How Victor Wembanyama's Year 2 Progress Compares to Great NBA Big Men

There isn’t a definitive answer to that question. Still, we used NBA Win Shares/48 for our definition because it measures impact per 48 minutes. This weeded out players who had lengthy but less remarkable careers. 

It’s also a statistic that Basketball-Reference goes back to 1951-52, so it captured greats from the vast majority of NBA history.

Although it’s not a perfect measure, the top 15 big men of all time, according to it, is a relatively solid list:

• Nikola Jokic
• David Robertson
• Wilt Chamberlain
• Neil Johnston
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• Rudy Gobert
• Charles Barkley
• Bob Pettit 
• Tim Duncan
• Anthony Davis
• Shaquille O’Neal
• Larry Bird
• Karl Malone
• Giannis Antetokounmpo
• Yao Ming

While there’s room for vast arguments with that list, how Wembanyama compares to those greats can tell us a great deal about how his career is progressing.

It’s not usual for a big man to take a significant step in the first season. 

On average, the group above improved their points per game, assists per game, and effective field goal percentage by notable margins. 

Wembanyama’s improvement in points per game (3.2)* is noteworthy, but it comes in below the group of elite big men. His assists have also dropped slightly this season (-0.1/game). 

The area where he’s made greater strides than others is scoring efficiency — as measured by effective field goal percentage, where he’s up +0.044.

The biggest reason for this is his three-point shooting, which has seen a massive jump in volume and effectiveness.

This is a place where Wembanyama can distinguish himself in the future, as through much of NBA history, power forwards and centers seldom made a difference with their three-point shooting. 

If the 21-year-old’s effectiveness from beyond the arc continues to blossom, it could help make him an un-guardable offensive force.

Considering the list of great big men we’re measuring Wembanyama against was created by looking at a total value metric, it makes sense to track his growth using that kind of statistic.

In this case, we’re using Win Shares/48, Player Efficiency Rating (PER), and Box Plus/Minus (BPM). There’s no perfect way to determine a player’s total value, but these three statistics do an admirable job, and our list of legendary big men saw a notable gain in each on average from Year 1 to Year 2.

Wembanyama doesn’t match up to this average by any of the three metrics, as his WS/48 is up 0.050, his PER has increased by 1.6, and his BPM is 2.0 above his 2023-24 season.

These gains are far from meaningless, though. 

For instance, according to Basketball-Reference’s definition of Box Plus/Minus, Wembanyama’s BPM rating of 7.2 places him in between ‘MVP season (8.0) and All-Star season (6.0)’ when last year’s 5.2 fit between ‘All-Star season’ and ‘All-Star consideration (4.0)’. 

That’s a significant difference — it’s just that the NBA’s legendary big men tended to improve even more.

These numbers might lead us to believe that Wembanyama is not on pace to have the career many hope to see from him. 

However, there are a couple of notable caveats. The first is that while total value metrics include defense, we did not specifically examine defense, even though Wembanyama is truly special in that domain.

Part of that was because NBA defense is notoriously difficult to quantify. Some of the most helpful statistics, like blocks and steals, are infrequent plays even for the best players — and there are tons of variables in numbers on how teams perform defensively with or without certain players. It’s far easier to measure how well a player performs delivering on their own offensive intentions than stifling their opponents. 

It also seemed unfair to rate his improvement on a rookie season where he led the NBA in blocks per game (3.58) and came second in Defensive Player of the Year voting when there’s not much better he could possibly do. 

He has been even better, though, raising his blocks to 4.03 per game — the highest total since Dikembe Mutombo’s 4.49 in 1995-96 — and becoming the overwhelming favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year.

When RG reporter DJ Siddiqi interviewed Domantas Sabonis for Sportscasting.com, the Sacramento Kings big man described the difficulty of being defended by Wembanyama right now:

 You have to feel him around the court all of the time. His presence is there on defense. You have to look around, he’s so long and always looking to disrupt any kind of shot or pass. You’re always aware of that. Their whole offense, they’re looking to get a quick shot, so you can’t really relax. 

When measuring Wembanyama’s improvements, whether defense or offense, one of the biggest reasons he doesn’t quite match up to the NBA’s top big men throughout history is that he established such a stellar baseline as a rookie compared to that group of 15.

Wembanyama may not be making a massive leap in the second year of his NBA career, but even with more incremental improvements, he’s already one of the best players in the league.

His combination of size and skill is truly extraordinary. While the notion that he could become the greatest basketball player of all time is probably premature, his early-career work fits in among the NBA’s all-time greats.