It's been a brutal stretch for the NBA. I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm watching all 82 games, so I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to the 2025-2026 tank-a-thon and all of the negative press the NBA got this season. All I know comes from Ryen Russillo and Bill Simmons – and that it's bad. But it goes beyond the 2025-2026 season.
The All-Star game has been a joke for a decade, and not in the way the Pro Bowl is. No one has ever cared about the Pro Bowl, and we are generally pretty okay with the travesty that it has turned into – but the dunk contest and the NBA All-Star game used to be spectacles, events my friends and I would look forward to in high school.
On top of that, since the 2016 Finals (with some exception), the playoffs haven't had the same allure. LeBron vs. the Warriors was awesome for two years before Kevin Durant ruined the competitive dynamic in the NBA, a dynamic that was only restored because he suffered a catastrophic injury – and the recipient of the goodwill that came with it was a Canadian team.
The 2020 championship was cool; but it wasn't the same – for obvious reasons. The absence of a crowd put a damper on things despite the whole sports world focusing on it; the only good thing was LeBron secured his much-needed 4th ring. The 2021 Finals, no one can even remember – the Suns may have had the flukiest conference title run of all time. It was cool to see Curry win his own ring in 2022, but that was followed up with the Nuggets trouncing the Heat in a contest that was never really in question.
The Celtics were such an unlikeable champion, thanks mostly to Jayson Tatum, and that leads us into the 2025 Finals – which should have been the best one since 2016. I looked it up the other day and couldn't believe that it was the first Game 7 of the NBA Finals since LeBron's heroic and historic comeback nine years earlier. But – to no one's fault – we were completely robbed of that potentially electric Game 7.
So now the NBA has had to hear all season about how it's broken, it's dying, how Adam Silver needs to fix it before it's irreparable. How tanking is bad, how they fumble the time of year right after the Super Bowl when nothing else is on, how load management is a problem, how stars are never playing.
The NBA has a solution. It has nothing to do with anti-tanking, anti-flopping, minutes requirements, or altering the draft lottery. The solution is already here.
His name is Victor Wembanyama.
The NBA doesn't need all these rule changes, they need a golden boy. Someone who you know, I know, your mom knows, my mom knows, my dog knows, your deceased great-grandfather knows, your hairdresser knows, your daughter's English tutor knows. Like how Jordan dominated the 90s and LeBron dominated 2003 to whenever he dies, like how Steph dominated a few years in there somewhere – the NBA needs a guy that gets normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill Americans off their couch saying, "What?!"
They have him – now if everything goes according to my plan, he can save the league for the next 15 years. The plan? Lose to the Thunder in heartbreaking, possibly even borderline-controversial, fashion.
This will give us two things the NBA desperately needs: 1) a hero, and 2) a villain.
Even though I disagree with the rationale behind hating the Thunder, it's irrefutable that most people already do. There's no better way to gain haters than by winning, and two consecutive NBA championships would certainly add to the hater base of the Thunder and solidify its existing coalition. The Thunder, up there with one of the most talented teams ever assembled, will become the 2020s version of the 2010s Warriors – the team that stomps through the competition and essentially renders the regular season moot.
Wembanyama, on the contrary, has the opportunity to become the LeBron James of the 2020s – the enemy of the imperial, the slayer of the dragon. LeBron winning the 2016 championship was a turning point obviously in his career, but also in how he was discussed. Many people, myself included, were not LeBron fans prior to his 2010s Cavaliers run, because he himself was that dragon on the Heat only a few years prior. But once he turned sides, so too did the narrative around him. Suddenly, everyone became a LeBron fan, the GOAT conversations kicked up a notch, and to this day there exists a coterie of basketball fans and non-basketball fans that will go to their grave saying LeBron is the greatest player of all time.
This was excellent for the sport. 2016. The last awesome year of NBA basketball.
It's been sliding for the past nine years. 2025 was bad. 2026 will continue to worsen.
But in 2026, what's different – a beacon. A Victor Wembanyama-shaped star at the end of the tunnel.
A Wembanyama victory in the Finals today would be too much for the sport – we aren't ready. He'd become a figure larger than life, we'd be saying it's unfair, people would get sick of his decades of dominance. He wouldn't have earned it. He needs to be knocked down, pick himself back up, and climb to the top of the mountain.
A loss in the conference semifinals? Just right. The Thunder start to be talked about as a superteam, one that fans plan their day around hate-watching. It's unfair, they say, who can take this team down?
Enter: the hero. Victor Wembanyama. The one man who can silence the Thunder. The next Michael Jordan, LeBron James. A superstar the NBA can claim as their own. One who can market the league to the entire world. One who gets the parents and grandparents watching. Someone who's likeable, easy to root for, and here to stay. The savior of America's third-most popular sport. Someone who today's kids will be insisting is better than LeBron James ever was.
We just need to wait one more year.