San Antonio Spurs star center Victor Wembanyama says there’s no blueprint for how to play the game with his unique combination of size and skill.
At 7-foot-4, the 22-year-old reigning Defensive Player of the Year gave insight into how he trains and envisions his career.
“I think the key is being comfortable not knowing, being comfortable finding out my own answers,” he said, adding, “I am comfortable not knowing my answers. I am comfortable walking through the fog.”
Wembanyama reflects on Spurs’ 4–1 series loss to the New York Knicks
Wembanyama says he felt like his head was poking through that fog last season when the Spurs were on a winning streak.
“Last year, there was this, I think the month of February, we didn’t lose a single game,” he said. “[These are the] moments where everything clicks, you know.”
The Spurs kept clicking through the spring. The team beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals. But then, despite being favored in the Finals, San Antonio lost in five games to the New York Knicks. Wembanyama, by his own admission, was far from his best.
He was portrayed as a villain in the Finals, but he said that didn’t bother him.
“It showed my limits more than anything else,” he said. “Going out there, you need to play basketball. You don’t need to beat the s**t out of people — if you want to win, at least.”
“A winner’s franchise”
That self-awareness comes from someone just starting his fourth NBA season. Wembanyama was a teen in France when he first appeared on scouts’ radars. He was the most anticipated rookie since LeBron James 20 years earlier. It was a given he would be the top pick in the 2023 draft.
The draft pick brought him from the Paris suburbs to one of the NBA’s smallest markets. For Wembanyama, it was the perfect pairing of player and franchise.
“The franchise with the greatest coach of all time, the franchise with a big French history as well,” he said. “And yeah, just winning. A winner’s franchise, you know?”
Wembanyama is talking about Gregg Popovich, who retired from coaching in 2025, but not before leading the Spurs to five NBA titles.
Wembanyama says Popovich taught him about humility.
“He often said something when we were in film, ‘After a win, you’re rarely as good as you thought you were, and after a loss you’re rarely as bad as you thought you were,'” Wembanyama said.
The key to Wemby’s career
After a blood clot in his shoulder shut down his second season, Wembanyama doubled down on his conditioning. Wembanyama says because big men have often had problems with their feet, he is preoccupied with strengthening his.
“I also find more and more that feet are responsible for so much more that goes on,” Wembanyama said. “It’s funny, because I was just talking to a rookie. I went to practice barefoot, and he sees me walking without shoes, and he’s like, ‘I didn’t know you could just not wear shoes.'”
Wembanyama’s an evangelist for going barefoot.
“I try to walk barefoot as much as I can, and wear minimalistic shoes,” he said.
Shoes that don’t respect the natural shape of the foot, he said, don’t do anything to strengthen the feet.
“If you got a good foot strength, which brings a good foot posture, everything else can develop the right way: knee, hip and back, everything,” Wembanyama said.
Lessons from monks and chess players
Wembanyama says curiosity is his defining trait. In the summer of 2025, he went to China where he learned kung fu and meditation from Shaolin monks.
“It was hard because they push you to the next level,” Wembanyama said.
He could lock in and meditate for around a half hour, “and then an hour and a half wondering, ‘How much longer is it going to go on for?'”
Wembanyama says you could call what he does at the free throw line meditation. When asked what’s going through his mind, he says “nothing for a second and then focusing on making the shot”
His curiosity has also led him to develop his game as a chess player. Wembanyama says there is overlap between basketball and chess.
“I find that chess is a lot about decision-making,” he said. “And that looks like basketball a lot, at least in theory. Because there are some theoretical good moves.”
A Frenchman in Texas
This past summer, Wembanyama returned to France where he runs an annual tournament that combines chess with basketball. On the same trip home, he hosted his Spurs teammates.
“I wanted to show them, you know, the refinement at times, but also how I would take care of them, you know? Because it really matters to me,” he said. “But it did more for me than for them that they came.”
When asked what he tells people back home when they ask him what it’s like to live in the U.S., Wembanyama rejects the premise of the question.
“My answer is always, ‘Well, I don’t know, because I don’t live a normal life in the U.S.’ I live the life of an athlete, of a rich person, you know, the life of somebody that’s going to have everything taken care of, you know, no matter what I do, really,” he said. “It’s not the life of the regular American. But it’s the best country to be an athlete in.”
