LOS ANGELES — The San Antonio Spurs organization was on edge. It was May 16, the night of the NBA Draft Lottery and San Antonio had a 14% chance of landing the No. 1 pick and generational talent Victor Wembanyama, changing the course of the franchise. Again. As it had done with Tim Duncan before.
There were watch parties in San Antonio, Spurs executives were biting their nails, and Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich was...
Sleeping. On a flight to Europe.
He knew Wembanyama was the prize, but he didn’t bother himself over it.
“The draft comes and all that, I watch some film, but I didn’t really pay any attention to it because you don’t think you’re gonna get him,” Popovich said Sunday night in Los Angeles.
“In fact, when we did get him, I was on a flight to Italy. Like, the club wondered, why would do that? Seriously. What was I going to do? Jump in the [NBA lottery] machine, then move the ping pong balls…
“But there wasn’t much I could do. I was asleep. My son-in-law nudged me, woke me up and said, ‘Hey, you guys got the first pick.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s good.’ After that, I started watching film and seeing who he was.”
Now Popovich is tasked with guiding the start of Wembanyama’s career. Is there a trick to guiding young NBA talents, especially potential franchise changers like Wembanyama?
“I think one has to be careful not to assume that you have the answers,” Popovich said. “It’s just like your children, you don’t know how they’re really going to end up. But this young man has already been taught many important lessons and understands the priorities. He’s not fazed by the hype or anything like that. His parents already did the job with him. So I just have to not screw it up.”
There are a lot of hard lessons ahead of Wembanyama and the young Spurs, and the veteran Clippers gave them one Sunday with a 40-point win. What strikes you about Wembanyama — beyond his size and skill — is how mature he already is for a rookie. How well he handles the pressure. And he already sounds like a Popovich Spur.
“We got we got a famous saying in San Antonio, and it’s ‘pound the rock,’” Wembanyama said. “It has a deep meaning, and how I see it — and how I see life — is always like [there is] adversity, struggles sometimes, but it’s not about how it’s not about how bad the struggles are going to be bad, how persistent we’re going to be.”
