Things You Love To See: Victor Wembanyama Announces He's Recovered From His Blood Clot Issue And Has Been Fully Cleared By The Spurs To Return

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This past February, I'd say it was a bit of a shock that we went from watching Wemby dominate in the All Star Game to then immediately out of nowhere be shut down for the rest of the season for what we learned was a blood clot issue in his right shoulder. It effectively ended any chance the Spurs may have had to sneak into the Play In, it basically robbed Wemby of the DPOY/1st Team All NBA he was essentially a lock for, but really none of that shit really mattered at the time. When you're dealing with blood clots, the last thing that matters is basketball. Sure, it was a bummer that we wouldn't be able to see one of the best players in the league play for the rest of the year, but what's more important is ya know, Wemby's actual life.

Well, fast forward to today and we have great news!

“I'm officially cleared to return. It just happened — I got the green light from the Spurs' medical staff just a few hours ago (last Friday). Phew, I’ll finally be able to play a bit of basketball again !”

Hell yes. I'm not even a Spurs fan and this has me very excited for this upcoming season. If you were to list out all the players in the NBA right now who are "must watch" players when they're on the floor, Wemby is certainly pretty damn high on that list. He's incredible, and I don't think enough people truly understood what type of season he was having before the February shutdown. I'm talking about a campaign that was easily a top 5 MVP type of season

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So the news that he's been fully cleared is great for a number of reasons. First and most importantly, his health is good to go. I can only imagine how terrifying of a situation that had to be at the time, so it's great news to learn that he's been fully cleared.

But let's not sleep on the basketball aspect of this news either. The Spurs are going to be a fascinating team in the West this year, and have arguably one of the best young cores in the entire NBA. Between Wemby, Fox, Harper, Castle, and Vassell, that's a pretty exciting group, and let's not forget they also made the best value signings of the offseason in bringing in Luke Kornet. You might laugh, but just watch. The Kornet/Wemby frontcourt is going to dominate during their minutes together. Good luck scoring at the rim against those lineups!

The question becomes, can the Spurs crack the Play In? Most likely, it's going to take at least 39-40 wins just to be the 9/10 seeds, which would be about a 6 win jump from what we saw last year from SA. Is it possible that maybe a team like MEM or SAC drops out, and the Spurs take one of their spots? It certainly won't be easy to break through given how tough the West is, but with Wemby back in addition to their high lottery pick in Harper and some internal development from their other young players. you would expect the wins to start showing up at some point.

If Wemby is the generational player he certainly looks to be, eventually that has to translate into team Ws. Entering Year 3, why can't this be the first year we see that rise? At some point, you need to transition from "young exciting core with potential" to actually getting it done on the court, and now that we know Wemby will be 100% to start the year, I don't think it's crazy to suggest the Ws are coming.

All I know is if you're a team with title hopes, you better hurry up and get it. We're only going to get so many seasons where a team like SA and a player like Wemby are still in the early stages of their rebuild, and this doesn't even factor in the other young teams that have either already won (OKC) or looked poised to be on the verge of taking that title leap (HOU), and that's just in the Western Conference. Good luck!