10 wildly overlooked aspects of Wembanyama's historic Rookie of the Year season

2) Wembanyama is already an elite NBA center. 

After being drafted, it seemed as though the Spurs plan for Wembanyama was to have him play power forward for at least the first two seasons of his career. Despite that, after what would turn out to be a 20-game losing streak, San Antonio was forced to change course and experiment with playing him at center. 

That turned out to be a fantastic decision and he has proven to be far more effective playing the five than playing power forward. Playing without another big man has given the Spurs more spacing and also allowed them to play faster. That is partly due to Wembanyama being a terrific transition player who often leaks out to try and get easy fast break points.

As Wembanyama's shooting has come along, it has also given him more opportunity to play on the perimeter without being relegated to the post, while the likes of Zach Collins set screens and facilitates from outside the paint. We now know that Wembanyama can be a good pull-up 3-point shooter and can be effective posting up. He can even face up further away from the basket and use terrific footwork and long strides to get to the rim. 

Defensively, he's played closer to the rim and has seen his block totals spike, averaging 3.6 blocks per game, an outrageous number for a rookie. It might have taken longer to learn those things with Wembanyama playing the four.