For the USA, Saturday’s gold medal game is about legacies. For American fans, it’s about memories—getting to see LeBron James and Kevin Durant with “USA” across their chest one last time. It’s about seeing Stephen Curry round out his Hall of Fame resume with a gold medal. It’s about savoring one final run with arguably the greatest collections of basketball talent ever assembled on one court at one time.
For France, it’s about Victor Wembanyama and the future.
That’s not how Wembanyama and France see it. They are dreaming of the upset, of revenge for the Tokyo Olympics gold medal match, of gold.
“Of course, it’s part of a dream come true,” Wembanyama told reporters after helping France beat Germany to advance to the gold medal game. “We can be part of a goal that we set for ourselves months back. We can write history, even more. A once-in-a-lifetime dream.”
It’s once-in-a-lifetime because it’s in Paris on home soil, but Wembanyama and France’s Olympic dream is going to live on in Los Angeles in four years and Brisbane in eight and numerous other international tournaments beyond those.
As was his rookie season seemed in the NBA, these Olympics have felt like the start of the Wembanyama era.
That’s not to say Wembanyama is carrying his team; rather, it’s the play of Evan Fournier, former Celtic Guerschon Yabusele, and Panathinaikos center Mathias Lessort that has been key for Les Bleus in the medal rounds. Wembanyama is putting up numbers, averaging 13.8 points and 10.2 rebounds a game, but is shooting just 37.5% overall and has not been efficient. His impact has been much greater on the defensive end.
Again, that feels like last NBA season. It took a while for Wembanyama to adapt to the NBA game at the start of his rookie campaign, he didn’t look like the Rookie of the Year the first couple of months. Then he figured it out and adapted (plus Gregg Popovich adjusted the lineups around him), and Wembanyama started to look like a force of nature.
The same thing has happened during the Paris Olympics.
“Victor is only discovering FIBA basketball at a very high level,” French coach Vincent Collet said. “He is adapting.”
After stumbling through the group stage, France started to thrive in the medal round when it sent Rudy Gobert to the bench and leaned into Wembanyama as the lone center in the paint. Again, it’s not that his play alone has carried the team, but he’s been good enough — particularly on the defensive end — to put a better matchup of players on the court around him.
So it was Wembanyama, bleeding from a scratch on his neck, celebrating France’s victory over Germany and heading to the gold medal game.
“In our national anthem, we talk about blood,” Wembanyama told reporters postgame. “We’re willing to spill blood on the court. So, it’s no big deal. If it allows us to win gold, I’m offering. Take all of it.”
Wembanyama is too young to remember all the USA vs. France basketball history, he was just 17 when the Kevin Durant-led Americans beat France in the gold medal game of the Tokyo Olympics. What Wembanyama does understand is national pride.
“This jersey brings to us a different energy that we can’t find nowhere else,” he said. “It’s something that we all feel as patriots. We love our jersey. We love our country.”
And it loves him.
By the time of the Los Angeles Olympics four years from now, a lot more people will love him — Wembanyama very well could be the best player in the world by that point. Behind him, France could be dreaming of gold on American soil.
That’s
the future, when the world is Wembanyama’s.
For now, Wembanyama is dreaming of gold in Paris, the city where he grew up. That would be an amazing start to his legacy and legend.
NBC Sports
