NBA Gregg Popovich and Victor WembanyamaNBA (DR) / Bleacher

If he is protected by his track record and his legendary status, Gregg Popovich will end up damaging his image because of his handling of the Victor Wembanyama case. He wanted to speak once again about learning about his prodigy, and he made a rather terrifying observation.

For many weeks now, fans have been annoyed by the treatment reserved for Victor Wembanyama by Spurs. Voluntarily or not, his teammates regularly refuse to find him when he is alone in the racket, and inevitably, the young Frenchman’s performances suffer as a result. With a real point guard, he would average well over 18.5 points per game, that’s for sure.

Among the accused, Jeremy Sochan is the one towards whom all the negative attention is directed. Transformed into a playmaker by Gregg Popovich during the summer, this trained strong winger is struggling to find his feet and especially to develop his vision of the game. Particularly humiliating, he was strongly criticized by Bulls commentators this Thursday, who would have liked to see Wemby more involved.

Gregg Popovich cashes in on Wemby’s progress

But at only 20 years old and in his second season at the highest level, Sochan cannot be at the heart of all the criticism. He may be a legend, but Pop also owes his fans some explanations, and that’s what he did before the trip to Chicago. He unfortunately made a rather defeatist observation about the development of his young prodigy.

Victor was shown the first seasons of LeBron, KD, AD and others, and they had tough times too. They were young and fell into teams with little experience. Here, David Robinson and Tim Duncan were in more favorable contexts to learn and progress quickly. Victor is going to have to do it by learning from his failures, but he won’t have advice from experienced veterans on what to do on the field.

We spend a lot of time on video and show him what other great players have done over time. We study the back-to-the-basket play of Kevin McHale for example, or the support of Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. We didn’t do that with Tim Duncan and David Robinson. We try to fill his internal “computer” with this information, because no one will do it for him on the ground.

The coach’s observation is simple: the Spurs do not have the veterans in the team to allow Victor Wembanyama to progress quickly… The Frenchman must learn everything by himself on the pitch, and he must integrate hours of video to assimilate some techniques from the legends. What if managers remedied this before the trade deadline?

Gregg Popovich is pretty honest: There is no veteran capable of teaching Victor Wembanyama the ropes on the Spurs. The Frenchman will have to learn alone on the ground, which necessarily slows down his progress…