Victor Wembanyama Rumors: Spurs Hopeful Future No. 1 Pick Plays in NBA Summer League
The San Antonio Spurs hope that presumptive No. 1 overall draft pick Victor Wembanyama will be able to play for them during summer league this year, per NBA insider Marc Stein.
"The Spurs are hopeful, I'm told, that Victor Wembanyama will indeed be a participant to some degree in summer league play in Las Vegas. Wembanyama's French League season finally ended Thursday when the MVP and his Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans 92 team were swept, 3-0, in the championship series by a Monaco team filled with former NBAers. The Spurs will draft Wembanyama with the No. 1 overall pick next Thursday and are scheduled to play in Sacramento's California Classic summer league July 3-5 before proceeding to Las Vegas. Wembanyama's precise availability for summer league play is TBD."
Wembanyama just led Metropolitans 92 to the LNB Pro A Finals, where they lost in a three-game sweep to Monaco that ended Thursday. The 7'5" star averaged 21.6 points, 10.4 rebounds and 3.0 blocks per game for the year.
He's also expressed his intent to play for France at the FIBA Basketball World Cup, which runs from Aug. 25-Sept. 10.
Adding responsibilities for the California Classic Summer League (July 3-5) and Las Vegas Summer League (July 7-17) would make for a busy stretch of basketball for Wembanyama.
He would get less than a month's break between the end of Metropolitans 92's season and the summer league. He'd then have a little over a month off before the World Cup, and then training camp would be around the corner after he returned, with the regular season starting in mid-October.
That's a lot of basketball and traveling in one calendar year for anyone, let alone a rookie about to enter the NBA. Next offseason should also be busy for Wembanyama if he represents France in the Paris Olympics.
Ultimately, load management of some sort could be on the Spurs' mind as their future star player navigates his way into the NBA. The good news is that Wembanyama has shown an uncanny and remarkable ability to handle great pressure and immense attention at a young age. If any rookie can handle this 2023 workload, it would be him.
For now, fans will wait for Wembanyama to officially become a Spur. The NBA draft takes place on Thursday, June 22.
