On October 22, 2025, the NBA season began. One night later, it felt finished. Not because anyone was injured or because a bracket was quietly filed and stamped in some league office, but because Victor Wembanyama walked onto the floor, unfolded himself like a celestial origami, and made basketball look like a solved game.
The San Antonio Spurs beat the Dallas Mavericks 125–92, which is the part of the story that belongs to box scores and historians. The part that belongs to the poets: Wembanyama’s 40 points and 15 rebounds in 21 years of bone-deep inevitability; the numbers are almost an act of modesty compared with the mood he imposed. He didn’t so much “dominate” as alter the laws of engagement. The rim became his private runway, the paint his cordoned-off airspace, the future his jurisdiction.
If you’re a skeptic, there were specifics, too. He did it clean, zero turnovers, and with the serene efficiency of a metronome: touch, elevate, finish, repeat. He stacked highlights in layers, a lasagna of inevitability, and still found time to bend the geometry of the game on defense, where arms are warnings and closeouts feel like weather events. He finished with the kind of two-way spread that coaches dream in: 40 points, 15 boards, a handful of dark-matter plays that never make the stat sheet, and an all-caps reminder that shot contests can be psychological warfare. Officially, the ledger reads 40–15 with three blocks. Unofficially, it reads: “good luck to everyone else.”
There have been nights when great players started seasons with pronouncements: LeBron with a runway dunk, Steph with a 35-footer, Giannis with an avalanche. Wembanyama’s declaration was different. It wasn’t loud. It was liturgical. We didn’t watch an athlete take a leap so much as we watched gravity concede. Alien? That was last year’s nickname. Last night was something else: heavenly; a visitation with footwork. He rose, and Dallas fell into line.
What does it mean to be “unstoppable” in a league engineered to stop you? It looks like this: a seven-and-change center gliding into a transition pull-up as if the floor is inclined, catching lobs from angles that make cameramen mutter, closing late but arriving early, drawing double teams that feel like group therapy. It means every coaching counter arrives a beat behind the premise. Trap him? He slips it with a side-arm laser. Sit on his right? He goes up, over, and through your geometry like a compass correcting a map. Switch small? That’s not a mismatch; it’s a mercy. Bring help? He invites it, then erases your weak side with a fingertip. Somewhere between step and reach, the Mavs discovered what “length” means when it’s paired with timing and calm.
You could see it in the Mavericks’ body language: the way drives veered off course six inches earlier than usual, the micro-hesitations that turn good shots into second thoughts. Even the makes felt provisional; a few possessions rented from a landlord who could evict at will. Dallas shot in fragments while San Antonio played in sentences. The Spurs led by as many as 33. Opening night, and the gap felt…terminal.
The heresy, of course, is to say the quiet part out loud: this is what the end of suspense looks like. That’s sacrilege in a league that sells parity and plot twists; it’s also what your eyes whisper when Wembanyama strings five straight possessions that could be art installations. There’s a reason the record book already bent: 40 is now the most points a Spur has ever scored in a season opener, a franchise with George Gervin etched into its baseboards. The Iceman used to own October; now it belongs to a young center who turns October into April on demand.
If you’re hunting for responsible caveats, I can list them like vitamins. It’s one game. Scouting adjusts. Regression happens. The league is an arms race staffed by savants with clickers and sleep-deprived assistants. But there’s a difference between trends and truths, and last night felt closer to the latter. The truth is that Wembanyama’s margin for error is so obscene that the “adjustments” other teams make are really acts of triage. He can win an A- game by rendering your A+ plan ornamental. If he misses, he changes the possession; if he’s late, he’s on time; if he’s on time, he’s early. What, exactly, is the counter to a player whose Plan B is “be taller, faster, calmer”?
We’ve spent a decade arguing about the GOAT like it’s a dinner table vote. Last night reminded us that greatness can sometimes be a fait accompli… less debate than meteorology. You don’t argue with a sunrise; you invest in better curtains. The bones of his résumé will take years to calcify: MVPs, titles, lore. But the shape of it? You saw the silhouette against the Jumbotron: the best offensive and defensive player in the same uniform, the same minute, the same possession. We’ve seen two-way supernovas – MJ, Hakeem, Giannis, peak Kawhi – and the comparison isn’t sacrilege; it’s suggestion. Wembanyama’s path is different: he is a skyscraper with ballet slippers, a cheat code written in French.
San Antonio, for its part, looked like a team that has discovered the tone of its symphony. The shots were clean, the floor balanced, the basketball modern without being sterile. When your center bends spacetime, you don’t need to be perfect; you need to be present. The Spurs were present, and then some, humming on 57.5% shooting and coasting after halftime. That they never trailed once the adjustment period ended felt less like game flow and more like manifesto. Opening night isn’t supposed to close conversations. This one did.
And Dallas? There’s no shame in being the first chapter of someone else’s epic, but there is a warning in the margins. The Mavs will be fine against mortals. They will retool rotations, polish spacing, and find counters that work against 28 franchises. Against this one, against him, they will, like the rest of us, need to negotiate with physics. The season remains long; the climb remains steep; but the summit view just gained a doorman.
Maybe it’s too much, too soon. Maybe it’s sportswriterly malpractice to turn a season opener into a coronation. Yet it didn’t feel like a coronation so much as an acknowledgment. We have seen God, or at least something god-adjacent in sneakers, and the feeling is at once exalting and terrifying. The league asked a fair question last night: who can stop him? It received a very boring answer: no one you know.
So yes, the season just started. And also, in a way that feels both holy and a little unfair, it’s over. The alien has ascended. Heavenly is the better word. He didn’t break the game. He blessed it, and that might be even scarier.
