SAN ANTONIO — My drive home from Victor Wembanyama's regular season debut included delays, detours, a gigantic freight train, and a clear sign from the universe.
Before that, a sellout crowd of nearly 19,000 fans packed out the newly renamed Frost Bank Center for a primetime ESPN game. Heavy hitters in basketball media parachuted in from national outlets that mostly stayed far away from the Alamo City last season as a young team fought through a rebuilding year. The media workroom is orders of magnitude busier now, and it's full of French folks, too. Bienvenue a San Antonio!
As reporters waited for Wemby to speak after practice before his debut, we got a bit restless as we watched the 7'4" phenom dial in his jumper. When he finally wrapped up and began walking over, one of my new French colleagues began saying, "L'arrivée!" in a voice that was a little sarcastic but also genuinely excited.
I've been lucky to cover the Spurs since just after their 2014 title. Every year on opening night, I'm filled with optimism for the season and gratitude that I get to do this for a living. Wednesday night, as I pulled into a media parking lot that was fuller than I'd ever seen it two hours before tipoff, that feeling was raised to the power of Wemby.
"Nothing will ever be the same for the Spurs. Nothing will ever be the same for basketball. Nothing will ever be the same for us."
The players all noted the excitement and the additional eyeballs in the buildup to the game. Gregg Popovich walked into a crowded pregame interview and quipped, "Did you all come to watch Jason and I coach?"
The air was crackling as months of hype came to a crescendo and finally gave way to the main event. The crowd buzzed from warmups on, and the introduction of the starting lineup induced chills.
Wembanyama didn't make fans wait long for the first highlight, blocking Kyrie Irving's jumper on his first defensive possession. The crowd lit up on his first basket, a pick-and-pop three for the 7'4" teenager. He also hit a sidestep three in the corner as the Spurs built an early lead on Luka Doncic and the Mavs, who really didn't want to attack the basket with his 8-foot wingspan in the vicinity.
People tuning into their first Spurs game in years may have gotten their first good look at Devin Vassell, who led the team with 23 points. They may have taken note of the jumbo starting lineup with Jeremy Sochan at the point, or Keldon Johnson's all-around impact.
There were special moments and sustained stretches of winning team basketball, but there were just as many rough patches to remind you that this is a young squad still very much figuring it out.
Wembanyama played limited minutes due to foul trouble, and in his time on the floor it seemed apparent that both he and his teammates could have done a better job of getting him involved. He had 6 points and 4 fouls after three quarters, then picked up his fifth foul on a silly swipe down just 26 seconds after checking in to start the fourth.
It felt like in The Incredibles when the kid on the tricycle who saw Mr. Incredible pick up his car is watching Mr. Incredible in his driveway and Mr. Incredible is like, "well what are you waiting for?" and the kid on the tricycle is like, "I dunno, something amazing I guess," and Mr. Incredible is like, "me too kid." Except instead of being sad and dejected, Wembanyama did some stuff that made all us kids on tricycles sit there staring, mouth agape, bubble-gum bubble popped with perfect comedic timing.
He spent the next few minutes on the bench thinking about how he was going to come back and make an impact in his first NBA crunch time. He did not disappoint. In about three minutes he finished an alley-oop, dribbled into a triple, crammed in a transition dunk, and hit a face-up jumper in the post as San Antonio stormed back into the lead. The energy surged. The building shook. The Spurs were back.
The fluidity at his size and the polish at his age is completely unprecedented. In the most meaningful minutes of his basketball career to this point, he showed it all. The storybook ending wasn't to be, though, at least not on this night. Dallas went on to win behind their All-Star players, who executed cleanly down the stretch as San Antonio showed their youth.
On one hand, it was a disappointing result for a team that's determined to win more and had one in their reach against a quality opponent. On the other hand, it was an encouraging performance from a young and unique group of guys who played their first real game together and will build on the good stuff and learn from the bad stuff.
Wemby finished with 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals, a block and 5 turnovers in 23 minutes, clear impact in a game that was far from his best. That makes him the second power forward drafted first overall by the Spurs to score 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting in his NBA debut, and the other guy turned out alright.
Even if Wembanyama had the best rookie debut since the merger, it wouldn't have mattered much in the grand scheme of his career.
"I want to win as many titles as I can in the long run," he said before the game. "I know it's not something easy to do. Many many, most players have their career and never get to even the Finals, or to win a championship. It's one of my biggest goals in life, so I know I'm gonna reach this one day or the other."
After the game, Wemby was already talking about learning from this one and moving on to the next one.
Pop, Wembanyama and Vassell addressed the media in a well-attended postgame presser, and the consensus was that a lot of good stuff happened and this group is still figuring out how to play together. It was nearly midnight, and I was ready to put a bow on things and head home.
As I exited the parking lot, I encountered another thing I'm not used to seeing that late after the final buzzer: traffic. Even weirder, it didn't bother me at all.
I thought about the empty seats that had been multiplying in recent years being full of fans who came out with friends and family, some from across the world. I thought about the extra staff needed to accommodate those people, the media members coming to our city and watching our team and spreading the word. I thought about the people across the world who are finally getting a proper introduction, falling in love and joining the Spurs family.
The Wemby tide isn't just lifting all boats in San Antonio, he's piquing interest across the country and the the world.
"The nightcap, which featured the debut of Victor Wembanyama, averaged nearly three million viewers (2,989,000) as the Dallas Mavericks defeated the San Antonio Spurs," ESPN said in a press release. "It peaked with 3,903,000 viewers at 10 p.m. ET. It was up 83 percent vs last year’s comparable game (Dallas Mavericks vs. Phoenix Suns) and is the most-watched season-opening ESPN late game since 2012. Excluding Christmas Day, it is the most-watched San Antonio Spurs or Dallas Mavericks regular season game ever on ESPN."
It felt like in Cars when the attention following Lightning McQueen helps put Radiator Springs back on the map and breathes new life into a unique little town with a big personality (sorry, I'm on a bit of a Pixar kick clearly, also Pop is obviously Doc Hudson here).
Road closures forced me onto a path to the highway that I was unfamiliar with. I felt my GPS was leading me astray, called an audible, and paid for it at what might be the shortest green light in Texas. Some of the drivers around me went the California stop sign route. I could've safely followed, but the light was gonna turn green in a bit anyway. I wanted to get home but I wasn't in a big rush.
I enjoyed my quiet drive through parts of the city I'd normally have to go out of my way to see, past the Torch of Friendship and through construction zones in an ever-growing downtown. As Wednesday turned to Thursday, some of my neighbors were on their way home from a night out. A lot of them had their Spurs gear on.
Just when I had a bit of open road in front of me, the gate came down at a railroad crossing. It was one of those freight trains that goes on forever, the kind where you can park your car and get out and stand on the roof and look toward the back of it and not see the caboose for a few minutes. It was the kind of train that moves so slow you could walk beside it at a leisurely pace and add your graffiti tag next to the others. I didn't do any of that cool stuff, but I sat there thinking about Spurs basketball and Victor Wembanyama, and that is cool in its own way.
By the time I put my foot on the gas again I was 40 minutes into a drive that usually takes me 30, and I still hadn't reached the highway. When I got there, I saw something that made me grateful for every inconvenience that had led me to that specific location at that specific time.
Ahead in the middle lane was a sports car traveling exactly the speed limit. I couldn't see much detail in the dark, but even from a distance I could tell I had never seen anything like it before. I pulled up closer for a better look, and when I realized what I was looking at a sound escaped my mouth that was something between a scream and a gasp, a scrascp if you will.
The Bugatti Chiron is a French supercar that is rarer and more powerful than you can imagine. It's worth more money than I will ever see in my lifetime unless I'm somehow able to turn my absurd ramblings about basketball and children's movies into obscene wealth.
Bugatti made the Chiron between 2016 and 2022, producing just 500 of them in that time. They cost around $3 million, and many of the people who purchase such things would rather leave them in a temperature-controlled garage than risk depreciating their asset. This was the first time I'd ever seen one in the wild. I wondered who was driving, and if they'd been at the game too. Maybe they saw the connection and had to pull it out for the special occasion. Maybe they'd been stuck in the same traffic as the rest of us.
The simple fact that a production vehicle like that exists boggles the mind. Driving next to it was surreal, and then suddenly a bit terrifying as I realized I was in danger of setting the world record for Most Expensive Sneeze.
The W16 engine (that's basically two V8s next to each other) puts out nearly 1,600 horsepower, it screams from 0-60 in under 2.4 seconds. The top speed is electronically limited to 261 mph because Bugatti determined that there isn't a tire that exists that can safely withstand the force of going any faster.
This holy grail of a performance car was just cruising along a San Antonio highway in the middle of the night. Somehow it wasn't even loud. Any knucklehead in a beat up Civic could go faster if they wanted to, and eventually I did just that. "I WOKE UP IN A NEW BUGATTI" rattled around in my speakers, more relatable than it ever had been.
I smiled a big dumb smile the whole way home. Even though it was just a small glimpse of the unfathomable potential, seeing it in person for the first time blew my mind.
