MIAMI, FL — A debate about NBA awards is brewing in the visiting locker room as the media waits for Victor Wembanyama to speak following the Spurs victory over the Heat.
There are no cameras recording or phones out in room. There weren’t many media members present.
Keldon Johnson was campaigning for himself as the Sixth Man of the Year Winner. Several Spurs supported him as they got dressed and The Athletic’s Jared Weiss relayed to Johnson that he is the favorite for the award before Wemby comes out of the bathroom, plops his feet into a bucket of ice, and the conversation shifts toward the MVP award.
It’s clear that Wembanyama feels he should be MVP.
It’s clear that his teammates see how special he is and feel the same. It’s rare to see a team in the Heat’s visiting locker room genuinely support their star and the star believing in himself, naive to circumstance beyond his control.
It’s clear that the players don’t quite understand how the gambling odds and prediction markets work or that they peg OKC’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the monumental favorite for the MVP award.
Weiss relays to the Spurs that SGA is the favorite.
“But we beat the Thunder?!”
Multiple Spurs are yelling out and arguments about how San Antonio isn’t getting enough attention compared to Oklahoma City materialized. Johnson, who previously earned a gold medal with Team USA in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, was the loudest Spur advocating for French big man’s candidacy.
Weiss attempted to blanket those claims of the Spurs not getting enough attention, stating that his sole job is now to cover the Spurs after being transferred from the Celtics beat. Shortly after, Wemby’s campaign started to take clearer shape.
“Defense is 50 percent of the game,” the 22-year-old star repeated to Weiss, myself and a few Spurs and Heat staffers remaining in the room. Wemby continues to petition. There’s a room full of media waiting for him to speak at the podium down the hall of the Kaseya Center but the Spurs PR team allows the conversation to continue. They recognize this moment; this isn’t a normal locker room session that had unfolded.
“I don’t think the voters view it as half of the game,” Wemby says calmly.
Weiss mentions that it’s generally viewed as 70 percent offense and 30 percent defense (while Zach Lowe was not mentioned in the conversation, it’s an ode to a philosophy popularized by Lowe during his prime as a ESPN columnist).
As Johnson and the rest of Wemby’s teammates board to the team bus, the conversation slowly shifts away from a player-driven Wemby-is-the-best-player-in-the-NBA echo chamber toward a philosophy debate found on a college campus.
“What metrics do you look at to see defensive impact?” Wemby asks.
Weiss said there are some stats available and Wemby continued stating that the media needed something that showcases defense better. As I contemplated explaining to Wemby what win shares were, I opted against forcing a math lesson on a 22-year-old against his will and took a different approach.
“No,” I interjected. “It’s because of missing those early season games put you statistically behind others. In impact metrics like win shares but also regular stats.”
Something interesting occurred: I had full Wemby’s attention.
Maybe it was a result of him wanting to hear a new voice after about 10 minutes of trying to change Weiss’ mind. Maybe it had to do with the ongoing internal battles between players and teams about actually playing in games (with Giannis Antetokounmpo being the latest star to battle a team about not wanting to sit). It could have been because he thought he was talking to a decision-maker for the award or that my silence among talkers for a living to this point made my words appear more valuable.
“Do you think the first quarter of the season matters as much as now?” Wemby asked.
“You can’t win (the MVP) in the first quarter of the season but you can lose it,” I started to explain. “Playing then gives you a statistical lead and along with early narratives, it’s hard to surpass favorites if you don’t play then.”
A Spurs staffer chimed in, explaining that the Thunder had way more national TV games and media attention earlier in the season.
It felt like a light came on in Wemby’s head. It seemed like the 7-foot-5 bushy-eyed 22-year-old was genuinely interested in parsing information that might aid him in achieving his goal of winning the MVP award.
Which statistical metrics matter? What role do narratives play? The truth is complicated. Playing more games would make him appear more favorable in the metrics he seeks and in his campaign for MVP but the answer has multiple variables.
The Games Within The Game
Five nights prior to the Wemby conversation, the Lakers were in that visiting locker room after LeBron James broke the NBA record for All-Time games played.
The contrast between James and Wemby is conspicuous. The past vs. the future. One crystalizing how history will remember him while the other begins his journey for greatness. One running circles around the media; the other debating them.
The 41-year-old answered the media’s questions seated at his temporary locker, playing a careful PR game and giving thoughtful yet thought-out answers. He’s looking to break whatever records are left to break while also shifting narrative about how his story is told.
Most notable were James’ comments about how he’s “always one to be available.” Notwithstanding that he appeared to take multiple coordinated breaks throughout his NBA career.
Allow me to editorialize here: I have a lot of respect for James but I laughed out loud in the media scrum when he made that comment on Thursday night given the campaign his camp has been on since he took a break from the Cavaliers season in 2015 to attend an Ohio State Bowl game (to be fair, I might have done the same thing if I were him). James finished third in the MVP voting results in 2015, playing 11 fewer games than Stephen Curry (winner) and 12 fewer than James Harden (runner up).
James has long played a different game than most NBA stars. On the court, he figured out how to pace himself and use his talents at the most crucial junctures. Off the court, he’s figured out how to optimize for longevity and he’s long been focused on crafting narrative and cleverly campaigning as part of the game he’s trying to play.
James won four MVPs in his first 11 seasons and missed a total of just 61 regular season games before that 2014-15 campaign, which was his first year after leaving the Miami Heat. He’s up to 262 missed regular seasons games and counting with no MVPs since.
James’ always being available argument is going to look great in the context of current day NBA stars—”only” missing 14% of game or one out of every seven contests —but in history, it’s a different comparison. Michael Jordan, for example, missed 95 regular season games in his career or 8.1% of his games (excluding when he was retired).
James can’t make the math change but he’s taking every opportunity to shift narratives to his goals. Wemby doesn’t need to be as media-savvy or as PR-driven as James to win a future MVP; he can still change the results on the court. Post-game in Miami might have been the launch of Wemby playing the games within the game.
An MVP campaign is just that — a campaign. You don’t get the best results of a campaign, whether political, sports award-related or social media monetization campaign without planning from beginning to end.
For the NBA MVP award, the early season narratives matter as do the statistical leverage that a top player can gain by excelling early in the season.
Some NBA teams enter the season sharp; other have ho-hum offseasons and training camps and work their way into peak shape during the NBA-NFL overlap on the calendar.
The truth is that every game in the NBA is not equal and the majority of contests during the first few months of the season shouldn’t be viewed the same as the games once everyone is up to speed.
Yet, all the stats get lumped together at the end, parroted by most award voters, majority of whom have no significant data analysis training.
The statistical advantages you can gain from beating up on unconditioned, uncoordinated and unprepared teams early in the year can set up a player up for an All-Star selection, an All-NBA selection, or even an MVP campaign. Dominating subpar competition early in the season can increase a player’s raw stats (points, rebounds, assists, etc per game).
Not playing early in the season also impacts more “advanced stats” like win shares (since the metric is a cumulative stat that showcases impact over a course of a season). That’s the metric Wemby sought. That’s where he remains behind.
- Victor’s 8.2 win shares ranks 11th in the league. He’s the current leader in defense (4.4) despite the missed time but offensively, he’s 38th overall (3.8) behind Deni Avdija, Immanuel Quickley, and Rudy Gobert among others.
Wemby missed a stretch of 12 games early in the 2025/26 season and for about a month afterwards, the Spurs had him on a minutes-limit.
- Wemby ranks 4th overall in win shares per 48 minutes (version of the stat that showcases efficiency or attempts to take out additional value for simply playing games).
- Wemby still remains 1st in defensive WS/48 but rises to 20th in offensive WS/48.
What could he have achieved had he not missed those games and not been on a minutes restriction?
Minutes before Wemby’s official post-game press conference in Miami, AP sports writer Tim Reynolds joins the locker room and explains that with the Rockets’ loss, the Spurs had just won the Southwest Division. Wemby didn’t hear the announcement; his attention remained on what the games missed earlier in the season had to do with winning the MVP.
Reynolds shifts the conversation away from how missing the games can hurt Wemby statistically, explaining that he was an actual MVP award voter and he values what he sees with his eyes.
Wemby goes into the shower stalls briefly before coming back out to head over to the official post game presser. Reynolds, who covered LBJ in Miami during two of his MVP seasons (and wrote a book titled “The Miami Heat” which is worth a read), tells Wemby that his time will come and what he really has to worry about is voter fatigue once he wins his first one.
The subtle vote of confidence for the future is not the vote that Wemby wants. He’s not finished with the conversation about this year’s MVP race.
“Who’s better than me at impacting the game on offense?”
There’s a long pause.
“Jokic,” I said.
“That’s fair. who’s second?” Wemby says as he’s ushered down the hallway. Someone says Luka Doncic. “But you might be third,” Wemby is told.
“If I’m first at defense and third on offense, how am I not MVP?” Wemby asks before again asking what metrics do the voters value in their MVP decisions.
As we walk down the hallway and through the official press conference room door, the big man’s ear was occupied by Reynolds and Weiss. Reynolds regurgitated his eye test emphasis and Weiss points out that Wemby wasn’t playing this great on offense early in the season.
Weiss described the scene on the way to the press conference as “First Take on the move” in his piece (published on The Athletic and The New York Times). It was surely a debate and a real conversation that you don’t see often between players and media. But, unlike ESPN’s First Take, Wemby wasn’t engaging simply to be right or to be entertaining.
Wembanyama believed in his side and like an intellectual on a college campus, he was genuinely curious to how he could appeal to a different viewpoint and what he needed to do specifically to achieve his goals of winning MVP.
The Press Conference
“Have you thought about MVP at all?”
Reynold’s first on camera question to Wemby at the podium gets a laugh. His follow up question about winning the Southwest Division brings Wembanyama back to standard player PR talk as he attempts to praise all the teams in the division and forgets that the Pelicans are part of it.
Weiss has the next question and it led to the clips that went viral about Wemby naming his three arguments for why he’s the MVP.
“My first one would be that defense is 50 percent of the game and that is undervalued, so far, in the MVP race,” Wembanyama said. “I believe I’m the most impactful player defensively in the league. Second argument would be that we almost swept OKC in the season and we dominated them three times with their real team and four times with the, you know, more rotation players. My third argument would be that offense impact is not just points.”
Four reporters asked questions before I talk to Wemby again.
I touch on him wanting to see defense more valued in MVP voting: “How do you see that happening? Or do you think when you win the MVP it will be because of your offense?”
Wembanyama starts by saying he believes that “most or every MVP in past years has been rightfully picked” before giving his thoughts:
“It doesn’t happen often even though it should. Defense is 50 percent of the game. Maybe there should be an offensive player of the year award. I don’t know. I think it’s just going to happen with time…Maybe more players like Giannis (when he won Defensive Player of the Year and MVP in the same year) in their best years, defense would be more recognized.”
In the time between the end of the press conference and the publishing of this article, we’ve seen a variety of takes from TV analysts, sports writers who weren’t in either the locker room or press conference and players who’ve had their qualms with the award voting in the past with Draymond Green expressing his displeasure on the media’s double standard with regard to defense.
There’s no perfect answer to bringing a better evaluation process in MVP voting. Maybe the conversation in the locker room at Kaseya Center will be a catalyst for a change. More likely, Wemby will still have to satisfy the criteria that the different NBA voting parties have historically been swayed on: the stats, the narratives, the ones who value the eye test over everything. Wemby has favor in the latter.
The conversation in Miami appeared to be an organic aha-moment for Wemby on the importance of narrative and playing through a whole NBA campaign. Will he be the latest human to learn that he has to play the games within game of the system that is the NBA? Or will his vocalness actually be enough to make change in how we evaluate things? If you believe the latter, maybe Wemby really is an “Alien” (the nickname LeBron James supposedly crowned him with several years ago).
All stats are as of the end of the Miami game, per basketball reference.
FortyEightMinutes.com is for sale. Contact us at FortyEightMinutesNBA@gmail.com if interested!
