Victor Wembanyama and the End of Basketball

This year’s NBA playoffs have been my first extended experience watching Victor Wembanyama. For the uninitiated, ‘Wemby’ is the star 7’6” French center for the San Antonio Spurs. He’s basically a living version of Dayienu. For the uninitiated, Dayienu (Hebrew for “it would have been enough”) is a Jewish prayer telling G-d he would be Kenough even if He wasn’t nearly as marvelous and generous as He was in getting us out of Egypt1. Here’s a couple Wemby stanzas so you get the idea:

If he were just the most athletic 7’6” player the world had ever seen, capable of completing alley-oops without jumping … Dayienu

If he were just, at 22, the best defensive player in the league, making the world’s best athletes look like the Looney Tunes playing against a Monstar … Dayienu

If he were just the world’s best shooting big man, capable of draining shots 25 feet from the basket … Dayienu

If he were just a psychotic competitor who learned English as a tween so he could better compete for titles in his 20s … Dayienu

Wemby is probably basketball’s most unique talent ever, and by himself a fascinating case study of game theory. Watching him evokes my memories of reading Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” in college. Fukuyama’s core argument in that book is that liberal democracy is a strictly dominant form of government. Since it is a fundamentally better system than its alternatives, history will move in only 1 direction – towards more democracy.

Wemby often feels like the End of Basketball. Unlike any star before him, his specific brand of dominance breaks the balance of the game and forces his opponents to be like him. You may not need to be Wemby to beat Wemby, but you do need to play like him.

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The game theory in basketball is run by three basic laws:

The First Law: It’s always better to be bigger, faster, and stronger

The Second Law: Big skill gaps beat small physical gaps

The Third Law: Three is more than two

The First Law is #1 for a reason. If you want to be in the NBA, you must be physically blessed. Period, end of sentence. It’s the only sport in the world where your chance of making it to the top levels goes up with every extra inch. Athleticism is the league’s Great Filter. You shoot better than Steph Curry? Your work ethic is better than Kobe Bryant? Oh, but you’re 5’10”? Hope China works out.

Only once you get through the Great Filter do other things matter. The gaps between athletes in the NBA are comparably small, so skill gets relatively more important. But only relatively. The challenge for the high-skill, low-athleticism crowd is that good athletes can learn skills too. You can teach shooting and dribbling, but you can’t teach height and vertical leap.

The big NBA strategic development in my lifetime is Law #3. It still befuddles me that after 60 years of every team (supposedly) trying to find every edge to win2, it took Steph Curry to think that making 35% of your three-point shots was equivalent to making 52% of your two-point shots. Steph is the last player (and only other?) to break the NBA before Wemby, going 140-24 in two seasons as his team lapped everyone in math.

This edge did not last very long. It turns out that being good at shooting 3s is strictly dominated by being huge, fast, and being good at shooting 3s. Steph’s Warriors won the 2015 title by blitzing the league with a five-man lineup of shooters averaging 6’5”. Within five years, the new champions did the same, with size. The best 5-man lineups for the 2021 (Bucks), 2023 (Nuggets), and 2024 (Celtics) champions averaged 6’8”, with 14 of the 15 players shooting at least 35% from 3. The exception is Giannis Antetokounmpo, blessed with such physical gifts his nickname is literally “the Greek Freak”.

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So where does the new edge come from? For the last 3 years, it has come from having seven-footers with not just adequate, but excellent shooting skills. Of the 12 teams that made the conference finals since 2023, nine employed one of the few seven-footers who can credibly play great defense and bomb 3s (Myles Turner, Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis, Chet Holmgren, and Wemby).

To date, this has been treated like a luxury. Many good teams play lineups without five quality shooters and win plenty of regular season games – this year’s Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, and Minnesota Timberwolves won plenty with 3 or less great shooters on the floor. All make up for low skill with high athleticism and physicality… The First Law again.

This can work … but not against Wemby.

Wemby’s core defensive strength is his reach. His wingspan is over eight feet, and he eradicates the best shot in basketball: the layup. Shots closer to the basket have always been the best shots in the sport, which is why big men dominated for years. They could both deter close shots on defense and create them on offense. The three-point revolution changed that by creating a roughly equally good shot on the perimeter. This forced coaches to move their defenders away from the basket, making layups easier.

Wemby is impervious to this. He defends the rim better than any human ever has. NBA players are downright scared to take a layup with Wemby by the rim. They shoot a piss-poor 40% when they do dare to shoot, but the more common scene is them getting close to the basket, looking up at French Godzilla, and turning and running away. Just watch.

So … how do you get Wemby away from the rim? Let’s start by what you can’t do. First, you can’t play a center who won’t shoot. Wemby will ignore them and park himself at the hoop.

OK … so let’s say you play a center who can shoot. If you have another player who won’t, Wemby will guard the one who can’t shoot and park himself at the hoop.

OK … so you play five guys with decent shooting skills. Well, your worst one (probably your center) better shoot well. If he shoots OK, Wemby will hang out by the basket, surrendering the 3s.

OK … so you play five guys who can shoot well. Only they can’t be too small (the 2015 Warriors move)… or Wemby will eat them alive on offense.

OK … so you play five guys who shoot well and have size. And at least one needs to be able to defend the rim against Wemby while shooting 3s comfortably from range.

To beat Wemby, you need to find your Wemby. QED.

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The “End of History” is a good cautionary tale for overconfident predictions like the one above. Since Fukuyama wrote the book, the balance of power on Earth has shifted away from democracies and the dominant democracies themselves have become, shall we say, less democratic. You don’t have to search hard to find those who argue that democracy and majority-will government is inherently an unstable equilibrium.

It’s possible that, similarly, Wemby is a historical aberration. His body may not be able to sustain this level of play. NBA athletes may figure out other ways around his dominance – his current opponent, the Oklahoma City Thunder, are prototyping the strategy of “enough gratuitous violence the refs can’t call it all” right in front of our eyes.

In the long term, I bet other strategies will fail. They barely work now – the Spurs are crushing the Thunder when Wemby plays, and may well win the series – and he will only get better. The End of Basketball is a logical continuation of The First Law, meaning our French overlord is here to stay.