Only one argument mattered on Halloween night in San Antonio. Wembanyama showed up to the Spurs' game against the Timberwolves dressed as Geralt of Rivia: a long silver wig, a flowing black cloak, a sword strapped across his back. It's a terrific costume, and still only the third-best one he's done. Slenderman is still the king.
Geralt works because it's authentic. The Witcher is his favorite book series, so nobody handed him this costume in the tunnel. He cares about it. Geralt is defined by two swords, steel for humans and silver for monsters, and a hero built around weapons and scale fits a 7-foot-4 man who already looks like he wandered out of a fantasy novel. On that frame, the cloak and blade read as genuinely imposing.
That's the ceiling for Geralt, though, and anyone tall enough can reach it. Put that wig and cloak on any lanky guy at a convention and you get a passable Witcher. The costume works on Wemby because he's big. It doesn't work only because he's Wemby.
Slenderman did. Back in his rookie year, he turned up to a game against the Suns as the faceless, impossibly elongated horror figure, and the whole joke was his body. Slenderman is a monster whose entire deal is being too tall, too thin to look real. Only one NBA player could put that costume on and genuinely unsettle people, and that's the guy who logged 18 points and eight rebounds that night while looking like a nightmare come to life. His own body made the costume work in a way no one else's could.
No-Face from Spirited Away belongs in the conversation too, another all-black, masked, otherworldly pick that leaned into the same eerie stillness. Then came the year with no game on Halloween, when he told everyone there'd be no costume and meant it. He takes this seriously, and the year-over-year ranking has become its own event. People get more amped for the reveal than for tip-off.
The case for the Witcher is real: it's the most detailed, most lore-accurate thing he's done, and the sword sells the medieval scale in a way a Minnesota crowd probably loved. Grade on craftsmanship and effort, and Geralt might win. Grade on what a costume can only do on that specific body, and it's not close.
The teammates got into it too, which helps the tradition. De'Aaron Fox went as Buzz Lightyear while his family filled out the rest of Toy Story, and another Spur did the Office three-hole-punch bit. Fun and harmless, forgettable by next week.
Slenderman wasn't forgettable. Three years later, nobody has. Geralt is a very good costume for a very tall man. Slenderman was the only costume in the world that needed him.
