If a defense can hunt Victor Wembanyama into 1-for-13 shooting, is he still the MVP-tier offensive engine The Ringer just crowned its No. 1 overall player, ahead of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic? After one night, the answer is yes. Anyone treating a single opening-night box score as the final word on that isn't being serious.
Start with what actually happened, because it was ugly and there's no spinning it. Wembanyama finished shooting a career-worst 8 percent, 1-for-13, with 12 points, 13 rebounds and six blocks. He missed all four of his three-point tries. His first bucket of the night didn't fall until the buzzer of the third quarter, a reverse slam, after he'd bricked his first 12 attempts. Per Elias, that's tied for the second-most missed field goals to start a season opener in the play-by-play era, going back to 1997-98. It was a historically bad shooting line.
And it happened in a game that mattered more than most season openers: a Western Conference finals rematch against the team San Antonio beat last May, with Oklahoma City returning the favor 116-104. SGA ran the other end of it, 32 points, five rebounds, four assists. The Thunder also threw a 7-foot-3 rookie, Aday Mara, at Wembanyama for real possessions, and Mara got into his head early, swatting an alley-oop and making him think on shots he usually just rises over.
Rating
RatingMost of the blame belongs to Wembanyama. He settled, forced shots, and kept attacking into OKC's length instead of making them pay a different way. That's fine. That's what accountability looks like when you're the best player in the sport. The rest belongs to a Thunder defense that came in with size and a plan, and to the Spurs never building the kind of lead that lets a cold superstar shoot through it. All of it was earned, through sound scheme and genuine size.
Wemby was bad, that's settled. The real question is whether this reveals something permanent, and the loudest voices are reaching past what one game can actually tell you. Their better case is that San Antonio's half-court offense stood around and watched, iso after iso, with no drive-and-kick and no off-ball movement to pry Mara and Holmgren off him. When your best creator is also your spacing, your rim protection and your rebounding, a stagnant scheme leaves him swimming against five guys every trip. That's a coaching problem as much as a Wembanyama problem.
RTGFinishing with 13 boards and six blocks while his jumper betrayed him is what a complete, two-way superstar looks like even on his worst shooting night, especially against the exact team that lost a seven-game series to him last spring. Wembanyama carved OKC up repeatedly last season, in the regular season and in the conference finals. That's the baseline. One frozen Tuesday against a contender's defense doesn't erase it, and anyone who watched him across last year knows it.
This is a legitimate flag about matchup vulnerability: big, switchable, physical frontcourts can make his offense vanish for long stretches, and San Antonio needs an offensive system that stops hanging him out to dry when it does. It leaves his ranking as a top-tier scorer fully intact. Judge him over the next twenty games instead of the first one. Treat 1-for-13 as a verdict on Victor Wembanyama and the only thing you've proven is how little you were paying attention the last two years.
