With the NBA starting in less than a month, here's one reason you should be paying attention.  

There hasn’t been a better time to start following the NBA. Not only has there been an unprecedented amount of parity amongst teams at the top with six unique finals winners in a row, but the league is also currently undergoing a gradual change of the guard. The stars that defined the 2010s, LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, are still playing but are slowly on the way out, and there’s a new core of global talent coming through with none more exciting than Victor Wembanyama. 

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 It’s been hard to avoid the discourse about the 7ft4 20-year-old out of France for a little while now, being the most nailed-on 1st overall draft pick since LeBron James in 2003. The season before the 2023 Draft took place had what became known as the “Wemby sweepstakes” where the non-contending teams were desperate to move assets and lose games to try and get the best odds at getting that incredibly valuable 1st overall pick. The eventual lottery winner was the San Antonio Spurs, who have a history of landing generation-defining big-men in the draft and have arguably been the best-run franchise of all time in the NBA with their roster construction around their stars. There is no shortage of comparisons to be made between Wembanyama and the other Spurs greats, particularly their best player of all time Tim Duncan who would go on to lead the Spurs to 5 NBA titles. 

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 The Duncan-led dynasty peaked in 2014, overpowering the Miami Heat in the finals who had devastated them in a 7-game finals series the year prior. The Spurs played what is seen by many as the most beautiful to watch basketball in NBA Finals history, and this all ties into Wembanyama’s arrival to the league nearly a decade later. The series was tied 1-1 after 2 games, but in Game 3 Coach Gregg Popovich made a starting line-up change to move Duncan to the Centre position with Boris Diaw replacing the bigger Tiago Splitter. A greater emphasis was placed on ball movement and defensive versatility, and the Spurs would go on to not only dominate the rest of the series winning three straight games, but also fundamentally change the way that basketball would go on to be played. 

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 Much credit is given to Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors for the 3-point revolution and while they certainly took the shooting beyond the arc to a level that the Spurs never did, Popovich, Duncan and co. should be seen as incredibly pioneering in the modern offensive game. In the three games with Boris Diaw as starter, the Spurs had the highest true shooting percentage as well as the highest offensive rating that we have ever seen in the finals. Following that series, the records for 3-point attempts per game would skyrocket and be improved upon almost every year during the Warriors dynasty. Going back as a newer NBA fan, the 2014 Finals stands out in its era as looking like the closest replica to the way current teams play. Even though the mid-range game of the early 2010s is becoming a thing of the past, the Spurs played such fluid basketball that it would seamlessly transition into a playoff game a decade later. The style of play redefined how big men could be used in the starting line-up as well as the new requirements for NBA role players, with no room for players who don’t have the ability to make open shots. 

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 And that leads us to Wembanyama, a freakish athlete able to guard every position and an elite shot blocker on defence, and then a big man with guard skills of someone a foot smaller and the ability to make shots on every level. The Spurs in 2014 showed that versatility leads to more fluid ball movement, which in turn leads to more open shots. There isn’t anyone who has the potential to be as versatile as Wembanyama given his remarkable jump shot percentage for his position. It is fitting that Coach Popovich is still leading the Spurs to complete the full transformation of the team since Tim Duncan’s retirement and with how quickly Wembanyama improved during his rookie year, it is not out of the realms of possibility that the Spurs become a serious contender within three years where it is feasible that Popovich is still going. The Spurs in 2014 did also prove that the way you construct your roster around your star is arguably just as important as landing that star in the first place, so there is a legacy defining job to do for the front office if they are to equip Wembanyama in an effective way. 

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 But the steps so far have been positive. Pairing Wembanyama with a veteran Point Guard in Chris Paul is a great move, and with the former already being the betting favourite for Defensive Player of the Year, the Spurs should take strides offensively and defensively. They do find themselves in a particularly strong Western Conference, and so a high seeding this year is still unlikely, but the closer that Wembanyama gets to being the best player in the world, the further the Spurs will go. It truly is a matter of when, not if, he reaches this pedestal, providing that injuries don’t play a disruptive role, and in the meantime, at the very least, the Spurs will become must-watch TV purely because of his skill ceiling. Watching him go toe-to-toe with the league’s best in the upcoming months is a good a reason as any to get hooked on the NBA this year.