Saturday, July 8, 2023

One W. One no-decision.

 They packed the Thomas and Mack Center in Vegas last night for a summer-league NBA game, and it was ... a summer-league NBA game. Which is to say, a whole lot of hoopin' was done, some of it worth watching.

Also, you couldn't conclude a thing from it.

The draw, of course, was the No. 1 pick in last month's draft, Victor Wembanyama -- aka Wemby, aka The Big W. He was not particularly impressive, missing 11 of his 13 shots and scoring just nine points in a tick over 27 minutes. He also got tired, he confessed, which might have been expected considering he's 7-5 and a 16-ounce beer outweighs him.

He's a really tall penknife with feet, in other words. Turn him sideways and he vanishes.

But he did have three assists, and five blocks, and eight rebounds, and showed us flashes of why so many think he's a special talent. And the sellout crowd got to see a 7-5 guy put the ball on the floor and take it to the tin, which is not something you see every day.

So score The Big W's debut a no-decision, with Wembanyama admitting what was obvious: He's got a lot of learning to do.

On the other hand ...

Well, on the other hand, by last night he'd already racked a W. So he had that going for him.

The W came out of Vegas, too, and it was the local constabulary who delivered it. Vegas police concluded there was nothing to an incident involving Wemby, Spurs security and former singer Britney Spears, whose celebrity card expired some time ago.

Seems she wanted to meet Wemby just like the rest of America, and so, assuming her celebrity card was still valid, she marched up behind him in a Vegas nightclub and put a hand on his shoulder. Spurs security, doing its job, shoved her hand away (Don't touch, missy, you could hear them saying). In doing so Spears was struck.

Supposedly it was because the security guy backhanded her, which seemed unlikely. The police concluded she'd actually smacked herself in the face when her hand was pushed away.

Ado about next to nothing, in other words, and shame on the social media knee-jerkers who thought the incident showed Wembanyama was already becoming yet another entitled young athlete. First of all, it was the team's security, not Wembanyama's, so Wemby wasn't in charge of them. Hard to fathom, therefore, how it was any reflection on him that Britney smacked herself in the face.

So, yeah. Call it a W.

And a to-be-determined-later.

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