I'm not worried about his shooting or rustiness. I'm much more worried about his main-character bull where he keeps breaking plays trying to get touches. Gaining muscle is nice, but what I wanted to see Victor come into the season with was a better understanding of how to move as a center in the NBA and some reliable moves to score inside the arc. The problem last year was NOT that no one on the Spurs was smart enough to throw Victor a pass. A lot of fans clung to that idea because they didn't want to look at Wemby critically. Yes, the players weren't very good, but far less talented bigs could've had success on last year's teams provided they understood how to play the position. The teammates were capping his ceiling but not really lowering his floor.
This is still a young year obviously, and there's plenty of time to see progress, but Victor has far better teammates this year than he did last year just by virtue of guys like Jones and Johnson being back-ups rather than starters, removing Branham and Wesley from the rotation. His inability to get quality touches tonight is not on them, even though I've seen some folks try to push blame on the other guys. I don't care if fans accept that or keep going on believing Wemby is never in the wrong. It concerns me to think Victor believes something like that and uses that believe to focus on the wrong things in his progression. He's not going to be a superstar center until he learns how to be an adequate center, and that includes turning down his impulse to be the main character on offense. The point of a Paul is to set Wemby up, not to throw Wemby the ball whenever he throws his hand up. He needs to focus on doing the things the offense needs him to do so it can flow and get him touches. That means setting and holding better screens, taking fewer impulse shots and being in spots that space the floor for his teammates.
Opponents are going to come into this year with actual plans to check Victor, and he's going to need to have better answers than he did last year. He got by mostly off the sheer absurdity of his physical makeup last year, but that shock value is not going to be there this time around. He badly needs to have some spots on the floor where he feels comfortable getting the ball and go-to moves to use when he gets those chances. That he isn't living off taking 8- to 12-footers off the catch boggles my mind, because those shots are basically unguardable and are very hard for the defense to prevent Wemby from getting if there's any pressure being put on them by the other four guys. Shoot those until the defenders start flailing about trying to contest them. Then just step through and lay it in. Just simple, bread and butter actions, but they aren't going to come from iso's and post-ups. They require coordinated movement, which means less freelancing.
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