For the United States, Saturday’s gold medal game is about legacy. For American fans, it’s about memories — about seeing LeBron James and Kevin Durant with “USA” on their chests one last time. It’s about seeing Stephen Curry in his Hall of Fame with a gold medal. It’s about enjoying one last run with arguably the greatest basketball talents ever to gather on one court at the same time.
For France it is about Victor Wembanyama and the future.
Wembanyama and France see things differently. They dream of a surprise, of revenge for the gold medal match at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, of gold.
“Of course it’s part of a dream come true,” Wembanyama told reporters after helping France beat Germany and advance to the gold medal match. “We can be part of a goal we set months ago. We can even make history. A once in a lifetime dream.”
This is a one-off event, taking place on home soil in Paris, but Wembanyama and France’s Olympic dream will live on in Los Angeles in four years and in Brisbane in eight years, as well as at numerous other international tournaments thereafter.
Just as it felt to him in his rookie season in the NBA, these Olympics felt like the beginning of the Wembanyama era.
That’s not to say Wembanyama carries his team; it’s the play of Evan Fournier, former Celtic player Guerschon Yabusele and Panathinaikos center Mathias Lessort that has been crucial for Les Bleus in the medal rounds. Wembanyama is impressive, averaging 13.8 points and 10.2 rebounds per game, but he only shoots 37.5% overall and hasn’t been efficient. His impact has been much greater defensively.
Again, this feels like the last NBA season. It took Wembanyama a while to adjust to the NBA game at the start of his rookie season. He didn’t look like the Rookie of the Year for the first few months. Then he figured it out and adjusted (plus Gregg Popovich adjusted the lineups around him), and Wembanyama started to look like a force of nature.
The same thing happened during the Olympic Games in Paris.
“Victor is just discovering FIBA basketball at a very high level,” said French coach Vincent Collet. “He is adapting.”
After stumbling through the group stage, France began to flourish in the medal round when they benched Rudy Gobert and used Wembanyama as the lone center in the box. Again, it’s not like his play alone carried the team, but he was good enough – especially defensively – to create a better matchup of the players around him on the field.
So it was Wembanyama, bleeding from a scratch on his neck, who celebrated France’s victory over Germany and made his way to the gold medal match.
“In our national anthem, we talk about blood,” Wembanyama told reporters after the match. “We are ready to shed blood on the pitch, so it’s not a big deal. If it enables us to win gold, I’ll offer it. Take it all.”
Wembanyama is too young to remember all of the U.S.-France basketball history. He was just 17 when the Kevin Durant-led Americans beat France in the gold medal game at the Tokyo Olympics. What Wembanyama does understand, however, is national pride.
“This jersey brings us a different energy that we can’t find anywhere else,” he said. “That’s something we all feel as patriots. We love our jersey. We love our country.”
And it loves him.
By the time the Olympics in Los Angeles come four years, many more people will love him – Wembanyama could be the best player in the world by then. Behind him, France could dream of gold on American soil.
That is
the future when the world belongs to Wembanyama.
Right now, Wembanyama dreams of winning gold in Paris, the city he grew up in. It would be a great start to his legacy and legend.
