Victor Wembanyama is coming off a rookie season where he proved to be as good as advertised as a generational talent. He earned All-Defensive honors, as well as Rookie of the Year, and despite being just 20 years old is already one of the best players in the league. Wemby checked in at No. 12 on our annual Top 100 NBA player ranking last month.
After a summer that included winning a silver medal for his home country of France at the Paris Olympics, Wembanyama will soon begin his sophomore campaign where he’ll team up with veteran point guard — and future first-ballot Hall of Famer — Chris Paul on a Spurs team that has an outside chance of contending for a play-in spot. San Antonio may still be in the infancy of a rebuild centered around Wembanyama, but after finishing last season strong there are some expectations on this young team to take meaningful steps toward contention.
All eyes will be on Wembanyama once again as we all wait to see what he does next in his young career. He’ll certainly be in the running for an All-Star spot this season, and will have countless jaw-dropping highlights, whether that be in the form of blocks, showing off his handle and knocking down a stepback jumper, or dunking on someone. Wembanyama collected his fair share of posters from his rookie season, but there are still three guys who he’d most like to dunk on as the 2024-25 begins.
In an exclusive interview on CBS Sports HQ, Wembanyama revelaed the three NBA players he would most like to dunk on. Rudy Gobert, his fellow Frenchman, was the first name he listed.
“The best defenders would be the biggest challenge, so that would be Rudy Gobert, I think Kawhi [Leonard] would be — because all these guys I respect so much on the defensive end that it would be incredible to dunk on them,” Wembanyama told Ashley Niclole Moss. “So I’d say Rudy, Kawhi and a third one would be Jonathan Isaac. I think [Isaac’s] a really, really underrated defender.”
Here’s the full interview with Wemby:
Wembanyama has said before that he would enjoy dunking on his fellow countryman in Gobert, but Leonard and Isaac are new additions to the list. None of those are out of the realm of possibility given Wemby’s size, and the reigning Rookie of the Year could check two of those names off his list early in the season as the Spurs play the Timberwolves and Clippers in back-to-back games the first week of November.
But as Wembanyama said, dunking on all three of those guys would be a challenge as they’re some of the best defenders in the league, with Gobert (the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year) ranking fifth in the league in total blocks a season ago and Isaac ranking 15th in blocks per game. Leonard may not be amongst the league’s top shot blockers, but when healthy he’s a lockdown defender and can challenge someone like Wembanyama even if Leonard is nine inches shorter than Wemby.
Now that Wembanyama has put that list out there, we’ll be keeping an eye out when he plays against those guys.
