AJ Dybantsa's Spurs declaration will excite Victor Wembanyama
01/25/2025 03:16 PM
The San Antonio Spurs and Indiana Pacers played a pair of games in Paris, France this week, allowing Victor Wembanyama to enjoy the spotlight in his home country during what has been a dominant second NBA season. But what will likely emerge as a bigger story than the result of either games — the Spurs and Pacers split a pair of blowout victories — will be what happened off the court with arguably the top high school basketball player alive.
AJ Dybantsa is widely considered to be the best player in the class of 2025, and is expected to be the top pick in the 2026 NBA Draft in 18 months time. Now there is a lot of basketball to be played between now and then, but it would come as something of a shock if the 6-foot-9 BYU commit didn’t end up going 1st overall whenever he enters the NBA Draft. And it turns out, Dybantsa is already eyeing not just the NBA, but according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, a partnership with Victor Wembanyama.
“I think Victor is just ridiculous; the things he does are just crazy,” Dybantsa told Windhorst while attending Saturday’s game between the Spurs and Pacers. “I just think we would’ve been a crazy duo. Now the odds of that happening are very slim. But I mean, it was just a thought that came up in my mind when he got drafted. But you never know.”
Dybantsa is correct, and not just about Victor Wembanyama being ridiculous… the chances that the Spurs would be in position to select him with the 1st overall pick seem slim. With the way Wembanyama and the rest of the Spurs core is developing, one would think the Spurs would be in the Playoff mix next season. However, the Spurs do have a potential ace in the hole.
In one of their first moves geared toward tanking for Victor Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs traded Dejounte Murray to the Atlanta Hawks for a bounty of draft picks that they’ll continue feast on until the 2027 NBA Draft. In 2026, the Spurs have the ability to swap picks with the Hawks if Atlanta’s pick is worse. Though it doesn’t seem likely that Atlanta will bottom out by the end of the 2025-26 season, crazier things have happened.
While we shouldn’t be in a hurry to wish away any years of the career of Victor Wembanyama, the thought of pairing him with a physical specimen like Dybantsa is intriguing enough to start thinking about what may come to be 18 months from now. At the very least, the Spurs may have two bites at the apple, and with multiple picks in the 2025 NBA Draft, they could parlay those selections into picks in 2026 instead.
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