Wemby's ode to 'tactically more correct basketball'

Victor Wembanyama, it seemed, had issued a decree.

- Marcus Thompson II

San Antonio Spurs' Victor Wembanyama dunking over Jalen Williams of the Oklahoma City Thunder during their NBA win on Dec 25. PHOTO: IMAGN IMAGES

(PHOTO: IMAGN IMAGES)

One veiled in gratitude and sealed with sarcasm.“I’m just glad to be part of something that’s growing to be so beautiful,” he said. “Pure and ethical basketball.”

This rang as if from a herald, with the panache of a proposed law. Especially because it came after a win on Dec 23 over the Oklahoma City Thunder - the new face of manipulation of the National Basketball Association (NBA), given their position as dominant defending champions - Wembanyama seemed to revel in the sweet victory of a hero over a villain. As if the future face of basketball threw down a challenge to the next generation of superstars.

Cut the shenanigans.

See, the San Antonio Spurs’ big man did not invent the term. Ethical basketball as a talking point was born in an ideological battle that has been waged online for years now, conceived by the flopping era and the NBA’s freedom-of-movement edict. What was once niche - Reggie Miller extending his leg on three-pointers, and Michael Jordan getting phantom whistles seemed to grow into an epidemic of players falling as if touch fouls were sniper fire.

So the concept of ethical basketball praised players such as Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant for not intentionally feasting at the free-throw line. And, simultaneously, it chided players such as James Harden and Joel Embiid for unabashedly manipulating the rules as a steady diet.