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Michael C. Wright, ESPN writer
IT WAS HIM final minute of the first quarter of Chris Paul’s preseason debut against the Orlando Magic, when he threw a lob to his new teammate, Victor Wembanyama, who scored on an alley-oop dunk over Moritz Wagner.
Naturally, the crowd of 16,952 at the Frost Bank Center was lost, expecting him to be the strongest of the precursors.
“Those who know, know that with the talent he has and the amount of attention he attracts, there will be times when he will actually be a decoy,” Paul said.
Paul would know. Name your big one. Paul has been improving them for almost two decades. The point guard entered this season having assisted on 715 alley-oop dunks throughout his career, the most among active players. Meanwhile, Wembanyama 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 consecutive seasons (2012-13 to 2016-17) playing alongside Paul. Clint Capela won the NBA field goal percentage title in 2017-18 as Paul’s teammate on the Houston Rockets, before averaging a career-high in scoring the following season.
“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 stroke” suffered on Nov. 2. “It’s difficult as a coach.” because you’re trying to talk to everyone at the same time and the game continues. So having someone like Chris, who probably has a better solution than me, can be on the court with the ball, help or. “affecting that in real time is worth its weight in gold.”
Paul has 20 years of experience improving bigs, but he’s never played with one like Wembanyama, the 7-foot-3 phenom who Paul’s friend LeBron James once described as “an alien.” Paul adds the obvious lob threat to Wembanyama’s game, but the adjustment hasn’t been as seamless as many around the league hoped over the summer, with Wembanyama’s ability to score on the perimeter (and the way opponents defend him ) adding a complexity to the partnership that the duo is still smoothing out.
“Do the traditional greats change from one to five?” Paul said. “You’ve never played with a point guard like me, you know what I mean? So we’re constantly doing different things. I’ve never played with a center that I’ve set screens for. It’s different.”
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CP3 reaches 12,000 assists with a balloon at Wemby
Chris Paul finds Victor Wembanyama at the rim for the 12,000th assist of his career.
PAUL FLOATED A lob on a pick-and-roll when Wembanyama cut to the basket in the first quarter of a Nov. 15 game against the Los Angeles Lakers.
Pop.
A two-handed jam with Austin Reaves hopelessly behind.
The assist was Paul’s third in the game and 12,000th in his 20-year career, making him just the third player to reach that milestone, behind John Stockton and Jason Kidd. The historic assist came on exactly the type of play most expected to see frequently when Paul and Wembanyama joined forces 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 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’ll just happen because he is who he is. There will be times where we’ll have open shots, and a lot of times we shoot it and he can finish , but we will always try to solve it.”
Paul believes that the diversity in Wembanyama’s game plays a role in slowing down the process of optimizing the chemistry between them.
“Some nights, it’ll be the centers that protect him,” Paul said. “Some nights, they’ll be small forwards. In this league, you just have to be able to adapt. That’s what he’s discovering and learning.”
There have also been other barriers blocking the process. The 20-year-old took a break after a whirlwind summer, and the club kept him out of three of San Antonio’s five exhibition outings as Paul missed two preseason matchups.
Wembanyama, who has missed the team’s last two games with a right knee contusion and has been ruled out for Thursday’s game against the Utah Jazz, spent the first few games of the regular season regaining his form while learning the ropes. intricacies of the game. with an elite point guard like Paul.
“We share a lot of similarities in our vision of basketball,” Wembanyama said. “The most important thing is his knowledge of the pick-and-roll. I’m just trying to apply what he sees and experiment, also telling him what I like. He tells me what he likes and what we don’t like. I think which is a very healthy relationship because we see basketball more or less the same way.
Combine a future Hall of Fame point guard with a 7-foot generational talent and watch the alley-oop dunks rain down in abundance. The idea seemed like a no-brainer when news spread that Paul had signed a one-year deal with San Antonio.
“On paper, it looks like it should work,” Johnson admitted.
Just 13 games into the NBA season, Paul and Wembanyama admit they are still involved in the learning stage of a partnership that could grow without limits as 2024-25 progresses. But Paul has already assisted on 98 of Wembanyama’s 295 points in 2024, the most points assisted by a passer per scorer this season, according to ESPN Research.
“The most important thing is that he is willing to tell us things,” Wembanyama said. “Every practice, he gives us feedback on what he used to do, how defenses usually played, how we can get more space. He’s approaching this in a very selfless way.”
WHEN WEMBANYAMA SCORE In the first 50-point game of his career during a 139-130 win on November 13 against the Washington Wizards, 14 of those points came from assists from Paul.
But none of them resulted in a single dunk from the French phenomenon. He scored 12 of his points assisted by Paul on four of his career-high eight 3-pointers in the contest.
“We want him to make those shots,” forward Julian Champagnie said. “[He’s] Obviously a special, special player. It won’t always be in the paint for him. Teams are going to play against him differently. Tonight, [it] It was number 3. He is not going to publish [Jonas] Valanciunas 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’s really no closure that affects it.”
It’s clear that opponents believe in defending Wembanyama physically in or near the paint, a strategy reflected in his shooting profile during San Antonio’s first 13 games. Opponents routinely hit and harass Wembanyama near the basket, and Johnson attributes that to the way big men are routinely officiated in the NBA.
So Wembanyama has taken his skill set this season to where it’s most effective: the perimeter. Considering his athleticism, imposing height and length, such an approach would seem counterintuitive. However, 62.5% of Wembanyama’s attempts during 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 away. the basket
So much for the avalanche of dunks… for now.
“A lob is a dunk, an easy basket,” Wembanyama said. “And this is one of the first things that teams are about to defend. So, it’s not as easy as it seems to throw lobs. But if there’s a player in this league who can throw them, it’s probably [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 connections between the duo, who can often be seen in the postgame locker room chatting about what they saw minutes earlier on the court.
Paul has dished out 31 assists for Wembanyama this season, 15 of them on three-pointers, eight on dunks and four on alley-oops. Paul’s connection to Wembanyama ranks as the only combination in the NBA in which a player has assisted on at least seven three-pointers and seven dunks against a single player.
And Paul’s impact does not end with the young Frenchman. Paul has been a veteran presence with Popovich away from the team. And with Wembanyama on the bench Tuesday night, Paul led the Spurs to a victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the best teams in the NBA. At 7-8, the Spurs still have a lot of work to do to make the playoffs, but they are well ahead of last year’s pace, when they recorded their seventh win on Jan. 12.
“I wish they could see the work that goes on day in and day out,” Paul said. “You know how talented he is. But his willingness and his desire to improve, his willingness to want to work on things… the more games we play, I think we’ll become more familiar with each other.”
