Is Victor Wembanyama Really 7’7″? We Investigate

There’s something poetic and faintly terrifying about the idea that Wembanyama might still be growing. It suggests that physical and spiritual development can run parallel. This means the entire NBA should try to win as fast as possible before Wemby and San Antonio self-actualize. 

Science, in its own way, has begun to echo what philosophy and scripture have always hinted at: growth is not always a steady climb, but at times, a sudden revelation. Dr. Michelle Lampl, a physician-anthropologist, redefined how we understand development through her theory of saltation and stasis—that the body grows in leaps, not lines. And Dr. Daniel Lieberman, Harvard’s leading voice in human evolution, studies how our bodies adapt to new demands, bearing stress, shifting form, and learning to move differently as purpose changes.

Viewed through those lenses, Wembanyama is an experiment in real time. He’s answering questions the sports world didn’t know to ask about how far the human form can evolve when mind and matter work in sync. This summer, he trained with monks in a vegan temple monastery in China for 10 days to calibrate his meditation and muscle. The first thing the monks told him to do was shave his head, which he obeyed. He sat in silence. Ate little. Breathed with intention. There’s a photo of him standing in a dining room—his head damn near reaches the ceiling as he towers over other monks. He seems to be teaching his mind to move like his muscles: pliable and elastic.

Monk writings teach impermanence, how beauty lives in what’s unfinished. “The most precious thing,” KenkÅ, a 14th-century monk wrote, “is its uncertainty.” Maybe that’s Wembanyama, still under construction.

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