Victor Wembanyama has been in his native France for much of the summer, and many of his teammates joined him this week.
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A year removed from a most “violent” offseason, Victor Wembanyama is bringing the gang back together. Less than two months after the San Antonio Spurs fell in the NBA Finals, a large portion of the team joined the big man in Paris this week for a mid-summer mini-camp.
The team posted a photo to social media of Wembanyama with seven of his teammates from his gym in nearby suburb Nanterre, France: Carter Bryant, De’Aaron Fox, Dylan Harper, Stephon Castle, Harrison Barnes, Jordan McLaughlin and free-agent signing Tobias Harris. The significant contingent, which comprises the majority of the Spurs’ projected playing rotation, is expected to spend around a week working out together at the home of Wembanyama’s former club Nanterre 92, of which he now owns a piece. Center Kelly Olynyk, who was with the Spurs last season but is currently a free agent, is also attending the workout.
It’s a unique opportunity to get the entire team aligned at the halfway point of the offseason, well before the usual pre-training camp runs most teams do in mid-September.
“He sets a great example in his approach, in the way he takes care of his body, in the way he connects with his family and with his teammates,” Spurs CEO R.C. Buford said of Wembanyama in an interview with French media outlet TrashTalk. “There are not many times where 10 guys from a team are flying halfway around the world to go work out together. And that’s done because of the respect and admiration and joy that Victor brings.”
It’s notable that Fox, who was hampered by an ankle injury during the finals run, is participating. He missed time last offseason after coming off wrist surgery in March, then suffered a hamstring strain in the lead-up to training camp. At the same time, Wembanyama was ramping up his conditioning after undergoing treatment to remove a blood clot from his shoulder, which shut his 2024-25 season down in February. A healthy offseason for the Spurs’ starters will be vital to starting strong come October.
Wembanyama’s training program last summer was rooted in a mission to push himself to the next level, and not just get back to where he was before the blood clot. He famously trained with Shaolin monks in China, then returned to the U.S. and put himself through a punishing conditioning program.
“I chose to do something much more violent,” Wembanyama said before last season. “Maybe that takes away from some time I can spend on shooting the basketball, but it doesn’t matter. I wanted to get my body back.”
That work paid off, as he showed his body could stand up to the demands of a championship run. Though he faded down the stretch at times and did not lead San Antonio to a finals victory, it was a drastic step forward from where he was a year earlier. It was proof that he has the tools to do it all, but just requires more development.
It also provided a sense of closure to move on from the health concerns of the past. But Wembanyama must always be mindful of his past blood clot scare, as former NBA All-Star Chris Bosh emphasized this week.
“Take your medicine,” Bosh, whose career was cut short by multiple blood clot episodes and who recently had a pulmonary embolism, told HoopsHype. “Make sure that he’s staying on top of his regimen to make sure that doesn’t happen again because it only takes one more time. It happened one more time for me, it happened twice, and I couldn’t play anymore. So I guess with him, just making sure he does everything necessary to keep that blood as thin as possible and take care of that body off the court.”
All indications are that Wembanyama has done everything possible to position himself for long-term success. Now that his body is where it needs to be, that leaves room to get more shots up, no matter where he is in the world. And so far, there’s a specific zone of the floor that he is emphasizing.
In a video posted by the Spurs, Wembanyama is shown hitting a “Dirk Fade,” the signature one-footed fadeaway shot from the post that was pioneered by Mavericks Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki. It’s an important step in one of his main offseason training priorities: developing a more robust post game.
Wembanyama went off to France after the NBA Finals, signing his contract extension there as he began his offseason training. He then returned to Texas and participated in workouts at Fox’s home gym, with Harris and Barnes included. Wembanyama also spent more time working with Hakeem Olajuwon, who helped him build out his post game last summer.
One of Wembanyama’s key vulnerabilities in the later stages of the postseason was his ability to create his own shot consistently. Throughout the season, he was able to play through his teammates for the most part, serving as a fulcrum for the offense as a screener or lurking near the hoop.
But when advanced defenses threw a wrench in the Spurs’ system in the playoffs — which is how it usually goes for most teams — he struggled to find his rhythm as a scorer. In the last eight games of the postseason, Wembanyama only hit half of his shots twice. That isn’t completely out of the ordinary for a star player, as Jalen Brunson did the same. However, Brunson has the ball in his hands most of the time, while Wembanyama generally functions as more of an endpoint. He is supposed to be creating more efficient looks than a small pick-and-roll creator. The Spurs will need his numbers to reflect that to reach their potential.
A core theme of the last two rounds was Wembanyama’s battle for positioning against big men such as Isaiah Hartenstein, Jaylin Williams, Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson. His catches against the Oklahoma City Thunder and New York Knicks were often off-balance, preventing him from getting the type of leverage he needed to get the best angle to the rim. He didn’t have a consistent midrange jumper or running hook to fall back on when getting to the rim proved too challenging.
This summer, Wembanyama is continuing to seek out the players who dominated those spaces in the past, learning their ways as he chases the consistency that comes with time.
“All the footwork stuff, things that look easy but aren’t, but he makes them easier,” Wembanyama said of working with Olajuwon in an interview with ESPN last season. “But more than that, it was the advice that comes with experience. Nothing can replace experience.”
Wembanyama and the Spurs got as much experience as they could this past season, learning their limitations and providing a map to reach their ultimate goal. Wembanyama was dominant, yet showed he has so much room to grow.
But if last summer was about getting his feet under him and getting stronger than ever, this summer gives him the chance to figure out exactly what he wants to do with those feet.
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Jared Weiss is a staff writer covering the San Antonio Spurs and Victor Wembanyama for The Athletic. He has covered the Celtics since 2011, co-founding CLNS Media Network while in college before covering the team for SB Nation’s CelticsBlog and USA Today. Before coming to The Athletic, Weiss spent a decade working for the government, primarily as a compliance bank regulator. You can follow Jared on X @JaredWeissNBA.
