Sean Elliott: Victor Wembanyama doesn’t care for the outside noise about him

Known by many for the Memorial Day Miracle, two-time All-Star Sean Elliott has been a beloved figure in the San Antonio community for decades and served as the Spurs’ color commentator for quite some time.

On behalf of Fresenius Kidney Care, Elliott spoke with HoopsHype about the unicorn Victor Wembanyama, the potential for the Spurs, kidney disease awareness, and more.

You had a front row seat to Victor Wembanyama all season. What improvements have you seen with his game that some of us from a distance can’t really see?

Sean Elliott: There have been subtle changes for sure to his game. I think for one, he’s learning how to play in the post area a lot more. He’s adapting to the physicality of the game. We had a play last week against the Warriors where he made two power dribbles in the low block and dunked it over his defender and he really got physical and backed his guy up. At the beginning of the year, it was just different, like he would catch the ball in the low block or if he didn’t, if he posted up in the low block and he didn’t get the ball, he kind of gravitated out to the wing. He’d give up position and so he doesn’t do that anymore.

He’s doing a lot better job establishing position, posting up, learning how to score in the low block. He’s also already a really good passer with great court vision and high basketball. But now he’s starting to see double teams, which is unusual for a rookie, but he does a phenomenal job of getting the ball out and making great passes. He’s more careful with the ball. His ballhandling ability was already good to begin with, but I think it’s gotten better and he’s becoming more aware of how NBA defenses are gonna play him, so he’s not turning it over as much.

I think it also helps that he’s not on a minute restriction anymore. And so he’s playing a lot in the fourth quarter. I thought that was essential for him to play there in the fourth when your legs are tired and you get a little bit fatigued and you have to make plays down the stretch.

There have been fewer foul calls now after the All-Star break. How has Wembanyama adapted to that?

SE: I think he’s done a great job. He doesn’t complain a lot when he gets fouled. Every once in a while, you’ll see him get demonstrative about maybe he thought he was fouled but he’s adjusted nicely to how physical the game has become. We had a game mid-March against Indiana and they got after him. I mean, they were just really physical, beating the hell out of him and he didn’t complain one time. He could just continue to play physical and match their physical intent and he ended up like 31 and 15 or 16 rebounds. It was a monster game from him again. It’s just part of his growth.

I thought at the beginning of the year the game was so fast for him and so physical that he had to make that adjustment. But he’s made that and the speed of the game seems like it’s slowing down for him and just the physical aspect of the game doesn’t bother him anymore. When he penetrates, he goes in there, he doesn’t expect to get whistles. He just plays through the physical nature of the game. If he gets an and-one or whistle then he gets it, but he doesn’t go in there looking to get it. He goes in there looking to get hit or get beat up. And so he’s definitely done a great job trying to finish plays.

Was there a particular moment earlier in the season you could pinpoint and think, 'Wow, this kid really could be something special?'

SE: That was our first couple games, I’ll be honest with you. I mean, when he scores 38 in Phoenix, that was pretty remarkable. But I think there have been other signature plays throughout the season. The big block on Giannis Antetokounmpo late in that game where Giannis tried to back him down and dunk over him. That was a huge play. I thought the way he played against Anthony Davis the first time, Anthony Davis had a couple of big dunks on him and he came back and answered, I thought that was really telling. There are so many plays that you could probably talk about where he just shocks you. I don’t know if there’s one instance or one moment. It’s almost every night where you see him do something, and you go that’s just remarkable. You just haven’t seen that before, and so now we’re kinda getting used to it.

You were with the Spurs when Tim Duncan first came in. Do you see any parallels between Tim and Victor both on and off the court?

SE: I don’t think there’s really any similarities on the court. I’ll be honest with you, I think they’re completely different players. Victor gets compared to David [Robinson] and Timmy, but he’s a completely different player than both of them. He’s unique. Sometimes you can take players’ attributes and kind of compare them, but I don’t think that they compare on the court. I’ll be honest because Victor is a better shooter than those guys were. I bet Victor alone this year has more threes than those two have their whole careers combined.

He is a better ballhandler. But those guys, they came in, they were more polished and they knew how to play. They’re both four-year players. So, Timmy was fundamentally sound. Timmy had a sneaky athleticism that he didn’t get credit for. Tim Duncan came in his first couple of years, he had a little jump hook that was already extremely polished and high quality where people couldn’t stop him even as a rookie. Victor still has to continue to work and polish his game, but when you talk about just what you’re given naturally talent-wise, this guy is completely different. He’s just completely different. It’s hard to make a comparison because I feel like he’s in a completely different category.

When you talk about away from the court and their personalities, that’s where you could compare him and Timmy where they’re just kinda comfortable in their own skin. They don’t really care about the noise or hear the noise that other people are talking about, which is so unusual. You have a lot of NBA players right now that are so worried about what’s going on with them on social media and what people say. Timmy didn’t care and Victor’s got the same type of attitude where he just doesn’t care. They just block all the noise out. Everybody can debate all the stuff, all they want, but those two guys are above it.

The last couple of weeks have been promising with the team. How do you see them faring next year? Do you see them in the playoffs?

SE: That’s a tough one. I feel like if we make the improvements and play the way we have the last month and a half or so, I think that we’re definitely gonna be in a situation where we rack up a lot more wins. When you look at Victor’s mindset, he wants to win now. He wants to win more games. He’s gonna go home after this season and he’s gonna watch the playoffs from afar and he’s gonna see that atmosphere and he’s gonna have a hunger for it. He’s gonna wanna be in the playoffs. It’s a great feeling and that’s where I really feel you make better strides as a young player once you get in a playoff situation that makes you better for the following year. That’s gonna be his goal and he’s gonna try to do whatever he can and drag a lot of players with him into the playoffs. And I think our guys as a whole wanna be there too.

In the second half of the season, it seems like our guys are figuring it out more and more, how to play with him, how to play through him. And we just didn’t have that the first 20 or 30 games of the season. Cedi Osman said it last week, [if] we were playing like this at the beginning of the year, we’ve be in an entirely different situation. So I don’t wanna say playoffs, but I think play-in, something like that, we’re definitely gonna threaten that and it’s gonna be a lot more fun.

Do you think the team is one big trade away or with the current core of guys they can get it done?

SE: I feel like a couple more veterans would help our team. That would be amazing, but our young guys have made a lot of strides. I mean, they’re just playing so much better and you just hope that they would take that next step and even improve from how they played the last half of the season, then we’re a much, much better team. I don’t know if you necessarily have to make a lot of trades, but I know that our team is looking to build around him, and you would like to bring in another veteran or two. Guys that have high basketball IQ, are good locker room guys, know the league and guys that have been there. They’ve been in high-pressure situations, so that would be nice and easy to do either. It’s not like these guys are just laying around, [there] a dime and a dozen. You can’t just pick guys up here and there.

In the last seven to eight years or so, there have been fewer veterans on teams. A lot of their roster spots are taken up by guys with two-way deals or Exhibit-10 deals. This has harmed younger players’ developments as they try to find their way in their careers. What are your thoughts on that?

SE: I think part of that is some of the older veterans, maybe teams look at them as not being able to play the NBA-style game as much anymore. So you don’t keep them around as opposed to even if a guy can’t help you as much on the court, he can help you in practice, he can help you away from the court with how young players should conduct themselves, would be a little bit more professional.

You don’t have that right now. You don’t have that desire to keep as many veterans around if they can’t help you on the court as much. Teams don’t sign them because maybe they’re a little bit older and everybody’s trying to get young and find potential and at the same time, you’re kind of losing the wise man in the league, the old stages. The guys that can show you the ropes, have a lot of untapped experience where in late-game situations, they can help in a huddle. They can be help at half-time or pre or post-game because of their knowledge. It’s not always about what you bring in practice, it’s game situation. These guys are talking to you on the bench. They have a lot of insider knowledge. I think a lot of that is being lost in just the search for teams to get younger. They’re kind of overlooking these older guys.

Do you think it’ll trend back the other way with more veterans?

SE: It would be nice. I think if it translates to more wins, that’s the biggest thing. You have one young team that’s really getting it done in OKC and the other young teams are struggling. So I always think it’s okay to have a lot of young guys on the team, but you gotta balance that out with some older guys that kinda can help you off the court and they know the ropes. They’re bringing a lot of knowledge to these guys on the court. All these guys that have been around, I know all the tricks and the secrets and that’s something that is valuable for every team.

Coach Gregg Popovich signed a five-year extension last summer. Do you think he will finish out that contract as the Spurs coach?

SE: I don’t know, you have to ask him. Pop seems to me this year to be in a really great mood. I think it stems from several things. I mean we haven’t won a lot of games but we have an incredible group of young guys who just continue to play hard and work and they haven’t fractured. They haven’t splintered like a lot of teams that haven’t won a lot of games. Our guys aren’t pointing fingers at each other. They continue to come to the gym and work hard and they stuck together and I think that makes it easier for him and just the fact that they’re soaking up whatever he says and they’re going out and they’re playing hard every single night and he’s having fun watching them grow.

When you see that kind of growth and when you see guys absorbing what you’re telling them, it’s gotta be a rewarding feeling. Watching him this year it seems that he’s having a great time. I’ve seen him in a better mood more this year than I’ve seen him in a while. So I know that he’s enjoying what he’s doing, and I know that he wants to give these guys a solid foundation for their careers. He’s got a lot of energy. He doesn’t look like he’s slowing down. He’s still sharp as hell. So, I wouldn’t bet against him. I wouldn’t bet against him finishing that’s for sure.

Can you talk about your journey dealing with kidney failure and the risk factors and the importance of early screening and detection?

SE: I was diagnosed with kidney disease at 25 years old, but they didn’t really know exactly what was wrong with me. The reason that I’ve teamed up with Fresenius Kidney Care is just to shine a spotlight on how early detection could be a game changer for you. Because when kidney disease finally presents itself and you start finally feeling the symptoms, it means the disease is advanced. And so for me, I was blindsided at 25 years old. But my whole life I had high blood pressure. I had high blood pressure from my very first physical in junior high school. So that was pretty much untreated until I started to have problems with my kidney. Then they jumped on my high blood pressure. But if you have high blood pressure or diabetes or your family has a history of high blood pressure, diabetes or kidney disease, then you should get yourself checked. Because it’s important if you catch it early, there are all kinds of therapies, medications, things you could do to kind of stem off kidney disease as opposed to allowing you to advance and then you find yourself where you need dialysis or a kidney transplant like I did.

Diabetes and high blood pressure are major contributors to kidney disease. Also, underserved communities are more likely to go unnoticed with kidney disease because you don’t get checked with the doctor, you don’t have checkups, you don’t have physicals as much, and so you allow your kidney disease to progress.

I was 25, man. I was playing in the NBA. I didn’t ever suspect that anything like this would ever happen to me. I thought I was a picture of health. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. I was a guy who was taking care of his body, obviously exercising, working out every day. I was in really good shape and I still got struck down. And so, we know that right now there’s a health crisis in our country. I mean, not everybody’s taking care of themselves, eating right, exercising, so there are a lot of high-risk groups out there. Minorities are at a high risk as well. A little bit higher risk than non-minorities. A lot of those minorities live in underserved communities health-wise. And so they’re not getting physical examinations, they’re not getting check-ups and they’re allowing kidney disease, which right now, one in seven American adults has kidney disease in this country has chronic kidney disease. That’s 35 million Americans, I mean, that’s a huge number.

And so when you consider a lot of those people are like me. We’re nine out of 10 Americans that have kidney disease don’t know that they have it. Nine out of 10. So 90 percent of the people have kidney disease or walking around have no idea that they have it and you’re allowing the disease to progress.

I read up on how African American communities are disproportionately affected by kidney disease compared to other races like white and Asian. Black people are three times more likely than white people to experience kidney failure. It can probably be traced back to the Tuskegee experiments that started back in the 1930s. Can you speak a bit about the importance it is to educate underserved communities so they have a better understanding of this?

SE: That’s a great question and I’ve talked about that in the past actually, where African Americans or Black Americans have more of a distrust of the medical profession than other ethnic groups because of that. That was a huge factor when you talk about the Tuskegee experiments. I think the biggest thing is that we need to have a lot more health care professionals. I would say that we need to definitely have more interaction and openness and transparency between the medical profession and its patients and its clients. It also helps if you have more black professionals or more black doctors and health care workers that are there to ease the fears of black Americans walking into the doctor’s office. I think that also makes a connection where you can alleviate their fears. I think that’s probably the most obvious answer.

Story originally appeared on HoopsHype