 What's the word, y'all? We just got the breakout game of Victor Wibbaniama's young career. 38 points, 10 rebounds, and he closed out a game against the Phoenix Suns. There were real stretches in this game, and I don't mean like a one minute stretch, a two minute stretch. I mean like a long stretch of this game where he looked like the best player on the court. On the court, they had Devin Booker and Kevin Durant. And y'all know what I mean? I'm not one to overreact to young players because I just feel like it's so hard to translate whether you're playing in the G-League, whether you're playing international play, college, or overtime elite, everybody goes their own pace. So I don't really have these crazy expectations on any young player. That's why I'm personally not overreacting to the week and a half of school Henderson where he has struggled because everybody runs at their own pace. So when I saw that Victor Wibbaniama was the best prospect since LeBron James, I accepted that because that was widely known as the opinion, but I'm not one to look at him and say, hey, you gotta come into the NBA and be as impactful as LeBron James was back in 2003 because that's what people are saying you should be. And I've been here along the ride. My first real time watching Victor Wibbaniama as far as a full game instead of just highlights or moments or scout reports was October 4th, 2022, when he played against school Henderson in the G-League Ignite where he completely, completely dominated. And then I was in live attendance for his first two summer league games. And of course I followed his journey through the pre-season and now and he has got progressively better every single time. This is not something that can be measured with statistics or measured with anything other than me just watching the game, but it feels as though he is the type of player that can look at his last performances and grow on them really, really fast. After his first summer league game when he was really struggling against Brandon Miller and company he was asked in the post game like, what was going on? He said, I don't know, I was just out there running around or something like that. In the game number two, he looked dramatically better. And his first real regular season performance he played against the Dallas Mavericks where he was in heavy, heavy foul trouble. And a lot of those fouls was like unwarranted fouls as far as he was trying to do more than maybe he should. I'm not saying a refereeing, but just him himself. And we've seen throughout every single game he's got better and better and better. And we're talking about game five of his NBA career where he looked like the best player with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker on the court. I think it says a lot about a player, especially a young player where his peers are talking really well about him. And Devin Booker had great things to say. Kevin Durant has had great things to say. And that has been the case pretty much against every team that they played against where he's got nothing but high praise except for Dylan Brooks. Dylan Brooks is just Dylan the villain talking about he's tall. And then that was it. But everybody else is like, man, this guy is the real deal. Even Paul George, he was skeptical, got to watch him play, slash play against him. And he went into his podcast like, my fault, yo, my fault. This guy's really him. So there are a lot of great things about last night's game. Yesterday, they were up by double digits in the first half where Wimby put up 20 points and they were up by 20 points. And then things change. And like Wimby said in his post game interview, this is the NBA, a 20 point lead is not as safe as it used to be, right? Even this year alone, through the first week and a half we saw the OKC Thunder blow a 22 point lead. I want to say to the Pelicans, we saw the Minnesota Timbers blow a 21 point lead to the Atlanta Hawks. Yeah, the Atlanta Hawks and the Bulls blew a 20 point lead to the Raptors and then the Raptors blew a 20 point lead to the Bulls. The craziest game of the season. So it happens all the time. So they were up by 20 plus points going into half time. Devin Vassil goes out with a groin injury and Devin Booker and Kevin Arant in the second half led their team to be close again late in the fourth quarter. I need you to follow me here. I need you to follow me here. Even if you don't have a league pass, you can go to NBA.com. You can watch every single one of these possessions. I can't show you them, but I can walk you through the domination of Victor Ibn Yama come fourth quarter, right? So at this point, Victor Ibn Yama has 28 points. The game is tied 116 and 116 with four minutes, 21 seconds to go. He splits a pair of free throws. Uda Wada Nabi misses a shot. Keldon gets the board, gives to Wimby. Wimby draws another foul. Kevin Arant this time, he's two for two. Boom, we have a three point lead after three or four free throws of Victor Ibn Yama. Juyu Banks went up with one of the softest layups I've ever seen from a big man. Even on the call, they were talking about how soft of a layup it was. He missed it. Wimby gets the board, eventually ends in him diving to the rim and dunking off a Zach Collins assist in a timeout for the Suns because this man just went on a personal 5-0 run in one minute. They're like, hold on, man. We just fought all the way back from here. We gonna need to stop the bleeding. And then Kevin Arant missed a three point shot. Rebound from Jeremy. Zach Collins gets in on the fun with a floating jump shot is what they call it. And just like that with two minutes ago, now this is far from over, but they've busted this lead open at least a little bit. Book missed another one behind a Jeremy Sohan block, goes down, Victor Ibn Yama, pull up three point jump shot, gets a rebound later and then ices the game with a mid-range jumper. So this man went in with the last 40 seconds, four minutes and 21 seconds with 28 points and he ended with 38 points because he went on a personal run. Well, I guess the Spurs went on a 12-0 run and 10 of those was Wimby. And the game was over just like that. And this is not new. Brett Usher has this tweet. Victor Ibn Yama is 15 of 19 from the field in average and 7.8 points per game on a 84.9% true shooting in the fourth quarter to the first five games of his NBA career. I don't need to tell you how good that is. And that's just the fourth quarter. And the numbers say this, and of course, if you've been watching, you've seen it as well, where in the first game of his career against the Dallas Mavericks, he also went on like a personal 80 run. But eventually, the one problem with the Spurs that I have watching them is first of all, they're one of the youngest teams in basketball. So like this complaint is a complaint due to just their youth. But between Trey Jones and Jeremy Sohan, there are a lot of times where Wimby has an opportunity to get an easy one, but they just miss him. And I think eventually one of those two guys might develop into that type of point guard to find him. Because even now it feels in game five, it was a lot better versus game one or game two. So I think just do with time and reps of them playing together. They'll recognize that this man is seven for four. You can kind of just throw the ball up and he'll make the rest happen. But eventually one of those two guys might develop to get him the easy shots or they might acquire that. But like his 38 points didn't necessarily come on all layups and dunks. Like it wasn't a ton of easy things. There are a lot of times throughout his young NBA career where we watch this man run like a gazelle down the floor just to be missed on an open ducking, which is fine at the moment. But I think it has been getting better. So this 38 points, a lot of this is just like super tough buckets. So imagine when he gets all of the easy ones. Now I don't know what this next, I don't know, a couple of weeks will look like because Devon Vaseil took a lot of pressure off of him just because he is another threat on the team. So if Devon Vaseil's groin injury is one that's gonna hold him out for some time, I wonder what that looks like for Wimmy's game. We'll cross that bridge down the line once we get the actual results of the injury stuff. But the only thing I've talked about today is the offense. 38 points, an elite level player in the fourth quarter. The defense is still the thing that I am the most impressed with. Because shots either fall or they don't, right? Because again, we're talking about difficult shots. The mid-range pull-up that he took over Kevin Arrant that he hit, that is a shot that could miss, right? Because it's basketball at the end of the day. The pull-up three-point jump shot he hit before that could have missed because it's basketball. The one thing that has been consistent through the first five games is this man is already creeping the crop when it comes to the defensive side of the ball. And we're not just talking about pure black shots and steals. Here are Wimby's on-off numbers. Net rating when he's on is a 4.67, which is decent. When he's off the floor, it's a minus 20. And most of that is because this defensive side of the ball. Well, when Wimby is on the floor, they have a 105 defensive rating. That 105 defensive rating will put them at seventh in the association when it comes to defensive rating. And again, we're talking about a player that is five games into his NBA career. That's how impactful of a defender he is. There were times during this, just this game, the Phoenix Suns, where they've opted to just not go to the rim because Wimby was there. Yes, I'm a dude. Any time Kenny talk about elite level defensive beings, you gotta bring in Rudy Gobert, absolutely. One of the reasons Rudy Gobert was so impactful, especially during his prime was because he forced you to take mid-range jump shots because people were afraid of him. I don't care about what the players say, the numbers say that when he was on the court, people did not attempt shots at the rim because he was there. And we're seeing that five games to the career of Wimby. It's not at the Rudy Gobert level, but I'm just pointing out the obvious that if you force a player to take a mid-range jump shot, it is dramatically more difficult than taking a layup and Wimby has that impact so far. One thing I'm excited for later in his career, even later this season, is the minutes where he's a strictly a five. We haven't seen a ton of them so far. He's always been paired alongside a Zach Collins or Charles Bassie, but I'm just intrigued by what it would look like when they have four other wings slash guards around him and let him run the center. So far in the small sample size, it doesn't look great, but it's a small sample size. And I think eventually he's going to get the whistle a little bit more. That's one thing that he's missing. Even yesterday, there were two different possesses I can remember off the top of my head where he went up and both of them he made the shot where it seemed like there was enough contact for it to be called a foul. It just wasn't. So just some very interesting stuff. Now the conversational Twitter has changed to like, hey, is he gonna be the first rookie? It says Blake Griffin to make the also game. Right now he's averaging 20 points and eight rebounds or something like that. But again, that's through five games. Let me know what you think about Victor Wibneyama so far. Are you excited about this guy? I just leave it at that. I was gonna make the rep. I was gonna talk about what Shaq said, but we talked about that on McKinney Beach and podcast. So go check that out.