Victor Wembanyama crossing his arms during U.S. national anthem is a problem for the NBA | Bobby Burack
At just 22 years old, Victor Wembanyama entered the NBA Finals on Wednesday with an opportunity to establish himself as the face of the league for the next decade.
Known simply as "Wemby," he has the look, personality and seemingly unearthly style of play to become the NBA's next one-name superstar, joining the ranks of Michael, Kobe and LeBron.
Unfortunately, his Finals debut fell short.
The Spurs blew a 14-point second-half lead in a Game 1 loss to the Knicks. Wembanyama finished with 26 points, but he shot just 6-for-21 from the field and struggled to impose his will down the stretch.
Yet by Thursday morning, much of the discussion surrounding Wembanyama had little to do with basketball.
Before the game, cameras caught Wembanyama standing with his arms crossed during the U.S. national anthem. Fans noticed immediately.
It's unclear why Wembanyama chose to stand that way. He has done it before, though it drew little attention given the difference in scale between the Finals and the rest of the NBA season.
Was he making a political statement? Was it simply a natural posture? As a native of France, does the gesture carry a different meaning altogether?
OutKick contacted representatives of the NBA, the Spurs and Wembanyama seeking clarification. As of publication, none had responded. We will update this story if they do.
Still, fans who interpreted the gesture as a statement about America are not doing so in a vacuum. In January, Wembanyama accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of "murdering" civilians.
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"Yeah, PR has tried, but I'm not going to sit here and give some politically correct answer," Wembanyama told reporters who asked him about unrest following the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
"Every day I wake up and see the news, and I'm horrified. I think it's crazy that some people might make it seem like or make it sound like the murder of civilians is acceptable."
For the record, "murder" is a legal term. The agents involved in the shootings were never charged with murder. Nonetheless, Wembanyama used the term, echoing rhetoric from others in sports, including NBA coach Doc Rivers.
If Wembanyama is the NBA's next defining superstar, turning himself into the league's next political activist would be a mistake.
LeBron James is one of the greatest basketball players in history, yet his decision to become deeply involved in politics alienated a significant portion of the public. That is one of the clearest differences between LeBron and Michael Jordan — that and the rings.
Jordan largely avoided political discourse during his playing career. He never fractured his fan base along ideological lines. LeBron did.
For the record, the NBA reached its peak of mainstream popularity during Jordan's reign as the league's face. By contrast, the NBA's ratings fell sharply around 2020 and 2021, when James and other players became heavily associated with political and social causes, including BLM activism, DEI initiatives and Democratic political campaigns.
Even the NFL, America's true pastime, experienced similar pushback in 2016 and 2017. Television viewership declined by double digits during the height of the Colin Kaepernick anthem protests.
Further, a YouGov/Yahoo News poll found that "nearly half of Americans" changed their sports-viewing habits between 2016 and 2020 because of "political and social messaging."
Fans at large do not want politics mixed into sports. They generally don't care what athletes do on their own time. That's the difference between Jaxson Dart introducing the sitting president in the offseason and the NBA painting "Black Lives Matter," as in the Marxian organization, on the court.
Regardless of Wembanyama's intent during the national anthem, the moment is now a story.
Videos of him standing with his arms crossed were among the most widely circulated sports clips on social media Thursday morning. Media outlets in New York are discussing the gesture. The conversation has spread beyond basketball.
That's the last thing the NBA needs right now.
For the first time in nearly a decade, the NBA is experiencing positive momentum. The viewership — albeit misleading — is no longer declining. The New York Knicks are back in the Finals for the first time since 1999. The president plans to attend Game 3 in New York City. After years of struggling to develop new mainstream attractions, the NBA appears to have found one in Wembanyama.
Taken together, those storylines should make this one of the league's most compelling Finals in recent memory. For casual sports fans, it may be the most intriguing championship matchup since Cavaliers-Warriors in 2016.
Yet instead of talking about the basketball, many fans are debating Wembanyama's posture during the national anthem. Casual fans likely did not know about his remarks regarding ICE. They do now.
For fans who just started to watch the NBA again, and there are many, that's a disheartening development. It's a reason to support something else, something more unifying instead.
At a minimum, Wembanyama previously spread harmful political propaganda by claiming that ICE agents were "murdering" civilians. Depending on his intent Wednesday night, some Americans will now view his anthem gesture as disrespectful to the flag.
To those fans, the fact that Wembanyama is French is beside the point. He is building a soon-to-be hundred-million-dollar brand in the United States, playing in an American sports league in front of an American audience.
On the court, Wembanyama has a chance to become better than both Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Keyword: chance.
At 7-foot-4, he possesses a combination of ball-handling, shooting, passing and defensive ability that the sport has never seen. He is already one of the NBA's most dominant defenders. His ceiling is impossible to quantify.
Yet for the NBA to capitalize on its resurgence, it needs Wembanyama to handle his stardom and platform much more like Jordan than LeBron.
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