Victor Wembanyama’s NBA debut: a night of dizzying hype and limitless promise

Twenty years after watching LeBron James make his NBA debut from press row, our correspondent returns to watch the most hyped teenage prospect in a generation

In October 2003, I flew to Sacramento, California, to watch LeBron James play his first pro basketball game. Even at 18 his physical presence was incredibly impressive. I wrote at the time (for this paper) that most tall men look etiolated, like the normal amount of human material has been stretched too thin. LeBron by contrast looked like a statue of a normal person - not just taller, but substantially more solid. The scouting report suggested that his jump shot was still shaky, and I noticed him missing short in the pre-game warm-ups. There seemed to be a hitch in his stroke, a kind of hesitation; he leaned back a little on the release. Then the game started and this teenage kid playing with grown men swished his first three mid-range jumpers without any hesitation at all.

Twenty years later I flew to San Antonio, Texas, to watch the most hyped teenage prospect since ... LeBron James, even while LeBron himself remains one of the handful of best players in the NBA. (It helps, as Michael Jordan once joked, to start while [you're] young".) Victor Wembanyama is the etiolated kind of tall man. Even the way he runs reminds you of the kind of long-limbed lightfootedness that might not break the surface tension of a body of water. Tall basketball players sometimes fudge their heights - they pretend they're shorter than they are. I've heard him listed everywhere between 7ft 3in and 7ft 5in. He's 19 years old. He may still be growing.