Broadway Takes Wemby: Inside Madison Square Garden for Victor Wembanyama’s Quiet New York Debut

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You know when you see a creature in a place where you’ve never seen it before? You know—a snake in the shower, or a deer running rampant through a restaurant. There’s something equally frightening and awe-inspiring about seeing it up close.

In his first few games in the NBA, watching supersized French whiz kid Victor Wembanyama has felt a little like that deer started taking people’s orders and calmly cooking the food.

That is to say, none of the proportions or movements look like anything we’ve seen before, but they also don’t look out of place either once they get going. It’s all fairly natural. One day, the deer is frolicking in a meadow. The next, it’s dropping 38 points on your head.

That made Wemby’s first game against the Knicks, at the Mecca of Basketball, appointment viewing. And even just watching him from way up in the Madison Square Garden media seating, four levels above the court, was spellbinding. Never mind the hype that was slowly building around him before Wednesday night’s game. The simple act of watching him shoot a basketball looked unbelievable in the most literal sense of the word. The Spurs’ team staffer tasked with simulating defense against him in warmups may as well have been invisible. Wembanyama would take a few dribbles, step back, and swish jumper after jumper, placing the ball in the hoop the way a mere mortal would put a book on a slightly high-up shelf. It’s not supposed to look that easy, is the thing, and yet he does exactly that. Probably the last time a player’s warmup routine captivated fans was peak Steph Curry. On Wednesday, as both Knicks and Spurs fans started to file in, many stopped dead in their tracks when they first caught a glimpse of the 7’4” teenager.

The fact that he was playing a nationally televised game in the planet’s premiere venue seemed immaterial to Wembanyama as he went through his pregame ritual. In fact, during shootaround on Wednesday morning, the youngster downplayed the whole shebang, saying that the world’s most famous arena was “not as big as I expected.” (To be fair: when you’re that tall, what could be?) What say Gregg Popovich, Wembanyama’s legendary coach, who also called the hallowed venue “the best place to play in the world” before the game?

“He’s been lauded for quite a while now,” Pop said of his team’s prized player. “He’s kind of used to that, and it doesn’t really affect him in any way. He pretty much ignores it all. His parents did an unbelievable job with him because he’s so level-headed and so mature for a 19-year-old with all the attention that he gets.”

Tlhen the game started.

Wembanyama grabbed the first rebound of the night, his knees nearly getting tangled in the net as he corralled the ball. Now we’re cooking, I thought. The Spurs came down the court and gave Wemby the first shot of the night as well. Clang. No big deal—more than half the shots in the NBA don’t go in. As the Knicks started to build momentum and the Spurs absolutely did not, Wembanyama’s second shot of the game was a true blue air ball. Now the vultures were circling MSG’s upper reaches, delighting in each misstep from the young Frenchman they hoped to feast on. When his third shot—another three-pointer—was also a brick, you could practically hear talk radio jokers greasing up their mics to declare that the precious phenom wasn’t ready for the bright lights. To his credit, he did keep his head throughout the nightmarish start. “I’m starting to get used to the rhythms,” Wembanyama admitted after the game. “It was like another away game, you know? We had a rough start collectively, but we’re the youngest team in the league. We’re learning…The challenge is always to stay lucid.” (Normal athlete speak, to be sure—but also a fairly remarkable thing to hear from a teenager speaking their second language.)

Popovich was asked where his new protege falls on the Tim Duncan to LeBron James scale, the former being masterfully avoidant of celebrity while the latter embraced being the face of the league from the very beginning. “I don’t see him in love with it or running away from it,” Pop answered. The Knicks fans within earshot of me put it another way. They were convinced he’s not even worthy of the question. “Wemby! We got your numbaaa!” they slurred.

By halftime, his Spurs down by 14, Wembanyama had the same number of points (two) as he did air balls. None of his first seven shots went where he wanted them to go, and the crowd didn’t exactly know what to do. On the one hand, these are New Yorkers. They’d root against children who just escaped a burning orphanage if they were playing the Knicks. But on the other hand, this was a marquee event—in many ways the biggest game of the Knicks’ season thus far. With an ESPN audience watching at home and the hottest thing in shorts wearing the opposing team’s jersey, everyone in attendance wanted a show. While they got a comfortable 126-105 win, they also seemed a bit…let down? It was like going to see your favorite actor’s new movie in a packed theater but being more impressed by someone in a supporting role. You head home thinking, I liked that, but not for the reasons I thought I would.

The Knicks’ lead hovered between 20 and 30 points for most of the second half, depriving the fans of an outlet for their full rowdiness. When Wembanyama would go to the bench—obscuring the view of roughly half the lower bowl—the air came out of the balloon a bit. If it’s going to be uncompetitive, can we at least see the big guy? Apart from one trip to the free throw line at the end of the third quarter—which allowed the fans to bombard him with o-ver-rated chants—the Garden was eerily quiet. Wembanyama finished with 14 points, making just four of his 14 attempts. He and the Spurs won’t be back at MSG until next year, either, barring the most far-fetched NBA Finals matchup of all time. In almost every way imaginable, Wemby Wednesday was extremely anticlimactic.

But at the same time, the singular experience of watching someone as preposterously built as Wembanyama run around is not something you just forget about. This is a once-in-a-lifetime talent in a once-in-a-lifetime body, after all, playing in his eighth-ever NBA game. And we must remember, he’s younger than The Black Album.

“At this stage of his career, he’s learning a lot,” Popovich reminded the gaggle of media, both American and French. “To put the whole program on him now is a bit premature. He’s got a lot to work on. But eventually, I would think he would be a rather large part of the program.” At the very least, Wembanyama was able to embrace the moment in his postgame press conference, conceding that, win or lose, Madison Square Garden is still Madison Square Garden. “No matter how many times I play here, it will always be special.”

Hopefully, on future visits, he’ll make the Garden feel as big as he expected.

Originally Appeared on GQ