Whatever the outcome of the 2026 NBA Finals, it will mark the end of the first chapter in a new legendary player’s career. The San Antonio Spurs’ shockingly fast rise to this series—22 wins in 2023; 22 again in 2024; 34 in 2025; 62 in 2026 (!)—has been all about the singular impact of Victor Wembanyama. To be sure, he has help: Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper are the most exciting young backcourt duo in the league, and De’Aaron Fox is the All-Star veteran steadying the ship. But the Spurs have had no greater advantage than their 22-year-old center who limits business near the basket more than any defender ever has.

Wemby’s playoff life began six weeks ago, against the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round. He dazzled in his debut, scoring 33 points, making five of his six three-point attempts and running the floor with flair and grace that don’t make sense for a man of his length. One fast break saw him handling the ball end-to-end and consistently pushing one of the league’s best wing defenders, Deni Avdija, back on his feet; Wemby dribbled behind his back, used the power of his stride, and finished it off with a spin move to the basket to announce his postseason presence with an exclamation point. 

His second game was less triumphant. For all the majesty that derives from Big Vic’s open floor ball-handling and other guard skills, his biologically oblong nature has always been a curiosity that savvy teams were bound to explore the negative space of in a pressure cooker. How freely and creatively can someone with such a high center of gravity really play, especially before he fills out his core and limbs with bigger muscles? Jrue Holiday got to the heart of this question when he guarded Wemby in the high post, and “pulled the chair” out from under him—old-head basketball terminology for essentially removing your body from post defense when you know the man with the ball is about to move aggressively, and depend on the defender’s body for balance. As Holiday stepped aside, Wembanyama fell like a pine tree cut at its root, hit his face on the hardwood, and lay stunned and unconscious for a few seconds before suddenly standing up and running to the back of the building; likely to vomit, as a just-concussed person often does.

Harper and Castle had his back in a Wemby-free Game 3, scoring a combined 60 points, and when the big man returned, the Spurs dispatched Portland without much problem. This is, arguably, when Victor learned the power of limitations to his game, and how unstoppable he makes the rest of his team when he plays like a more traditional big man: owning the glass, and constantly keeping defenses in red-alert mode off the ball as a vertical spacing threat. Though we’ve hardly seen the end of Wemby exploring the range of his unique game, he’s clearly identified a Closing Time Mode that he’ll resort to when his team is most pressed: be tall, be near the basket, dunk and rebound and block. Repeat.

Against the Minnesota Timberwolves, older NBA fans were reminded of what the Detroit Pistons did to Michael Jordan in the late 1980’s. “The Jordan Rules” was a euphemism for beating the hell out of a player who was too gifted to deal with any other way, and for a while it worked: Jordan and his Chicago Bulls lost their composure in the pit of such rough-housing, and needed three years to mature to their 1991 form before they could coolly, clinically take their older foes down. Given his own unsolvability, “The Wemby Rules” were inevitable. 

But the related arc of conquest happened within just one series, for Victor: yes, his poise was taken from him by an extra-physical approach, too. And he was rightfully ejected for his violent over-reaction to how the Wolves manhandled him: elbowing Naz Reid in the neck. But after that, he was visibly uninterested in the ragebait shoved into his face, and kept his head straight, powered by the knowledge that his team had everything it needed to win, and that only the gnarliest of gamesmanship could take them away from their goals. 

In the Western Conference Finals, his arms would again be held, his jersey grabbed, his body used as a kind of tackling sled. It is already the case that officiating Wemby is, for the league’s referees, a Shaq-like challenge: if they called everything, we probably wouldn’t enjoy the product. Such is the burden of the basketball unicorn.

The eminently well-studied Oklahoma City Thunder were also able to complicate the game for Wemby strategically. Over the course of the series, they learned how to move him from his best defensive position, sometimes baiting him into expanded rim-protection territory with the illusion of a shot-blocking opportunity that would then turn into a quick dish to the dunker’s spot. They also boxed him out with extra men, used another defender to stop his rolls after his high screens, and threw the whole playbook at him, really. It was almost enough, but San Antonio ultimately had enough counter-strategy—and vast physical advantages—to get over the top in Game 7 on the road.

Against the New York Knicks in the Finals, there will be another test. While the modern NBA has a lot of centers who can hit three-pointers, including Wemby himself and the big man he just dispatched, Chet Holmgren, there is really only one center out there whose accuracy from deep is truly defense-bending. That’s the guy who the Knicks start: Karl-Anthony Towns. While Towns was down from his career 40-percent mark from deep this season, he’s been up at 49 percent this postseason, which means that Wemby will have to stick more seriously to the arc than he has in previous rounds. That’s a problem when the Knicks also have Jalen Brunson, one of the most skilled paint operators around.

While the Spurs enter the series as betting odds favorites, and with home court advantage, they will be the more tired and less experienced team. Their dynamic guards will have more size to deal with, too: Mikal Bridges and O.G. Anunoby are elite wing disruptors, ready to take everything away from determined ball-handlers. What the analytical book-making minds of Las Vegas have deduced, however, is that the Spurs are not only more blessed with talent than anyone else, but also that they’ve already proven that they can solve problems swiftly enough to repeatedly push the burden of proof back over to their opponents. You could overthink this, and make a laundry list of reasons for why the sharpest predictive minds see it this way. Or you could just go with the truth: it’s because they have Wemby.