Victor Wembanyama: The Real Stats and Absurd Measurements

So I’m scrolling through my feed, trying to find something—anything—that isn’t a brain-dead take on politics or another crypto scam, and I see it. John Hollinger over at The Athletic, a guy who is paid actual money to analyze basketball, ranked Victor Wembanyama as the 5th best player in the `NBA` for the 2025-26 season in his article, Victor Wembanyama, Luka Dončić and the NBA’s best players in 2025-26 - The New York Times.

I laughed. Not a chuckle. A full-on, out-loud laugh that made my dog look up from his nap.

Fifth.

Let’s just sit with that for a second. The man is essentially ranking a creature from another dimension, a 7-foot-5 basketball-playing alien who led the league in blocks while playing on one leg for half a season, as "pretty good, I guess." It's the most cowardly, butt-covering, say-nothing-while-pretending-to-say-something take I’ve seen all week. And I've seen some real stinkers.

Hollinger even had the nerve to write that ranking `Wemby` at #5 "still might be too low." You think? That’s like looking at a tsunami about to wipe a city off the map and saying, "You know, we might get some rain." It’s an observation so obvious it circles all the way back around to being insulting. It’s a transparent attempt to have it both ways—to seem reasonable to the old guard who still think a player needs to "pay his dues," while also being able to say "I told you so" when Wembanyama is inevitably named Supreme Overlord of the Galaxy in 2026.

This Isn't Analysis, It's an Insurance Policy

Let’s call this ranking what it really is: an insurance policy against being wrong. Putting a guy like `Wemby` at number one right now feels risky to these guys. It feels bold. What if the `victor wembanyama injury` bug bites again? What if the blood clot thing is a chronic issue? They’d look like fools. So instead of making a call based on what their own eyes are telling them, they hedge. They tuck him in safely behind a few established names, guys who have already peaked, and call it a day.

It’s a garbage take. No, "garbage" doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of an opinion.

We’re talking about a player who, in just 46 games, collected 176 blocks. He grabbed nearly a third of all available defensive rebounds when he was on the floor. He was the shoo-in Defensive Player of the Year before he got sidelined. This isn't some project player we’re hoping will pan out; this is a guy who was already warping the geometry of the entire sport in his rookie season. I was watching a `Spurs` game last year, and you could see the exact moment a guard drove to the lane, saw the shadow of Wembanyama’s ridiculous wingspan, and just… gave up. He passed it out, his spirit visibly broken. You can't quantify that on a spreadsheet.

The whole thing is like watching someone discover fire and then writing a report that says, "This new hot, orange thing shows promise as a potential light source, pending further review." It's offcourse a risk, but my god, can't you see what's right in front of you? The idea that four other players will be definitively better than a healthy version of this guy in two years is laughable. Who are they? Are they also 7-foot-5 with a guard's handle and a 35% shot from three? I didn't think so.

The Scariest Part? He's Not Even Close to His Final Form

The most insane part of this whole discussion is that the version of Wembanyama we've seen so far is the beta test. It's the raw, unpolished, still-figuring-it-out model. Hollinger himself notes that the `San Antonio Spurs` offense doesn't even optimize his skills yet. They’re still running plays like he’s a normal human center instead of a basketball cheat code. He’s putting up these absurd `victor wembanyama stats` on hard mode, with a team that's actively making his job more difficult.

What happens when they finally realize their entire offensive playbook should just be a sticky note that says, "Give the ball to the giant Frenchman and get out of the way"? What happens when he adds another 15 pounds of muscle to that frame?

Hollinger calls the prospect of his improvement "a scary thought for the rest of the league." It’s not a thought; it's a guarantee. We're witnessing the basketball equivalent of the first T-800 rolling off the Cyberdyne assembly line. It’s terrifying, it’s inevitable, and its sole purpose is to terminate the competition. To act like this is some far-off possibility is just willful ignorance.

The blood clot is the only thing giving these analysts cover. It’s their one plausible excuse for not anointing him king right now. And I get it, it’s a serious issue. We don’t have all the details on his recovery, and that uncertainty is real. But these rankings are hypotheticals to begin with. They assume a baseline of health. If we're assuming health, then there is no logical argument for four players being better than him. There just isn't. The conversation for #1 is already a two-man race between him and maybe Luka Doncic, and even that feels generous to Luka. The rest of the league is playing for third.

To pretend otherwise is just... a failure of imagination. Or maybe just a failure of courage.

Stop Pretending You Don't See It

Let's be brutally honest. This #5 ranking has nothing to do with basketball analysis and everything to do with professional risk aversion. It's the safe, boring, corporate-approved opinion. It’s for people who are more afraid of looking stupid than they are excited about being right. They're ranking the present, not the future they're claiming to predict. We all see what's happening here. We see the unicorn. We see the guy who is changing the fundamental math of the sport. Anyone pretending he's just another top-five talent is either blind or lying.