French basketball player Victor Wembanyama will be playing in the French league finals this weekend, and the San Antonio Spurs will most likely choose him as the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft on June 22. NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated that the league does not have a preference for the site of Wembanyama’s first game with the Spurs. Although the Las Vegas NBA summer league is the biggest event and attracts all 30 teams, Sacramento hosts one of the smaller summer leagues that come before the Vegas event by a few days. The Spurs are one of six teams that will be attending the Sacramento event, and Silver stated that he supports the Sacramento summer league.
The Kings have a lot of attention this summer because not only are the Spurs headed there, but also Charlotte, which holds the No. 2 pick. The Spurs and Hornets will play each other in Sacramento, potentially creating a No. 1 versus No. 2 matchup a few days before Vegas even starts. If Wembanyama plays in Sacramento, he would be the first No. 1 pick not to debut in Las Vegas since Markelle Fultz for Philadelphia in 2017.
Recent No. 1 picks have opened their seasons in Las Vegas, with Paolo Banchero’s debut in Vegas for Orlando last summer having John Wall and DeMar DeRozan sitting courtside, as well as Jerry West. Zion Williamson played only nine minutes in his debut in 2019 in a game that was stopped by an earthquake, and his debut got LeBron James and Anthony Davis to grab courtside seats.
The Spurs have not stated whether Wembanyama will play in the Sacramento event, which starts on July 3, and probably will not address the topic until they draft him in a little over two weeks. Wembanyama is expected to be with the Spurs in Las Vegas as well. The league has already announced him as one of the participants for its inaugural NBA Con, which runs July 7-9 and will celebrate many aspects of basketball culture.
Silver said that what made the summer leagues valuable were the media rights more than the individuals who bought tickets there, as it was a very affordable experience. The NBA commissioner wants Wembanyama to get playing court experience, and he thinks that the team, assuming it is San Antonio, should make decisions completely independent of any commercial implications from where he debuts.
Wembanyama’s Boulogne-Levallois team beat his former team, ASVEL, 3-1 in a French league semifinal series that ended last Sunday. The top seed in the league, Monaco, awaits Wembanyama’s team in the best-of-five final that starts on Saturday and could go until June 20, two days before the draft.
Wembanyama stated in October that he is 7-foot-3, and some still say he is 7-foot-4 or 7-foot-5, and given that he is only 19, it is certainly possible that he had a bit of growing left in recent months. Either way, he is a generational talent who will come into the NBA with enormous hype, the likes of which probably have not been seen since James went No. 1 to Cleveland in 2003.
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