From Victor Wembanyama to Joel Embiid, from Tom Brady to Jalen Hurts, pro sports is about stars more than smarts

Victor Wembanyama is 7-foot-4. Based on the scouting reports and available video, he has Steph Curry’s shooting range and Hakeem Olajuwon’s footwork in the post. Based on his interviews ahead of and during Thursday night’s NBA draft, he has the charisma of Pierce Brosnan after two martinis and the grounding of a kid whose mom made him finish his homework before she let him hang with his friends. So you know what that means: Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs are about to be geniuses again.

This is not to pick on Popovich, who is a fine coach if a less-than-lovable grump. But it is to point out that, over the last 36 years, the Spurs have experienced a measure of good fortune in the NBA lottery that no other franchise can match.

In 1987, they happened to get the No. 1 pick when David Robinson was available. Then in 1997, they happened to get the No. 1 pick when Tim Duncan was available.

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Twice in a decade, they welcomed in a player who was an all-time all-timer not only in his skill level but also in his character, his leadership, and his ability and willingness to establish and maintain a team culture conducive to long-term success. Hell, Duncan was even better in those regards than Robinson was, and Robinson was spectacular.

Now they have Wembanyama, who promises to deliver all those qualities and more if you believe the hype around him. And if it goes too far to say that Popovich and the Spurs owe their five championships and their reputation as one of the NBA’s premiere franchises entirely to Duncan and Robinson, it’s also not quite right to say that San Antonio was the “perfect landing spot” for Wembanyama. Whatever benefits he will derive from playing for Popovich, the Spurs are likely to get the better end of the deal. That’s how good he could be. That’s how these things tend to work.

It’s easy, amid the hubbub around any draft, to forget that truth. The coverage gets caught up in the moves and machinations of the personnel executives, the strengths and weaknesses of the prospects, and the methods that teams use to acquire these players. In the aftermath, of course, those teams are graded and judged, and those judgments can be especially harsh nowadays, because they constitute a cottage industry. Fantasy sports, convenient access to data, and digital trade machines have combined to condition fans and media members into role-playing GMs themselves. It’s all good fun, if that’s your thing.

But then time passes, and reality reveals itself. And that reality — in the NBA and, to a lesser degree, in the NFL — is two-pronged: (1) One great player can have and often does have an outsize effect on the direction of his team or even the league as a whole. (2) The acquisition of that player usually comes down to nothing more than timing or luck, and often, no one — not even the decision-makers who are tossed laurels for their talent-evaluating and talent-developing acumen — has any genuine insight at the time that this particular player will have that particular effect.

Let’s take the NFL first. (Why the NFL and the NBA and not Major League Baseball and the NHL? Because in basketball and football, one star — the best player on the floor, the quarterback — can have such a profound influence, beyond any one player on a baseball or hockey team.)

He’s the obvious case in point, but it’s worth holding him up again: Tom Brady, the 199th pick of the 2000 draft, has been the most consequential NFL player of the last quarter century, and his excellence has been only enhanced by the New England Patriots’ descent to mediocrity since his departure.

But there are smaller-scale examples. Consider the two starting quarterbacks in the most recent Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes was the 10th player and second quarterback picked in the 2017 draft, and he was picked that high only because Andy Reid saw him in a way few others around the league did and was willing to trade up to draft him. As for Jalen Hurts, the story of how the Eagles stumbled into their franchise quarterback doesn’t need repeating around here.

Now, let’s return to the NBA. There certainly have been team-builders who knew what they were looking for, how to get it, and how to win with it once they had it: Red Auerbach, Pat Riley, Jerry West, to name a few. They have been the exceptions, though, to those clubs thriving because of circumstance. From 2005 through 2018, the Cleveland Cavaliers won at least 50 games eight times, reached five NBA Finals, and won a championship, and it wasn’t because of their front office’s collective brilliance. It was because they had the chance to pick LeBron James in 2003.

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The Golden State Warriors needed the six teams ahead of them in the 2009 draft — two of whom picked point guards! — to pass on Steph Curry. The Milwaukee Bucks had Giannis Antetokounmpo fall to them at No. 15 in 2013. Nikola Jokic was a self-described “fat boy” when the Denver Nuggets took a flier on him in the second round of the 2014 draft. And had the Cavs and Bucks been less risk-averse in the first two picks of that ‘14 draft, the 76ers never would have had the opportunity to take Joel Embiid — the remaining, and maybe the only, jewel of The Process.

The NBA is an entertainment vehicle, and those select stars are its engine. They make otherwise irrelevant franchises matter and transform respectable coaches and GMs into masterminds, and by that standard, Thursday night should be considered a smash hit.

It was amusing to see complaints among basketball fans about this “boring” draft. Assuming Wembanyama meets the expectations now attached to him, his entrance into the NBA could have a seismic impact on the sport. There’s nothing boring about that prospect, and if he does turn out to be as good as everyone says, at least people can say, in good faith, that they saw this one coming.