ESPN’s Shams Charania: Wembanyama is 100% Motivated by MVP Award Snub

Shams Charania confirmed what every camera angle from Game 1 had already suggested. Victor Wembanyama was not surprised by the MVP outcome. He was motivated by it.

"That's real," Charania told Rich. "That's why, you know, you think about how big of a deal, a big story on its face just Shai Gilgeous-Alexander winning back-to-back MVP awards on its face alone."

Charania spent the first half of his answer building the case that Shai's award is itself historic. The Thunder guard is the 14th player ever to win consecutive MVPs. He is the first guard to do it since Stephen Curry. He is the first back-to-back winner since Nikola Jokić. The list of players who have done what Shai just did rhymes with the list Wembanyama wants to climb.

"In the same category as Michael Jordan," Charania said.

For Wembanyama, the snub framing is not about merit. It is about fuel. Charania has been around Wemby's orbit since he was 16 and 17 years old in France, sitting in the back of his agent's car while that agent told reporters this kid was going to be the best player in the world someday. The competitive wiring has been visible since then.

"Anyone that knows Victor Wembanyama, he's as focused, as driven of a young star as we've seen come into the league," Charania said. He compared the gene to Cooper Flagg, Anthony Edwards, and Luka Dončić as the small group of players in that range. Wembanyama, in Charania's read, is still the most singular of them.

The off-court detail was the part Rich asked about. Charania pointed listeners to a Ramona Shelburne ESPN feature from earlier in the day that detailed Wembanyama's offseason. Time in Asia training with monks. Time in Los Angeles picking Kevin Garnett's brain. Time in Houston working with Hakeem Olajuwon. Time back in San Antonio. Everything mapped out, everything productive, everything pointed at the next season.

"He's not interested necessarily in some of the lifestyle components that come with being in the NBA," Charania said. The interests outside basketball, in Charania's accounting, run toward NASA, outer space, and potentially aliens.

"Maybe he is researching himself," Charania said.

Then Rich asked the question that has been on his mind for two weeks. What was said in the tarmac conversation between Gregg Popovich and Wembanyama after Wembanyama was ejected against Minnesota?

Charania did not have specifics, but he had structure.

"That to me looks like a very classic Pop-Wemby moment," he said.

The framework he used to explain it required a piece of organizational news he himself had broken last summer. Popovich, despite no longer being the head coach, is the president of basketball operations of the Spurs. He is still the decision-maker. Brian Wright runs the day to day, makes the draft picks, executes the trades. RC Buford is CEO. Mitch Johnson is the head coach.

"Those guys are the godfathers of this organization," Charania said.

The deeper play, in Charania's read, is that the Spurs are building the next dynastic Pop-and-RC pairing, this time in Wright as GM and Johnson as head coach. They want a 30-year structure, not a three-year one.

Whatever Popovich said to Wembanyama on the tarmac, Charania promised to chase the exact words for next time. The performances since the conversation, including the 40-and-20 in Game 1, have made the original conversation the most interesting question of the postseason.

Even the elbow on Naz Reid, Charania said, fits in the same character profile. The Spurs feel teams have been increasingly physical with Wemby. The elbow, in their internal read, was Wemby standing up for himself.

The chip on the shoulder, in other words, was already there before the MVP vote. Shai winning it just gave the chip a new name.