How winning Defensive Player of the Year would put Victor Wembanyama in extremely rare company

Yesterday at 11:23 AM

Wemby has a chance to stand alone with Michael Jordan and David Robinson — and it's just his second season.

Victor Wembanyama makes some kind of history almost every time he steps on the court, whether it's posting some kind of unique box score or reaching a milestone earlier than most (if any) other player — or at least Spur — has. It's fun to follow in real time (and nearly impossible to keep track of), but it's also just as fun to consider his future potential. He's already won Rookie of the Year and is the odds on favorite for Defensive Player of the Year this season (and likely for many more to come), which would out him in some extremely rare company yet again.

Yesterday, Extra Muse tweeted out a Venn diagram, showing players who have won Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and MVP. As a quick refresher, a Venn diagram shows the relationship between multiple concepts, and where the circles overlap is where those concepts have something in common. In this case, the blue circle consists players who have won Rookie of the Year, yellow is Defensive Player of the Year, and Red is MVP. Anyone within the areas where either of those circles overlap are players who have won each of those awards.

It may be a little hard to see (you can click on it to expand), but there are several Spurs in there. There's Wemby in the Rookie of the Year circle (just to the right of the "R" in YEAR") and Kawhi Leonard and Oscar Robertson in DPOY. In the overlapping areas, you have Tim Duncan with both ROY and MVP, and standing in the center of it all is David Robinson and Michael Jordan as the only two players to have ever won all three awards. It's a testament to both how great The Admiral was and how underrated he has become, but it's also hard to ignore the fact that Duncan isn't in there with them.

Despite holding an NBA-record 15 All-Defensive team appearances, he never won DPOY. He was truly a victim of style over substance, where more defensive-minded, physically intimidating, dramatic players like Ben Wallace and Dwight Howard won the award a combined 7 times during Duncan's prime. The ooo's and aah's their booming blocks into the stands generated stood out more than Duncan's more subtle but equally effective defense, which often had the goal of block-and-gather the ball to gain possession rather than still giving the ball back to the other team by sending flying it out of bounds.

Another interesting note is just three players have ever won DPOY and MVP but not ROY: Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Garnett and Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Dream was beaten by Jordan for the award in 1986, so that's understandable, but it is amusing looking back at who beat Garnett and Giannis: Damon Stoudamire (1996) and Michael Carter-Williams (2014), respectively. It just goes to show that those two may have entered the league a little raw — both were long, super skinny 18-year-olds who needed time to grow back when the NBA was more physical — but they really blossomed soon after.

But enough geeking out (okay, not really) and back to the topic at hand, which is Wemby. You may notice a big ol' gap at the bottom of the diagram where currently, there are no players who won ROY and DPOY but not MVP — likely proof that ROY voters tend look at offense first and foremost. Regardless, Robinson would have been the only other player in that slot at any point in time, having won DPOY (1992) three years before MVP (1995). Jordan technically owns the same distinction, but he won both his first DPOY and MVP awards in the 1987-88 season, so he never would have been in that slot in this particular diagram, instead jumping right to the middle

So with Wemby the favorite to win DPOY this season, he could very well be alone in that area as soon as this summer and be only the second player to ever sit there other than Robinson. And even then, he too may not stay there for long as he has future MVP written all over him once he becomes a little more consistent on offense and the Spurs as a whole improve. Still, it will be interesting for whatever amount of time he owns that distinction on his own, completely unique from any other player in NBA history, before ultimately joining the same elite company in the middle — likely leaving that area vacant again.

That pretty much describes Wemby in a nutshell: unique, talented, and constantly doing things few if any other players have ever done, and this is only the beginning.