WAS THE final minute of the first quarter of Chris Paul’s preseason debut against the Orlando Magic, when he lofted a lob to his new partner, Victor Wembanyama, who blocked it home for a lane-oop dunk over Moritz Wagner.
Naturally, the crowd of 16,952 at Frost Bank Center lost it, hoping it would be the strongest of predecessors.
“Those who know know that with the talent that he has and the amount of attention that he garners, there are going to be times where he actually is a decoy,” Paul said.
Paul would know. Name your big. Paul has been improving them for nearly two decades. The point guard entered this season having assisted on 715 alley-oop dunks during his career, the most among active players. Wembanyama, meanwhile, ranked third in the league last season in alley-oop dunks, according to Second Spectrum tracking data. He accomplished that feat without a floor general of Paul’s stature.
Working with Paul, Tyson Chandler in 2007-08 averaged a career-high 11.8 points. DeAndre Jordan led the league in field goal percentage for five straight seasons (2012-13 to 2016-17) playing alongside Paul. Clint Capela won the NBA’s field goal percentage title in 2017-18 as Paul’s Houston Rockets teammate, before averaging a career high the following season in scoring.
“He’s probably seen everything on the basketball court,” said Spurs interim coach Mitch Johnson, who is leading the team while Gregg Popovich recovers from what the team called a “minor concussion” suffered Nov. 2. “It’s difficult as a coach. because you try to talk to everyone at the same time and the game is going on. So, to have someone like Chris, who probably has a better solution than me, can actually be on the court with the ball, help, or affect, that in real time is worth its weight in gold.”
Paul has 20 years of experience in improving bigs, but he’s never played with one quite like Wembanyama, the 7-foot-3 phenom once famously described by Paul’s friend LeBron James as an “alien.” Paul adds the obvious lob threat to Wembanyama’s game, but the fit hasn’t been as seamless as many around the league expected over the summer, with Wembanyama’s ability to score on the perimeter — and the way opponents defend that — adding to that . a complexity to the partnership that the duo is still smoothing out.
“Traditional big changing one to five?” Paul said. “You’ve never played with a point guard like me, know what I mean? So, we’re constantly doing different things. I’ve never played with a center that I set screens for. It’s different.”
PAUL FLOSED A lob on a pick-and-roll when Wembanyama cut to the basket in the first quarter of a November 15 game against the Los Angeles Lakers.
Bang.
A two-handed jam with Austin Reaves desperately trailing.
The assist was Paul’s third of the game and the 12,000th of his 20-year career, making him just the third player to reach that milestone, behind John Stockton and Jason Kidd. The history-making assist came in the exact type of game most expected to see often when Paul and Wembanyama teamed up in July.
Instead, it was the only one of Paul’s 11 assists that night that led to a Wembanyama dunk. Meanwhile, three of Paul’s team-high 11 assists against the Lakers found Wembanyama for 3-pointers.
“Our first priority is to win games,” Paul said. “A lot of people think it’s just going to be lob, lob, lob. If the lobs come and we win, so be it. It’s just going to happen because he is who he is. There’s going to be times when we get open shots, and a lot of times when we throw it out and he can finish But we’ll always try to figure it out.”
Paul believes that the diversity in Wembanyama’s game plays a role in delaying the process of optimizing chemistry between them.
“Some nights, there will be centers guarding him,” Paul said. “Some nights, there will be small forwards. In this league, you just have to be able to adapt. That’s what he’s figuring out and learning.”
There were also other barriers blocking the process. The 20-year-old took some time off on the heels of a whirlwind summer, with the club holding him out of three of San Antonio’s five exhibition outings as Paul missed two pre-season contests.
Wembanyama, who missed the team’s past two games with a right knee contusion and was ruled out for Thursday’s game against the Utah Jazz, has spent the first few contests of the regular season playing his way back into shape while learning the intricacies of the game. with an elite point guard such as Paul.
“We share a lot of similarities in our view of basketball,” Wembanyama said. “The biggest thing is his knowledge of the pick-and-roll. I just try to apply what he sees and experiment, also telling him what I like. He tells me what he likes, what we don’t like . I think it’s a very healthy relationship because we see basketball pretty much the same way.”
Pair a future Hall of Fame point guard with a 7-foot generational talent and watch the alleys rain in abundance. The thought seemed incomprehensible when news broke of Paul signing with San Antonio to a one-year deal.
“On paper, it looks like it should work,” Johnson admitted.
Just 13 games into the NBA season, Paul and Wembanyama admit they are still learning a partnership that could grow infinitely as 2024-25 progresses. But Paul has already assisted on 98 of Wembanyama’s 295 points in 2024, the most points assisted by one passer to a scorer this season, according to ESPN Research.
“The most important thing is that he is willing to tell us things,” said Wembanyama. “Every practice, he gives us feedback on what he used to do, how defenses played them normally, how we can get more space. He approaches this in a very unselfish way.”
WHEN WEMBANYAMA WAS BORN his first career 50-point game during a 139–130 win on November 13 against the Washington Wizards, 14 of those points came off Paul assists.
But none resulted in a single hire of the French phenomenon. He scored 12 of his Paul-assisted points on four of his career-high eight 3-pointers in the contest.
“We want him to shoot those shots,” forward Julian Champagnie said. “[He’s] obviously a special, special player. It won’t always be in the paint for him. Teams will play him differently. tonight, [it] it was 3. He doesn’t post [Jonas] Valanciuna the whole game. That’s a big body. We want him to keep shooting [3s]. He will get them. He is 7-5. So, there really is no end that will reach him.”
It’s clear that opponents believe in defending Wembanyama physically in or near the paint, a strategy reflected in his shooting profile over San Antonio’s first 13 games. Rivals routinely beat and harass Wembanyama near the basket, and Johnson attributes that to the way big men are routinely officiated around the NBA.
So, Wembanyama has taken his skill this season to where it is most effective: the perimeter. Given his athleticism, height and length, such an approach would seem counterintuitive. Yet 62.5% of Wembanyama’s attempts over San Antonio’s first 13 games came on catch-and-shoot opportunities and pull-ups, while 33.2% of his shots came from less than 10 feet from the basket.
So much for the lob dunk attack — for now.
“Lobo is a dunk, an easy basket,” Wembanyama said. “And this is one of the first things that teams are going to watch out for. So, it’s not as easy as it seems to throw a lob. But if there’s one guy in this league that can throw them, it’s probably him. [Paul].”
Fortunately for Wembanyama and the Spurs, history has shown that Paul can make any variety of passes he chooses. That has led to an interesting combination of bonds between the duo, who can often be seen in the post-game locker room chatting about what they saw minutes earlier on the floor.
Paul dished out 31 assists to Wembanyama this season with 15 coming on 3-pointers, eight on dunks and four on alley-oop jams. The Paul to Wembanyama tie ranks as the only combo in the NBA in which one player assisted at least seven 3-pointers and seven dunks to a single player.
And Paul’s impact doesn’t end with the young Frenchman. Paul was a veteran presence with Popovich away from the team. And with Wembanyama on the bench Tuesday night, Paul led the Spurs to victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the top teams in the NBA. At 7-8, the Spurs still have a lot of work to do to reach the playoffs, but they are well ahead of last year’s pace, when they recorded their seventh win on January 12th.
“I wish you could see the work that goes in, day in and day out,” Paul said. “You know how talented he is. But his willingness and willingness to get better, his willingness to want to work on things … the more games we play, I think we’ll get more familiar with each other.”
