![]() ![]() But there are still bigs coming out of college and top pro leagues who have a chance to make an impact, both immediately and down the road. As the game has downsized, the role of big men has been deemphasized. Wemby is a mortal lock to go to the Spurs with the first pick in Thursday’s draft, the first true big to go first since Deandre Ayton in 2018. If he is successful, the game will look radically different when he’s done playing. Wembanyama threatens to alter the game in a similar way – vertically rather than horizontally. In the first 60-plus years of NBA history it wasn’t feasible to take that shot - until it was. With Wembanayama, we will likely have to recalibrate similar to the way we reassessed the game after we watched Stephen Curry, time after time, launching and making shots five feet behind the 3-point line. You can’t get back on defense on a fast break, challenge the ballhandler and still block the lob. You can’t take two dribbles from midcourt and dunk! As in, we’ve never seen a human being that stands 7-foot-4 do the things that he does on a basketball court. ![]() That is what the Season of Wembanyama has felt like, as the Metropolitans 92 phenom has created highlights that are … incomparable. He won the American League Most Valuable Player award in 2021 last year, he finished fourth in the AL Cy Young voting. But, in the five years since, Ohtani has continued to rearrange the molecules of the game, dominating on the mound and in the batter’s box. He won AL Rookie of the Year despite essentially getting shut down from pitching in May of ’18 and needing Tommy John surgery after the season. He stretched limitations and shattered boundaries. But, after a rookie campaign in which he became the first player since Babe Ruth in 1919 to pitch at least 50 innings and hit 15 homers in the same season, Ohtani had changed the notion of what was possible on baseball’s grandest stage. ![]()
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