He won't win it. But should Victor Wembanyama be Defensive Player of the Year?

I have never seen a player improve as rapidly at something as Victor Wembanyama has improved at NBA defense.

Not that he was bad to start — he’s been good since day one! Wembanyama flashed his court-guzzling defensive prowess right from the preseason, gobbling up entire possessions like a basketball Galactus:

But there’s a difference between having a good season and having an all-time great season. He’s closing in on the latter.

A few weeks ago, I said that “defensively, Wembanyama could’ve swept last year’s Oscars: he’s everything, everywhere, all at once.” That may have understated his impact.

Wemby’s 3.1 blocks per game lead the association, and his 1.2 steals per game are 19th in the league (he’s the only center in the top 20, although Nikola Jokic is right behind him). Nobody comes close to those combined numbers no matter how you regularize them (although, shout out to Andre Drummond, an old-school center leading the league in per-possession steals, and Walker Kessler, who slightly edges Wemby in blocks per possession). For what it’s worth, the Spurs recover 66% of Wemby’s blocks, the top mark of the most prolific shotblockers (by a fraction of a fraction over fellow rookie Chet Holmgren, having an All-Defensive-caliber season of his own).

Notably, he’s blocking all these shots without getting into foul trouble: his minuscule 2.9% foul rate compares favorably to Rudy Gobert, Holmgren, Brook Lopez, and most other elite big-man defenders you can name — and that’s as a rookie! Newbie bigs almost always struggle with foul trouble as they navigate the complexities of NBA-level pick-and-roll defense. Instead, we have Wemby doing stuff like this:

If that’s too basic for your tastes, the alphabet stew all-in-one stats are just as kind as the traditional metrics. For players with at least 500 minutes played, he currently ranks sixth in D-EPM, third in Bball-Index’s D-LEBRON, and seventh in

Neil Paine

’s defensive eRAPTOR.

While all of those acronyms have various strengths and weaknesses, Wembanyama and Knicks’ backup center Isaiah Hartenstein (performing fantastically in Mitchell Robinson’s absence) are the only players in the league to be top-10 in all three. If every directional indicator points the same way, you can feel better about the conclusion.

And remember that Wemby played much of the season out of position and is still surrounded by nervous-matador teammates. These dudes are dying on screens like randy teens in a slasher flick. How does Wembanyama cope when this is what he’s faced with every game?

The breakdown: Malaki Branham (#22 on the Spurs) is one of the worst defenders in basketball. Setting a screen essentially hits the delete button on Branham for any given possession, as you see above (it’s hilarious that Branham flips his hands up as if he’s frustrated by his teammates). Julian Champagnie (#30) is usually better but misses his job this time. He’s supposed to “tag” the rolling big man by bumping him to make the roll to the rim more difficult. Instead, like my toddler helping with the chores, neither of those players does anything remotely useful. Wemby is put into an untenable 2-on-1 situation that ends in an easy alley-oop for Bismack Biyombo.

This happens all the time. Further proof: when Wembanyama is resting, the Spurs give up 124 points per 100 possessions, an awful figure. For context, the Clippers have the best offensive rating in league history right now, and they’re cracking 122 points per 100.

In other words, whenever Wemby folds himself onto a tiny bench chair, the Spurs transform opposing offenses into the Dream Team. But the Spurs give up fewer than 115 points per 100 when Wemby’s on the floor, a slightly above-average mark. He transforms one of the worst defenses in the league into something more than respectable.

That’s primarily due to scaring the shi*t out of opposing ballhandlers. He’s in the 98th percentile for reducing opponent shots at the rim, and teams shoot less accurately when they do get there, too. Opponents shoot just 52% at the rim against Wembanyama, the same mark as Rudy Gobert, and according to Second Spectrum, Wembanyama lowers the probability of an opponent’s shot converting by a greater percentage than anyone in the NBA.

Statistically, there’s a powerful argument that Wemby’s the best defender in the NBA right now, and many of those same numbers have only gotten better since the first month-ish of the season (give or take a midseason minutes restriction).

I know that was a metric ton of metrics, so let’s turn to the tape. Film shows the same improvement. Coming into the season, a knock on Wemby was that he was too easy to shift off-balance, and his hips were slow to turn. This outrageous deflection would beg otherwise:

Look how quickly he spins and re-locates the pass to knock it away! Sublime.

Wemby can change his orientation with startling alacrity. And like the best shot-blockers, he’s not scared to get yammed on. You don’t average three blocks by regularly making business decisions:

Wembanyama is not some lumbering oaf bound to the paint like Mona Lisa, either. He skitters across the court, arms wide like some nightmarish shot-eating crab. Chris Paul learned this the hard way when he tried to get to his pet pull-up from the right elbow to end a quarter, only to panic and fling the ball at the rafters when Wemby apparated in front of him:

Wembanyama is still learning, but his margin for error is like playing a video game in story mode. Here, he falls for an initial shoulder fake by Scoot Henderson but gets the block anyway:

At the beginning of the season, Wembanyama struggled with the timing of when to help and when to stay home. He’d chase blocks he could not get, then watch a driver go right by him without offering much resistance. But he’s starting to find the balance. He’s singlehandedly destroying possessions by himself. Watch as he stonewalls Giannis Antetokounmpo, then Lopez, then Lopez again, then Giannis for good measure:

The biggest players can still mash Wembanyama under the basket, but he’s far stronger than he looks. Not many defenders can absorb a full-speed Giannis shoulder and live to tell the tale, much less become the hero:

The scary thing is that there are clear areas for further improvement. Wembanyama tends to close out really high on shooters. It certainly dissuades them from launching, but it can take him completely out of the play (and few Spurs can be counted on to provide much help):

Wemby occasionally misses box-outs, relying upon his tree branches to corral rebounds. He’s only been so-so in isolation defense, as he’s a little jumpy (although that, too, is improving). He throws himself off-balance at times by trying for kick balls, a weird habit you can’t stop noticing once you see it (although anecdotally, I do think he’s been less prone to soccer of late; I wonder if coach Pop told him to cut it out):

And while I’m not sure this is actually a negative thing, Wemby is a big proponent of the Kornet Kontest. If I’m a Spurs fan, I’d prefer he holster any unnecessary jumping. Watch him swat an invisible fly at the top of this clip:

(He’s not even in between the shooter and the basket! I giggle every time I watch this video. Then again, the shot didn’t go in…)

Those are real knocks, if understandable, given his age. And if the season ended right now, Rudy Gobert would be the deserving Defensive Player of the Year — I’ve waxed rhapsodic about his resurgence several times since January last season. But the trendline of Wembanyama’s defensive performance looks like a lower-case “L,” and that’s not an exaggeration:

Further improvement is not guaranteed, of course. Teams are scheming to keep Wemby out of their plays, and the rookie wall is a real threat. But there’s a solid chance that Wembanyama is the most deserving Defensive Player of the Year candidate by season’s end — and it might not be close.

The question, then, is whether voters will give it to him. If he wins DPOY as a rookie, it will be hard not to give it to him for much of the next decade, barring injuries. Defensive Player of the Year is less prone to voting fatigue and contextual narratives than MVP. Dikembe Mutombo won it four times in seven years, Ben Wallace four times in five seasons, and Dwight Howard three-peated. More recently, Gobert won it three times in four years (and might add a fourth in seven this season). And Wembanyama won’t be worse at defense than he is right now.

It’s impossible to predict what the league will look like in future seasons with any degree of certainty. And I don’t think voters will be willing to give DPOY to a rookie, no matter what the numbers say, particularly one toiling like a 7’4” Sisyphus on a basement-dwelling team. But I’m increasingly convinced that they should.