers could be the key piece to winning a championship until the Warriors rewrote history books and forever changed basketball with the three-pointer no one wants change until it works the only problem is you will never know if it works or not until someone comes in and wipes away all doubt
Victor wanyama is in the process of doing just that recently while on the Bill Simmons podcast Kirk goldsbury talked about how unpredictable the progression of basketball can be and how the next phase of the NBA may be centered around the skilled big man the 2010s were about small ball we're halfway through uh the 2020 tier bill and we might call it skill ball I think because even the big dudes like joic and embiid and wemi like name a center from 2004 or 1994 could they do anything that yog do maybe Rasheed Wallace there were some
there were some guys that were super skilled uh that could shoot the ball and pass and dribble it's basically Rasheed Rasheed was the guy everyone pointed to and said oh my God this guy he can shoot from outside he can post up and we we held him up to this crazy level and he was like 16 points a game this generation does everything uh everybody does everything dribble pass and shoot and and skill has never been this high and wemi is giving us a very clear next up everything is clicking you know he was very
hyped like LeBron coming in uh but I think Victor wanyama is poised to be the next greatest player in the NBA at some point in the next 5 years looking back at how basketball has changed over the years it only makes sense that towering players with versatile skill sets would be the next step in the game's Evolution almost a direct counter to the small ball era that preceded it and Victor is well aware of this as he put it the best way for me to help is to not put me in a box we know
we are going to make something original something special coaches and staff within the Spurs organization encouraging Victor's departure from positional Norms knowing that allowing him to play his game won't stunt his potential it will help him reach it it doesn't make sense that wimy can drill 30 Footers or get into his bag or tell his guards to come set screens for him we like our bigs to play big I mean usually we like our bigs to play big wait hold on that was actually kind of sick okay well height is just a number but you
got to take advantage of it we've heard it all before declarations that all made sense until the next evolution of basketball was staring it in the face any attempt to Define wi's game or compare him to another player past or present will leave you empty-handed he in his skill set do not compute they are illogical he isn't just really good he is really good in a whole new way we are witnessing the future of basketball and if you didn't like the idea of a guard anchoring your team if you didn't like the idea of seven-footers
popping out and taking long jumpers and if you didn't like the three-point Revolution then you sure aren't going to like what this guy ends up doing [Music]
