The San Antonio Spurs have now formally selected French basketball player and potential superhuman Victor Wembanyama in the 2023 NBA Draft. They practically selected him upon winning the NBA Draft Lottery a few weeks ago. And the Spurs began manifesting the dream of drafting Wembanyama when trading Derrick White to Boston, and then doubled-down on that manifestation by trading Dejounte Murray to Atlanta, and then tripled-down on that manifestation by trading Jakob Poeltl back to the Raptors.
But you don’t need the history lesson, all that matters is Wembanyama is a Spur. And if he’s going to be the franchise cornerstone we all hope he’ll be, he needsa cool nickname.
Yes, he comes pre-programmed with “Wemby,” but y’all, I know we can do better. I now present to you… The official Fiesta Shorts guide to giving Victor Wembanyama a better nickname.
Wemby?
Let’s just get this one out of the way. Wemby is boring, lazy, and uninspired. I’m not trying to say “The Big Fundamental” was the most creative name of all time, but at least someone tried. Simply deleting 2⁄3 of Victor’s last name and adding a “y” at the end feels like a complete lack of effort. Just admit you can’t be bothered to learn how to say his last name, which is not hard to do.
Counterpoint: Apparently Wembanyama likes this nickname so that’s unfortunate.
The French Rejection
Because he blocks shots, you see. It’s one of the many things he’s very good at, and this nickname also harkens to an old timey noir film I’ve never seen and probably never will. But that doesn’t matter. It also just sounds cool. I can hear Bill Land shouting “THE FRENCH REJECTION” in my dreams and I’ve never slept better than I do right now.
One small, tiny bummer about this is that Basketball Reference lists this as a nickname of Rudy Gobert, but I have never heard anyone call him this so I’m going ignore that. They also say that Gobert is known as the Stifle Tower and… Gobzilla? This can’t be right. While we’re at it, you shouldn’t get to claim more than one nickname at a time. Gobert is breaking all kinds of unwritten rules here.
I propose that if The French Rejection truly is a nickname Gobert goes by, we play a game for it. If, at any point in his career, Wembanyama out-blocks Gobert over a season OR in a head-to-head game gets to take The French Rejection for himself.
AND if Wembanyama ever blocks a Gobert shot during a game, Wembanyama immediately takes ownership of the name. Fair? Fair.
Big Vic
I haaaaaate this one. This is also lazy as hell. And again, just because you can’t bother to pronounce the dude’s name doesn’t mean you get to resort to something this easy.
The thing that really proactively scares me about anyone using this nickname is the inevitability of people calling him “Big Dick Vic” the first time he wins a game with a clutch move.
That’s just weird, we gotta move on from this one. Put a big ol’ “NO” stamp on the Big Vic document please and thank you.
WembanJAMA
The thing I like about this name is that jamming is cool. Space Jam was cool. NBA Jam is cool. Jam on toast? Sign me up! Uh… Bob Marley did some jamming and people seem to love that. I once watched a Phish concert via livestream and while they were technically jamming (ferociously jamming at times, I would say) I was unable to definitively determine whether or not it was cool.
Let’s not get too hung up on that last one. Generally, jamming is cool. Cool? Cool.
Speaking of things I can hear Bill Land shouting in my dreams… “WembanJAMA with the put back… ohhhh mama” is up there.
Does Wembanyama jam? He can jam. We might have to wait until he has a sick dunk reel to use this name, but I want it out there as an option so we don’t forget about it if he starts going nuts on the AT&T Center rims.
Victor the Restrictor
Okay. No this is stupid. My bad, y’all.
Frankenstein
OKAY HEAR ME OUT because I live in Germany and maybe it makes more sense in Deutsch, but in Germany, instead of France we say “Frankreich” and we’ve established that Wembanyama is kind of a monster (in the coolest way), so you see?
Frank = he’s French, “-enstein” because of Frankenstein’s monster?
It works, just trust me on this one.
Personally, I’m stuck on The French Rejection but Frankenstein is growing on me. Like, between the time I wrote this and the time it was ready to publish Frankenstein probably became my favorite. Got a better nickname? Share it with us on Twitter @projectspurs and shout it from the rafters all season long.
