Victor Wembanyama #1 of the San Antonio Spurs celebrates after a 131-121 victory towards the Washington Wizards at Capital One Enviornment on February 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. | Greg Fiume/Getty Photographs/AFP
Victor Wembanyama is among the faces of the NBA, the star of the San Antonio Spurs and already one of many largest names in basketball.
And his season is probably going over, after the Spurs introduced Thursday that he has been identified with deep vein thrombosis in his proper shoulder.
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The 7-foot-3 middle from France was averaging 24.3 factors, 11 rebounds, 3.8 blocks and three.7 assists this season. Since blocked pictures turned an official statistic, solely Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — practically a half-century in the past — completed a season with these numbers or higher.
Some questions and solutions about Wembanyama’s scenario:
What’s deep vein thrombosis?
By the Mayo Clinic’s definition, deep vein thrombosis — or DVT — “happens when a blood clot varieties in a number of of the deep veins within the physique, often within the legs.” The Spurs say Wembanyama was identified with DVT in his proper shoulder, and medical doctors will now work to find out how and why that occurred earlier than arising with a plan for remedy.
Among the many main dangers of DVT: Clots breaking free, touring via the bloodstream and reaching the lungs. That doesn’t seem to have occurred to Wembanyama, not less than based mostly on the analysis the workforce offered Thursday.
How will Wembanyama be handled?
Medical doctors who spoke Thursday to The Related Press — none of them concerned in Wembanyama’s remedy — mentioned it’s a digital certainty that the French star will likely be prescribed blood-thinning remedy to handle the clot.
The longstanding pondering was that athletes who take part in contact sports activities like basketball shouldn’t play whereas on blood thinners, or anticoagulants, due to the chance of bleeding. Nonetheless, an article printed Thursday by the American School of Cardiology — hours earlier than the information about Wembanyama broke — mentioned enjoying “aggressive sports activities could also be cheap for athletes receiving full anticoagulation or partial anticoagulation.”
What does this imply for the Spurs?
In brief, it’s not good. The Spurs are usually not at the moment within the playoff image and confronted an uphill struggle simply to get into the play-in match — and now must end the season with out their greatest participant.
San Antonio nonetheless has expertise: Chris Paul, Harrison Barnes and newly acquired De’Aaron Fox are a formidable veteran trio. However every little thing is constructed round Wembanyama.
And the Spurs will likely be with out their largest star whereas additionally lacking the franchise’s chief. Coach Gregg Popovich had a stroke in November and has been away from the workforce for practically your entire season.
What does this imply for the NBA?
The league’s MVP for every of the final six years has been a participant born someplace aside from the U.S. and that streak is more likely to lengthen to seven this season — with Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the stellar Oklahoma Metropolis guard, and Serbia’s Nikola Jokic, the three-time MVP from Denver, anticipated to be the favorites.
But it surely robs the league of one among its brightest stars for the stretch run.
All the pieces Wembanyama does is large information in France and in San Antonio, and he’s already one of many league’s hottest gamers. If he and the Spurs had made a playoff run, his star would have solely shined brighter.
Why can’t he win an NBA award now?
The league is in its second yr of what’s generally referred to as the 65-game rule, which principally means a participant has to look in not less than 65 video games to be eligible for many end-of-season awards like MVP.
It additionally applies to defensive participant of the yr, which Wembanyama was favored to win. He has performed in solely 46 video games, which means he won’t be on the NBA’s poll for that trophy when the voting is carried out in April.
Wembanyama received rookie of the yr final season. If this case occurred then, he nonetheless may have received the rookie honor — that one doesn’t fall beneath the 65-game-minimum coverage.
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