Victor Wembanyama Is The Unanimous 2023-24 Rookie Of The Year

Every now and then, the NBA’s award season gives us a result that absolutely no one saw coming. The 2023-24 Rookie of the Year award was not one of those times, as the frontrunner to take home the Wilt Chamberlain trophy did just that. On Monday night, TNT’s NBA crew announced that San Antonio Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama will become the third player in franchise history to take home the award.

Wembanyama becoming the league’s best first-year player seemed to be an inevitability when the Spurs took him No. 1 overall in the 2023 NBA Draft. While he took a few months to really find his footing in the NBA, he started to blossom when the calendar turned to January and never looked back. By the time the year came to an end, Wembanyama had already started to dominate on the offensive end of the floor, and established himself as one of the league’s most devastating defensive players — he is a finalist for the Defensive Player of the Year award, which will be handed out on Tuesday night.

On the year, Wembanyama averaged 21.4 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 1.2 steals, and a league-best 3.6 blocks in 29.7 minutes per game while shooting 46.5 percent from the field. He joins the last two Spurs players to get selected No. 1 overall, David Robinson and Tim Duncan, in winning the award.

Wembaynama earned all 99 first place votes, beating out Charlotte’s Brandon Miller, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, and Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren, the No. 2 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft who missed all of last year with an injury.