Victor Wembanyama terrorized the NBA to start the 2025-26 season. The lanky Spurs star raced out of the gates in the first five games of the year, averaging 30.2 points, 14.6 rebounds, and 4.8 blocks in 33.8 minutes per night. San Antonio, unsurprisingly, went 5-0 with Wemby dominating both ends of the court. It led to numerous declarations that the NBA now belonged to Wembanyama, and that the “best player in the world conversation” needed a strong shift in his direction. Even those most optimistic about Wembanyama entering the season were blown away by just how productive he could be when he leverages his enormous talents.
But Wembanyama was inevitably going to cool off. Given no player in history has ever come close to averaging those numbers over the course of an entire season, it was reasonable to expect some statistical decline.
Once the calendar turned to November, that cool-off happened. Unfortunately for the Spurs and Wemby, though, it isn’t just a regression to the mean. The French superstar has officially hit his first slump of the new season.
In two games so far this month Wemby’s averages have plummeted across the board: 14.0 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per game. He’s shooting 32.1% from the floor. Most detrimental to his team’s efforts to win, Wembanyama is turning the ball over 5.5 times per game and has recorded 10 fouls across those two contests.
It's nothing to be worried about in the grand scheme of things. Slumps happen, and Wembanyama is dealing with being the entire focus of opposing defenses for the first time as a Tier-1 star—something that isn’t helped by the absence of his teammate and All-Star point guard De’Aaron Fox, who has yet to play this season. But the statistical drop-off is so steep it’s worth examining: just how are defenses working to stop Wembanyama?
As is the case with many great players, the answer is simple: .
When it comes to guarding Wembanyama, the more the merrier
In the first five games of the year Wembanyama was tightly guarded, but defenses weren’t constructed to prevent him from getting to his spots. That is no longer the case. Every time Wemby trots down the floor there’s a defender in his jersey. And when he gets the ball, the pressure heightens considerably, which is the biggest difference between the first five games and the last two. Opponents are no longer waiting for Wemby to beat his man before sending help. The help is there as soon as a Spurs teammate passes him the ball. In many instances, the help jumps at even the threat of Wembanyama getting the ball.
Take these two clips from the Lakers’ game on Wednesday, in which Wembanyama fouled out before the Spurs lost by two. In the first, he gets to deal with Marcus Smart, a former Defensive Player of the Year who has long been one of the NBA’s best post defenders for his height. Smart refuses to let the Spurs star get decent position, but that’s only half of Los Angeles’s scheme. If you watch Smart’s teammates, whenever Wembanyama looks like he’s settling in for a post-up possession, someone jumps into the paint, ready to guard him. It’s mostly Jake LaRavia in this clip, but near the end Jaxson Hayes abandons his man entirely to double Wemby, who wound up getting called for an offensive foul.
The second clip is both shorter and more straightforward, but still exemplifies the new strategy against Wembanyama. He gets the ball on the wing and immediately tries to drive to the hoop. But Rui Hachimura rotated into his path the moment Wembanyama got the ball and drew a charge. That in of itself is a standard basketball play, even if Hachimura was a bit quicker to move for Wemby than he might’ve another Spur. At the 13:45 mark below:
But a closer look reveals the larger focus of the defense: every single defender is locked on Wemby the moment he catches the ball.
It’s not a complicated concept. All talented players will face tighter defenses than their teammates and great players face double teams on the regular. Wembanyama himself experienced it plenty of times over his first two NBA seasons. The mere fact that he’s so much taller than everybody else means the only recourse opponents have is to send a double team most of the time. But receiving the full, focused attention of an entire team’s defense is a different experience.
The impact it’s had can be seen in the advanced stats, too. Making it harder for Wembanyama to get the ball and swarming him when he has possession has forced the Spurs to become more predictable. In particular, it has resulted in San Antonio force-feeding Wemby the ball in the one place defenses struggle to deny him, and the one place where the Spurs were extremely effective running the offense through in the opening stretch of the year: the elbow.
In the first five games, Wembanyama averaged 5.6 elbow “touches” per game, meaning he caught the ball at the elbow about 5.6 times per game (per NBA.com tracking data). At that spot he can survey the defense and choose his way to attack: a jumpshot, a drive to the hoop, or a pass to an open teammate. On those possessions the Spurs star averaged 0.78 points per touch. Wemby is so tall and such a talented scorer that it was easy for him to impact the game from that spot, but San Antonio doesn't get it to him there every time down the floor because it’s a difficult position to gain against a dug-in defender.
Over the last two games, those numbers have changed quite a bit. Wembanyama has averaged 7.0 touches per game at the elbow, but has been significantly less effective, recording 0.14 points per possession. That’s a reflection of him getting swarmed by the defense in those spots.
Wembanyama and the Spurs will figure it out. The NBA season is filled with counters upon counters upon counters. But as it stands, defenses are stumping Wembanyama, and he has to figure it out on the fly.
