What Victor Wembanyama still needs

A few more developments can turn Wembanyama into the best player on Earth and an all-timer.

Good morning. It's Free Newsletter Wednesday. Let's basketball.

Victor Wembanyama might be the best player in the world already. He's in the top three at worst at this stage – I'm eager to see where my Consensus Best Player Alive metric puts him, which depends on what happens in this series. The Spurs may or may not win the championship in his first postseason and third season overall. He had an all-time game in the conference finals and has been really good through three Finals games, the best player in the series.

There's still more he can unlock. Here are three things.

1. Impulse control

Perhaps Wembanyama didn't intend to mush Jalen Brunson to the ground in Game 3, and the height differential made the placement of his hand and the optics worse than Vic intended. Regardless, what he actually did was pretty darn dirty and should have been sanctioned.

Wembanyama is frustrated about all of the extracurricular contact the Knicks are giving him and largely getting away with. He was frustrated by the Wolves doing the same thing two rounds ago, and he swung an elbow on Naz Reid and missed most of a game as a result.

He is going to get targeted for extracurricular contact more and more as he continues to improve. It will be even worse if opponents know they can goad him into demonstrative reactions like this and cost him flagrants, fines and suspensions. If they would have called a Flagrant-1 here, which they should have, Wembanyama would be one more flagrant from a suspension in the playoffs. (He picked up two points on the Reid elbow.) And it's pretty easy to pick up a cheap flagrant with a bad close-out or challenge. He's also going to get a reputation with the league. And while it feels to Knicks fans that he's a league darling right now and is getting every benefit of the doubt, at some point he will do something that turns that and earns him extra punishment scrutiny.

Wembanyama has to stop doing this.

2. Foul baiting

This is related to No. 1. And I don't actually want this. But defenders play Wembanyama incredibly physically, and he doesn't really sell it. He still gets plenty of free throws, but he doesn't have the Brunson or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander skill of drawing bail-out fouls or exaggerating contact. Stephen Curry doesn't have it either – Curry still has the worst whistle of any non big man I've ever seen – and it's cost him a point or two per game for his whole career. Nikola Jokic halfway has it – he's tried, but you can tell his heart's barely in it. He'd rather complain about no-calls than sell calls.

Again, I don't actually want to see Wembanyama learn how to foul bait. I would love for there to be a way to legislate it out of the league. But it would be a development that get him closer to the production and performance zenith.

3. Energy management

Wembanyama is an electric circuit that is provided maximum power for two hours every game. It's not safe to have a stable load at the top end of capacity continuously! He needs to be on the court for the Spurs to win this series, but he seems to lack the ability to control his energy use. He doesn't have a coast mode where he relies more on his presence than his skills to control the defense and impact the offense.

That will come over time on defense, and will be a constant battle between opponents learning the cues when he's coasting and won't challenge every paint touch and when he's going to stop everything. But he hasn't even tried taking a defensive possession off. On the other end, this is one of the downsides to the Spurs' need for Wembanyama to play more inside against the Knicks' lack of shot blocking: it's way harder to play inside than to stay on the perimeter, and it's further to run back on defense. The Spurs' transition defense has been extraordinary, and part of that is that Wembanyama does not lollygag ... ever. His longevity might require him to strategically lollygag ... even in a Finals game since it could preserve his ability to play 40 minutes and stay in the entire fourth.

Dare to Dream

Trae Young went on a podcast and made the point that he's still good even if he barely played and didn't look good when he did play last season. That's a fair corrective! And then he said something truly eye-opening.

"Imagine the Wizards as the No. 1 team in the East next year. What are people going to be saying?" I'm going to be checking the weather data coming out of The Underworld, for one. That's crazy. But this is actually really healthy. Notice that Trae didn't ask us to imagine Trae averaging 30-10 next year and wonder what people would be saying. He asked us to imagine the Wizards winning.

And the Wizards winning – not the Wizards being the best team in the East, but winning games and ending up in or around the top six in the conference – is not terribly far-fetched. Trae isn't a perfect player, but he's a top-10 scorer in the NBA and a brilliant passer. A healthy Anthony Davis is damn near a top-10 defense on his own (having a top-10 defense with Trae will always be a challenge). The Wizards have the No. 1 pick and there are a couple of NBA-ready high-end prospects available to them.

This is why I was a little stunned the team kept Brian Keefe, who, no offense, did not show any inclination toward being a high-end NBA head coach in recent years. He was hamstrung by the franchise's direction and strategic investment in sucking. But even by those standards, the development of young players left something to be desired. I'm glad to see him get a chance with an apparently real team. The window for Davis, though, is tight, and I'd hate the Wizards to waste a season (or half a season) to learn that Keefe isn't equipped for this challenge. And it will be a challenge: it is the Washington Wizards, after all.

Game 4 is scheduled for 8:30 PM Eastern on ABC again. See you in the morning. Be excellent to each other.