Tank Watch: NBA will stream all of Victor Wembanyama's French league games this season
Victor Wembanyama is the runaway favorite to go No. 1 in the 2023 NBA draft and impressed the basketball world earlier this month during two exhibition games in Las Vegas.
The 7-foot-4 French phenom is the best NBA prospect since LeBron James, and on Thursday, the NBA announced that it will be streaming all of Wembanyama's French league games for free on the league's app beginning 2 p.m. ET Saturday, when the Metropolitans 92 play JL Bourg Basket.
The LNB Betclic ELITE will be the first non-NBA affiliated league to have its games live streamed on the NBA app, and it should attract a solid audience after Wembanyama's debut in Las Vegas.
In two games, Wembanyama averaged 36.5 points, 4.5 blocks and scored from all over the court. He hit long, step-back threes and grabbed impossibly high lobs for dunks in transition. In the first game, he had a season-high seven 3-pointers and added five blocks. His ceiling at the next level is a combination of Rudy Gobert and Kevin Durant, and even James, the Los Angeles Lakers' star, was impressed with his play.
"He's for sure a generational-type talent," James said of Wembanyama after seeing him play for the first time. "Everybody’s been a unicorn over the last few years, but he’s more like an alien. No one has ever seen anyone as tall as he is, but as fluid and as graceful as he is out on the floor — his ability to put the ball on the floor, shoot step-back jumpers out of the post, catch-and-shoot threes, block shots."
Wembanyama plans on playing the entire season and dismissed any speculation that he would sit out or shut it down for the season to prepare for the draft.
"I can't accept just to quit like that," Wembanyama said. "I understand why people would say that, but it's not me. I wouldn't have joined the team if I wasn't going to play and go to the end."
The 2023 NBA draft is still eight months away, and Wembanyama could be playing on a weekly basis until February. If his first two games in Vegas are any indication of what's to come this season in the French league, every Wembanyama game will be must-watch basketball and a great opportunity to get familiar with the next great prospect to enter the league.
