Pat Peters
1.7K posts
With Victor Wembanyama on the floor, the Spurs generate far more layups for their point guard trio — a trio I spent all summer convinced wasn’t an ideal fit. De'Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle, and Dylan Harper are three downhill guards and none of them is a proven knockdown shooter. On paper the spacing math didn’t work. Mitch Johnson solved it by playing only one or two of them together at once. And Wemby handled the rest. Harper’s at-rim frequency jumps 15.5% with Wemby on the floor. Castle, 14.2%; Fox, 9.7%.
More shots at the rim is one piece. More shots going in at a higher rate is the other. Every rotation player sees a jump, not just the guards. Devin Vassell’s true shooting climbs from 55.2% to 60.8%. Harrison Barnes from 58% to 64.7%. Julian Champagnie from 58.4% to 63.3%. Fox is the exception — his true shooting stays the same.
Some of this increase is thanks to transition offense off stops. Most of it is Wemby’s gravity in the half-court.
Gravity comes in different flavors. The first is simple spacing: his shooting pulls a big out of the paint and the guards drive into an empty lane. The more interesting one is what happens when he rolls. When off-ball defenders decide to stay home on shooters, the big man still needs to prevent a lob to Wemby, which means Fox, Castle and Harper can go one-on-one with a full head of steam and walk into layups.
Of the nearly 400 handler/screener duos to log at least 100 pick-and-rolls this season, Fox/Wemby, Castle/Wemby and Harper/Wemby all rank in the 88th percentile or better in scoring efficiency.
None of this shows up on his line. Wemby finishes those possessions with zero points and zero assists and jogs back down the floor, and the box score insists nothing happened. Something happened.
Kevin O'Connor@KevinOConnor
My 2026 NBA MVP ballot: 1. Victor Wembanyama 2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander 3. Nikola Jokic I spent most of the season assuming I'd vote SGA. Then I looked closer. New column on @YahooSports: sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/th…
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