The greatest French hope

(Lille, France) At La Samaritaine, the chic department store in central Paris, you’ll find luxury dresses. Luxury shoes. Luxury jewelry. Luxury handbags. Everything to empty your RRSPs and TFSAs in one impulse purchase. “Do you think when they saw us come in in shorts and T-shirts, they knew we wouldn’t buy anything?” my young colleague Nicholas Richard asked me.

Maybe, Nicho. Maybe.

And in the heart of the ground floor, under the grand Art Deco staircase and the glass ceiling, what pieces have been highlighted on a pedestal as part of a temporary exhibition dedicated to the Olympic Games? The dress that Lady Gaga wore during the opening ceremony? That of Céline Dion? The loincloth of the blue character played by Philippe Katerine on the Seine?

Three times no. They are rather three basketball jerseys. That of Nikola Jokić, three times NBA player of the year. That of Luka Dončić, star player of the Dallas Mavericks. And slightly above the other two, that of Victor Wembanyama, number 1 of the San Antonio Spurs and the most popular player in Paris.

That’s how iconic the French basketball player has become since he was selected first overall in the NBA draft in the summer of 2023. 200 kilometres north of La Samaritaine, in the university town of Lille, Wembanyama’s jersey also occupies a privileged place. Not in a luxury store this time, but on the backs of hundreds of spectators who came to cheer him on with the French team at the local soccer stadium, transformed for the Games into a basketball arena.

Wembanyama is the greatest hope of French basketball – and that’s not just a figure of speech. At 2m24 (7ft4in), he is both the tallest player in the NBA and at these Paris Games.

What is 2m24? That’s about a head taller than former Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chára, who himself was a head taller than current Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki. When Wembanyama raises his arms, he’s only 12 cm short of the rim. With his arms outstretched, his reach is comparable to that of a golden eagle’s wings.

I watched his game against the Japanese on Tuesday. The only player you could see near the net was him. At times, you’d think he was Gulliver among the Lilliputians. A photo of him facing Yuki Togashi, 1.67 m tall, went viral on social media in less time than it takes him to cross the field in his seven-league boots.

In addition to being tall, the 20-year-old is good. Very good. The best rookie of last season in the NBA, he can play both under the net and on the edge of the three-point zone, a rare versatility in modern basketball. He also showed the extent of his talent in overtime against the Japanese.

The French lead was too slim: 87-84. The Japanese were attacking. The blue crowd of Lille was stressed. Getting beaten against the United States, fine. Against a European power, at the limit, we could understand. But against Japan, 26^e in the world, a country that has only produced half a dozen players in the entire history of the NBA? Shame. A Japanese man attempted a free throw. Wembanyama blocked it, allowing France to counterattack. He himself completed the sequence with a three-point basket, to put the game out of reach for the Japanese.

“A champion’s maturity, a champion’s mentality,” his head coach, Vincent Collet, praised. Wembanyama finished the game with 18 points, 11 rebounds and 6 assists. And according to his coachit was despite a bad second half and fatigue. Wembanyama would just recover from COVID-19, information provided by one of his teammates, but not confirmed.

French fans, for their part, see him as the leader capable of leading the Blues to the podium. “For French basketball, since Tony Parker, it had run out of steam,” explained to me Dimitri Kucharczyk, journalist and section editor for the USA Basket website for 15 years. “Wembanyama, he comes to renew all that. There is a real craze around him. The other French are specialists. He is a player who can carry a team, who can be a star in the NBA. He has everything to become the standard-bearer of French basketball.”

In Lille, it seemed like it was already a given. The fans covered him with chants of “MVP, MVP, MVP,” for Most Valuable Player. The young darling was pleased with the attention. “They give me a lot of love. I want to give it back to them. When I’m at the free-throw line and they sing MVP, the least I can do is score!”

A player like him is a rare and invaluable luxury, no matter the team.

But even more so for the host country.

France is 2-0. Next game against Germany, this Friday, 3 p.m.