Facing immense pressure, Spurs' Victor Wembanyama is up for the challenge

SAN ANTONIO(AP) — As Victor Wembanyama took the stage for his first newsconference inside his new home arena, he couldn’t help but noticean accessory that the San Antonio Spurs commissioned for theoccasion.

It was areplica of the Eiffel Tower — made from Legos. Hundreds ofthem.

Wembanyamaloves Legos. He looked down at the 4-foot replica when he saw itand smiled. And then he sat next to Spurs general manager BrianWright and started to talk business.

The scenewas a perfect microcosm of Wembanyama’s world right now. He’s stilla teenager, albeit a very big one, at 19 years old and not averseto saying that he enjoys building things with Legos. And he’s alsothe player, who seems incredibly mature for his age, on a worldstage that the Spurs are betting on to change their fortunes andhelp them return to championship contention.

“I feellike they’ve already started to take great care of me,” Wembanyamasaid.

They haveto. The world is watching.Andthe hype levelis already incredibly high.

The notionof basketball being a global game and the NBA being a global leagueis not new, with roughly one out of every four players in theleague born outside of the United States. But there’s never been aninternational player coming into the NBA with the hubbub thatWembanyama has; he’s already a global brand and global phenomenoneven without playing an NBA game.

Not evenLeBron James had this much global attention when he came into theleague 20 years ago.

The Kidfrom Akron, as he still calls himself, is one of the biggestsuccess stories in the history of sports — grew up with almostnothing, instantly found fame and fortune as a teenager thanks toan enormous Nike contract that he signed when he entered theleague, now is a billionaire, the all-time scoring leader in NBAhistory and still going strong.

LeBron wasa big, big, big deal in the U.S. in 2003.

Wembanyamais a big, big, big deal globally right now. That’s thedifference.

Storieshave been written about him in English, French and Spanish over theweekend. He speaks English just about perfectly, and now that he’sin San Antonio he wants to learn Spanish as well. If he plays forFrance in the Basketball World Cup this summer — something he wantsto do, but time will tell if the Spurs are on board with that plan— he’ll be playing games in Indonesia and the Philippines.

And if heplays on that world stage, he will be gettingasmuch attentionas any player in the tournament. Same goesforwhenhe plays at Summer Leaguenext month. And it’ll be thecase when the NBA season opens; Denver will raise a banner and getchampionship rings on opening night, some free agents that’ll startagreeing to new deals in the next few days will be in new cities,but every storyline to start the season will haveWembanyama’s7-foot-plusshadowlooming somewhere around it as well.

“Because ofall the hype, he’ll have a target on his back,” Spurs coach GreggPopovich said. “So more than Os and Xs to begin with, we’ll be mostinterested in setting a framework in an environment where he’scomfortable, where he can be Victor. He’s not LeBron or Tim(Duncan) or Kobe (Bryant) or anybody else. He’s Victor and that’swho we want him to be.”

Hispresence just adds to the level of international stardom in theleague right now.

Thereigning NBA Finals MVP is Denver’s Nikola Jokic of Serbia, thereigning league MVP and scoring champion is Philadelphia’s JoelEmbiid of Cameroon, and the top three finishers in that MVP racethis season were all international players — Embiid, Jokic andGreece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo of Milwaukee. That trio has combinedfor the last five MVP awards; Dallas’ Luka Doncic of Sloveniashould be in the MVP mix for years to come as well.

There’seven talk of a World vs. the U.S. format to the All-Star Gamebefore long. That might be a heck of a challenge for the Americanside.

“We’rereally seeing the ongoing continued growth of this league,”Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this year. “I know DavidStern, who unfortunately is no longer with us, but it was so muchof his vision to turn this into the global game it’s become today.If he’s looking down on us, I know he’d be incredibly proud ofthose numbers.”

Stern wouldhave loved Wembanyama.

Theteenager — already being mentored by past Spurs great big men likeDuncan and David Robinson, along with French SpursTonyParkerand Boris Diaw — is worldly, mature, engaging,funny and somehow has stayed humble even with all the attention.His family shuns the spotlight. They want no part of the attention.Wembanyama’s parents are almost always around, but nevermeddling.

“To myfamily, it’s got to be weird sometimes,” Wembanyama said. “It’s gotto be strange. There’s a lot of new stuff. But they’re really smartand grounded people. Whenever I need to find stability, I can go tothem.”

He’s goingto need those bits of normalcy. The challenge that awaits him is astall as he is and the world is watching.