NBA Teams Ready To Tank For French Star Victor Wembanyama

After his otherworldly performance in front of some 200 NBA scouts and on national television Tuesday, Victor Wembanyama already has NBA GMs talking about tanking for him this coming season.

The 7-foot-4 Frenchman put on a remarkable performance in shooting 11-of-21 for 37 points, including seven 3-pointers, with five blocks and four rebounds in his first game on American soil, a 122-115 loss by Wembanyama’s Metropolitans to G League Ignite that came with Chris Paul, DeMarcus Cousins and A’ja Wilson in the stands at Dollar Loan Center in Las Vegas.

“He’s a 7-foot-4 Durant who blocks shots — and he’s not even close to what he’s going to be,” one NBA GM told ESPN. “He will be the most hyped player since LeBron.”

Scoot Henderson, the projected No. 2 pick in 2023 behind Wembanyama, went for 28 points, nine assists and five rebounds in the win while drawing comparisons to a young Derrick Rose.

Among the teams with the lowest projected win totals for this coming season are the Spurs, Thunder, Rockets, Pacers and Jazz — meaning those teams would theoretically be in prime position to draft Wembanyama with the No. 1 overall pick.

“Victor distorts basketball reality,” one GM told ESPN on Wednesday. “The tank/trade market will really shift after that showing. It feels like last night will start a race to the bottom like we’ve never seen.”

The 6-2 Henderson, who is in the second year of a two-year, $1 million deal with Ignite, a pretty nifty fallback at No. 2, but his agent believes he should be in contention as the No. 1 overall pick.

“I think anyone who watched that game last night saw a physical talent at the guard position we haven’t seen in years,” Steve Haney, Henderson’s agent, told me. “Victor’s intriguing and a great player but Scoot Henderson is the type of generational talent you build a franchise around.”

He added: “There were two incredibly talented players on that floor last night. But one beast.”

A gracious Wembanyama said before the game of Henderson: “He’s really a great player. If I was never born, I think he would deserve the first spot.”

Both players are only 18.

Tanking was in vogue a few years back — see the 76ers and “The Process” — but beginning in 2019, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the league attempted to crack down.

The team with the worst record used to have a 25 percent chance of earning the No. 1 pick, and couldn’t fall below No. 4. Now the teams with the bottom three records have the same 14 percent chance at the top pick, while the worst team can slip all the way to No. 5. Winning the lottery always came down to the bounces of ping-pong balls. But now the benefits to losing are lesser than before. The days of the quick fix in the draft are over.

Still, ESPN’s Woj believes that teams on the border of making the Play-In Tournament might opt to trade away players at the deadline in order to sink in the standings instead of moving up.

Wembanyama and Henderson will meet again Thursday (3 p.m. ESPN2) and Wembanyama’s agent says his star player has no plans to shut it down to maintain his draft stock after that.

“NBA people are telling me to shut him down, and we are not going to shut him down,” Bouna Ndiaye told ESPN on Wednesday. “If we came with that kind of talk to [Wembanyama], he will look at us and say, ‘What are you talking about?’ He’ll never agree to that. He wants to compete and get better. With Victor, it’s basketball first and everything else second. He was so pissed off that he lost.”