the mythification of victor wembanyama
wemby has left the chat. the chat being the nba, western medicine, and your expectations. he’s now training kung fu with a shaved head at shaolin. and no, this is not a metaphor.
somewhere in the mountains of henan province, where the fog hangs like an ancient proverb and the wi-fi dies on arrival, the tallest man in basketball sits cross-legged in front of a row of buddhas. shaved head, gray robe, no entourage, no instagram stories - just stillness. the photo hit chinese social media like a prayer gong. the nba reposted it with trembling reverence. the caption? “deepening his spiritual journey”. translation: wemby’s doing monk shit now.
and yes, that’s real. victor wembanyama, the 21-year-old who casually averaged 24.3 points, 11 rebounds, 3.8 blocks, 3.7 assists and 403 three-point attempts before his bloodstream decided to stage a silent protest, is now in the middle of a 10-day closed-door martial arts retreat at the shaolin temple. you know, the place where legends meditate in silence, learn discipline through pain, and sometimes become legends themselves. it’s not a vacation. it’s not a marketing campaign. it’s not even content. it’s the nba’s most precocious alien taking the offseason to go full existential.
most guys spend their june in vegas, miami, or a basement podcast studio saying things like “we just ran outta time”. not wemby. he’s learning kung fu before breakfast.
the default response to anything weird in the nba is to assume it’s a brand activation. kd tweets too much? promo for a documentary. kyrie disappears? probably a shoe drop. lebron reads page one of a malcolm gladwell book? clutch sports has a new docuseries. but this? this is different. there are no hashtags. no sponsorships. no “wemby x shaolin” merch capsule (yet). the spurs posted a video of him on the great wall, but it wasn’t edited to the beat of drake. it was just... victor. marvelling. tall as hell. quiet as ever.
he hasn’t posted a single thing. not one caption. not one quote. not one post-game prayer hands emoji. the only updates have come from chinese media, nba weibo, and tourists who wandered into a temple expecting incense and got greeted by a 7'4" frenchman dressed like a monk. and even those glimpses are rare. according to one local official, “he deliberately stays out of public view”. imagine being too zen for the shaolin temple.
this, then, is the wembanyama offseason. not body sculpting, but soul sculpting. not protein shakes, but tea ceremonies. not pilates, but prolonged silence. he’s doing something the league has no muscle memory for: spiritual load management.
because yes, this started with an injury. a serious one. deep vein thrombosis in his shoulder - the kind of diagnosis that sounds more like a plot twist in a medical drama than something that should happen to a 21-year-old who moves like he’s animated by ai. he was shut down in february, just after becoming an all-star. had surgery. didn’t complain. didn’t post cryptic recovery quotes. just... vanished. and now we know where he went.
while the rest of the league was doing pre-draft workouts and debating if the knicks should fire thibodeau for being too thibodeau, wemby was in beijing watching a volleyball match where his agent’s daughter played. he was at the great wall, bridging empires. and now he’s in a mountain monastery learning to balance his chi while the rest of the west balances tax aprons. in an era obsessed with timelines, his is eternal.
but let’s not pretend this isn’t disorienting. this is not what the american basketball machine was built to process. stars aren’t supposed to retreat - they’re supposed to expand. they’re supposed to sell. to post. to pose. the entire offseason economy is built on the premise that athletes need to be seen to be relevant. workouts in exotic locations. podcasts where they’re “finally speaking their truth”. brand launches with words like legacy and authenticity. wembanyama is doing none of it. and that, ironically, makes him the most compelling star of all.
he’s not just rejecting the template - he’s ignoring it completely. you don’t go to shaolin to rehab a shoulder. you go to shaolin to obliterate the concept of shoulders. this isn’t a detour. it’s a declaration. he’s not here for your algorithm. he’s here to become something else.
and while he’s doing that, let’s talk numbers. because of course this is still basketball. and the truth is, nobody in league history has done what he did this season. not kareem. not hakeem. not dirk, duncan, or david robinson. 403 three-point attempts. 176 blocks. 24.3 points per game. only one other player has ever averaged 24+, 11+, 3.7+ assists and 3.8+ blocks in a season. his name is kareem abdul-jabbar. the year was 1976. and kareem wasn’t pulling up from 28 feet.
what wembanyama is building - or now, rebuilding - isn’t just a body that can survive an nba season. it’s a mind that can endure the expectations of being the most anticipated prospect since lebron. and maybe even something deeper. maybe he’s forging an identity that isn’t just shaped by western media narratives, but by his own intellectual curiosity. who else in the league goes from drawing portraits in new york parks to closed-door kung fu training in zhengzhou?
in a league where personality is usually reduced to soundbites and brand deals, wemby is building an inner world that scares the algorithm. not because it’s offensive. but because it’s silent.
he will be back, of course. in training camp with the spurs. maybe even at eurobasket in august, if his health and spirit align. but when he returns, don’t expect him to be the same. don’t expect him to play the same, either. he was already the league’s most versatile defender. now he’s done seven days of shaolin. there’s a non-zero chance he can now block floaters with his mind.
he will talk less. he will blink slower. he will see the game three rotations ahead and remain perfectly still until it reaches him. then - hand, deflection, run. stillness into violence into stillness again. like the monks taught him.
and maybe that’s what scares people. not just that victor wembanyama went to china to meditate. but that he didn’t do it for the camera. he did it because he could. because he wanted to. because being a unicorn wasn’t weird enough - he had to become a myth.