Victor Wembanyama made most look silly during his first NBA campaign — and he’s doing the same at the 2024 Olympics.
As Team France squared off with Team Japan on Tuesday, the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama was improbably lined up against 5-foot-6 guard Yuki Togashi in a 94-90 overtime victory for the French squad.
The matchup, pitting the Games’ tallest and shortest players against one another, made for a viral moment on social media.
Not shockingly, Wembanyama led the way in France’s win with 18 points, 11 rebounds and six assists in 31 minutes.
Meanwhile, Togashi scored just three points on 1 of 6 shooting in nearly 12 minutes of play.
The 20-year-old phenom’s prowess is carrying over from his first NBA campaign in which he averaged 21.4 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 3.6 blocks and 1.2 steals per game en route to winning Rookie of the Year and finishing as the Defensive Player of the Year runner-up.
That top-tier ability applies to height, too; Wembanyama is tied with the Rockets’ Boban Marjanovic as the tallest in the league at 7-foot-4.
Alongside the Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert and other NBA veterans in Nicolas Batum and ex-Knicks Evan Fournier and Frank Ntilikina, the French have gone a perfect 2-0 in Group B play.
Wembanyama and Team France will battle Germany in their final group-stage game on Friday.
Meanwhile, Japan — with Rui Hachimura, ex-Net Yuta Watanabe and Pacers rookie Keisei Tominaga — is now 0-2 and will square off with Brazil on Friday.
Playing in his native France, the 2024 Summer Games are the Olympic debut of Wembanyama, although he was previously a member of the country’s national team during EuroBasket 2022 and FIBA competitions in 2019 and 2021.
In fact, the sensation set a FIBA single-tournament blocks per game record in 2021, the same year he battled Chet Holmgren and Team USA in the finals of the U19 World Cup.