Sporting News Player of the Year: Victor Wembanyama has already arrived as the NBA's best player

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Sporting News Player of the Year: Victor Wembanyama has already arrived as the NBA's best player originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Derrick Rose was the youngest MVP in NBA history, winning the award in just his third season at the age of 22 years and seven months old for his hometown Chicago Bulls. Victor Wembanyama is going to break a lot of records over the course of his career, but that is one of the few that will be outside of his eight-foot reach. At 22 years and three months old, he's widely expected to finish No. 2 behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander this season in official voting.

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But, that won't stop Sporting News from naming Wembanyama our youngest ever NBA Player of the Year. Gilgeous-Alexander is a worthy candidate. His Thunder team finished with the best record in the West ahead Wemby's Spurs, and he's played over 400 more minutes despite also dealing with injuries this season. But, the numbers and impact certainly do not lie: Wemby has been the best player in the league this season.

Why Victor Wembanyama is Sporting News' 2026 Player of the Year

Victor Wembanyama is already the best defender in league history

Mark Eaton holds the NBA career record with 3.50 blocks per game. Wembanyama hasn't played enough seasons yet to qualify for that leaderboard, but he is right there with 3.47. Wemby would get more of them too, but even the greatest players in the league are terrified to challenge him. 

Earlier in the season, Luka Doncic found himself underneath the basket with a chance to score. Instead, he whipped a pass behind his head to get the ball out of the paint. "If it's not Wemby, I go for the layup," he explained afterwards. 

"You literally don't even want to go to the hole when he's on the floor," LeBron James said recently on his Mind the Game podcast.

When players do sneak a layup attempt past Wembanyama, they convert those shots at one of the lowest rates in the league. The Spurs are No. 4 in the league in how few layups they allow and No. 3 in the field goal percentage that opponents shoot on those attempts.

If Wembanyama were simply a rim protector, it would be one thing. But he can guard anyone, anytime, anywhere. He covers more ground than anyone, and he has a defensive motor that rivals Steph Curry's on offense. 

Wembanyama is going to win the Defensive Player of the Year award in a landslide if he squeaks past the 65 games requirement. And this is the worst he's going to be defensively for the next decade or more.

Wemby laid out his MVP case himself by stating that defense is 50 percent of the game. While some might disagree with that statement, he is the most dominant defender that I have witnessed in over 30 years of watching the NBA. The sheer scale of his impact is a worthy cornerstone to his candidacy for our award, even if defense isn't quite as important as offense. 

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Victor Wembanyama is a better offensive player than the stats suggest

Wembanyama's 24.8 points per game are at a top 15 mark, but not near the 31.3 points or 28.0 points of his competitors Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic. Both are better passers than him as well, although Wemby is no slouch. The same goes for shooting percentages, where Wemby is good but not elite. 

Where Wembanyama has those guys beat is with his 172 dunks, which ranks fifth in the league. Dunks certainly shouldn't be the only measure of offensive talent, but they do illustrate that Wemby's vertical threat is where he contributes the most to the Spurs' offense. He has the biggest catch radius in the league, and opponents must constantly be focused on keeping him as far away from the basket as possible.

When Wemby is within dunking range, all he has to do is point up and one of his guards is getting the Spurs an automatic two points. 

Wemby being a mere fifth on the dunkers list doesn't sound all that impressive, until you realize that he's also made 120 3's on the year and the four guys ahead of him have made a combined 87. While other guys get their dunks by being specialists, Wemby makes it impossible to guard him by also being able to score from anywhere. 

Other greats recognize how impossible of a cover this makes him. After playing the Spurs, Jokic explained to the NBA on Prime broadcast how much the Nuggets struggled to contain him.

"He's the most unique player on both sides of the floor," Jokic said. "He challenges you so many ways defensively because his ability to shoot the ball. He's one dribble at the basket dunking the ball, a lob threat."

The attention that Wembanyama receives opens up everything for the rest of the Spurs offense. They shoot better, and they take better shots. To wit, every single rotation player on the Spurs improves their effective field goal percentage when they share the court with him, per PBP stats. And as Hoops Tonight's Jason Timpf has noted, the Spurs are generating the most corner 3's in NBA history mainly because of his gravity. 

Wemby's impact shows up all over the advanced stats too. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Spurs are 15.6 points per 100 better with him on the floor, ranking in the 99th percentile of all players. 

Wemby is simply the best two-way player in the game right now, as fellow MVP candidate Jaylen Brown said on a livestream earlier this season. 

"When I say I’m the best two-way player in the league, it’s not counting Wemby. He’s not even human. I’m the best human player."

Victor Wembanyama has completely transformed the Spurs into title contenders

The Spurs mostly returned the same group of players that won 34 games last season. Newcomer backup center Luke Kornet has certainly helped in making them better, as has rookie Dylan Harper. But if you take Wembanyama off this team, they're probably winning less than half of their games.

With Wemby's improvement, they've won over 60 games this season for the first time since 2017. They finished runner-up in the NBA Cup and likely would have won had Wemby not been on a minutes restriction. They've competed with the best of the best, taking three of four from the Thunder during the regular season. 

Some people will need to see Wembanyama prove it in the playoffs before they anoint him the best player in the league. I've already seen enough. He's doing things on a nightly basis that nobody else in the league can even come close to approaching. He's already the best player in the league, and he's done more in less minutes than anyone.

Awards like this oftentimes lag a year behind. Wemby is simply too good to let that happen. He's our Player of the Year, and nobody is knocking him off his pedestal for the foreseeable future. 

MORE:Nikola Jokic, not Wemby, wins media voting for NBA's best player

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