Victor Wembanyama is going to be an NBA MVP one day, and it has always been a matter of “when” rather than “if” for the San Antonio Spurs’ star. His production already looks like that of an MVP, so whether this is the season he wins his first depends more on San Antonio’s team success than on his individual performances at this point.

Time is also on his side. He will be 23 years old by the end of the upcoming regular season, only a year older than Derrick Rose was when he became the youngest MVP in NBA history in 2011, so even if he does not win it this year, he will still have at least a decade to do so. 

Last season’s third-place finish in the MVP race shows how close he already is though. Only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who won his second straight MVP with 83 first-place votes, and three-time winner Nikola Jokic finished ahead of him, while Wembanyama collected five first-place votes of his own in just his third season.

Wembanyama averaged 25.0 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 3.1 blocks while shooting 51.2 percent from the field. He led the league in blocks for the third straight season and, at 22, became the youngest winner of Defensive Player of the Year and the first unanimous one. It is easy to imagine him one day, maybe even this season, becoming just the fourth player in NBA history to win both MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same campaign, joining Michael Jordan (1988), Hakeem Olajuwon (1994) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (2020).

Ultimately, his case hinges on the Spurs’ continued success. Last season, he carried San Antonio to 62 wins, the No. 2 seed in the West and the NBA Finals, where they lost to the New York Knicks in five games. That run came ahead of schedule, since few expected the young Spurs to get that far so soon, although that success has only raised the bar for this season.

His main rivals in this race remain the same, with Gilgeous-Alexander still the benchmark. The 28-year-old guard averaged 31.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 6.6 assists for a 64-win Oklahoma City Thunder team last year. Jokic of the Denver Nuggets and Luka Doncic of the Los Angeles Lakers are expected to be major contenders as well, though their teams are unlikely to match the regular-season success of San Antonio or Oklahoma City who are expected to top the West once again.

Wembanyama has a chance to start his potential MVP run on a strong note in the season opener where the Spurs will host the Thunder in a rematch of last season’s seven-game Western Conference Finals. A big night and a win would give him an early head start, which makes the opener less of a routine curtain-raiser than the latest chapter of this budding rivalry between two potential dynasties led by generational talents.