Victor Wembanyama was the presumed No.1 pick for months, the rare certainty in an NBA draft process that’s often a guessing game.
Yet as the clock above the stage he was facing ticked all the way down to zero, butterflies set in.
“Longest five minutes of my life,” Wembanyama said.
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The San Antonio Spurs are confident he will be worth the wait.
The Spurs took the 19-year-old from France who arrives with enormous expectations to become basketball’s newest sensation, triggering chants of “Wemby! Wemby” from a group of Spurs fans waving signs from the first row of seats in Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Wembanyama comes with far more height and hype than most No.1 picks. Listed at seven foot four inches – or 224 centimetres – he dominated his French league in his final season there, leading all players in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots.
Now he makes the move to the NBA, perhaps as the best prospect since LeBron James came out of high school in 2003. Wembanyama brings a package of skills that seem perfect for the modern NBA and too vast for one player, with the size of a centre and the shooting and ball handling ability of a guard.
He teared up as he left the stage with his Spurs cap on and hugged his siblings, then joked afterward about how quickly he was handed a white-and-black No.1 jersey with his name already on the back.
“Someone knew this was happening somehow,” he said.
Just about everyone did.
Wembanyama was the centre of attention throughout the draft process and sat in the middle of the green room — for the short time he was there, anyway. He smiled for young fans who screamed “Victor!” as he walked around the arena, even encouraging one to throw him a basketball that he signed and tossed back up into the stands.
The Charlotte Hornets took Alabama freshman forward Brandon Miller with the No.2 pick.
Scoot Henderson of the G League Ignite, whose bling-filled jacket stood in sharp contrast to Wembanyama’s solid green look, was the No.3 pick by the Portland Trail Blazers.
It was during a two-game series between teams featuring Wembanyama and Henderson last October in Las Vegas that Wembanyama solidified himself as the main man in this draft, scoring 37 and 36 points in front of scouts and some future opponents.
His highlights, such as a follow dunk of his own missed three-pointer, became can’t-miss content for basketball fans during the past season.
Wembanyama is the Spurs’ third No.1 pick and the first since Tim Duncan in 1997, which led to a stretch of five NBA championships through 2014 before they struggled in recent seasons.
He became the first international player drafted No.1 without playing any college basketball since Andrea Bargnani in 2006 and ended a run of 13 straight years where a college freshman went first. Blake Griffin, a sophomore in 2010, was the last No.1 who wasn’t a one-and-done.
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