NBA Draft Lottery: Victor Wembanyama to learn his fate

The most hyped basketball prospect in more than a decade will learn where his future lies as NBA teams anxiously await the results.

James McKern

@jLmcKern

2 min read

May 16, 2023 - 9:03PM

Metropolitan 92's French power forward Victor Wembanyama reacts during the French Elite basketball match between Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans 92 and Bourg-en-Bresse at The AccorHotels Arena in Paris on May 7, 2023. (Photo by FRANCK FIFE / AFP)

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The NBA draft lottery hasn’t generated this much buzz and anticipation since a kid from Akron by the name of LeBron James burst onto the scene in the early 2000s.

Two decades after the Cleveland Cavaliers landed the number one pick, the complicated pingpong process holds far more international intrigue due to the 19-year-old European wunderkind expected to have a transformative impact on the league and the team fortunate enough to draft him.

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Victor Wembanyama, the 7-foot-4 French phenom with a guard’s handle, a deft outside shooting touch and an 8-foot wingspan, will finally learn his initial NBA destination when the draft lottery takes place in Chicago on Wednesday at 10am (AEST).

The buzz around the man dubbed “an alien” by James himself has reached its peak as teams now await to discover what pick they’ll land in the draft.

“Put simply, we have never seen anything like this before,” former Memphis VP of basketball operations and The Athletic analyst John Hollinger wrote last year.

“Wembanyama is a basketball evolution all his own, a unicorn even among unicorns, the unholy melding of the best traits of Ralph Sampson, Kristaps Porziņģis and Dirk Nowitzki.

“Between the size and length and the off-the-charts skill level, calling Wembanyama a generational prospect feels somewhat like calling fire an important discovery; while true, it still comes across as a massive understatement.”

Wembanyama isn’t like anything we’ve seen before. (Photo by FRANCK FIFE / AFP)

While some players enter the Draft with a prefered landing destination, the French youngster is reportedly ready to help whatever team drafts him launch back into the playoffs.

“There’s no wrong team,” ESPN’s Jonathan Givony said on The Hoop Collective podcast. “He, in his mind, thinks that he’s going to go figure out even the worst situations in the NBA. He’s kind of already putting on the table that he’s fine going whoever lands No. 1.”

Three teams will enter the draft lottery with a 14 per cent chance of landing the coveted number one pick and securing Wembanyama.

The last three teams to secure the first overall pick all entered with the highest percentage chance of walking away with it.

That’s good news for the Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets and San Antonio spurs who all enter the lottery with the highest percentage of securing the top pick.

Of the last eight Draft Lottery’s, only the New Orleans Pelicans in 2019 have claimed the top pick with a percentage less than 7 per cent.

After Wembanyama, who plays for the Metropolitans 92 club in Paris, most mock drafts project some combination of G-League Ignite point guard Scoot Henderson, Alabama forward Brandon Miller and Overtime Elite twins Amen and Ausar Thompson among those who could round out the top five.