Future No. 1 NBA draft pick Victor Wembanyama swishes absurd, one-footed 3-pointer, and all we can do is laugh

LeBron James said it best. Victor Wembanyama isn’t a unicorn — he’s an alien.

The NBA was wise enough to stream all of the 7-foot-4, 18-year-old Frenchman’s international games on its app, and we saw exactly why during Friday’s 78-69 win by Wembanyama’s Boulogne-Levallois over Limoges. Widely considered the most coveted NBA prospect at least since LeBron, possibly since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wembanyama’s skill set for his size is truly something we’ve never seen before.

He can shoot, he can handle, he can run the floor and finish at the rim, he protects the basket with his Stretch Armstrong wingspan and — perhaps most importantly — he already carries himself like a superstar. Wembanyama opened the eyes of NBA fans and scouts alike during a two-game showcase against the G League Ignite in early October, and he’s continued to put up gaudy stat lines for his French club.

It’s hard to believe that Wembanyama could impress us any further, but then he goes and does something like this. Early in the fourth quarter of Friday’s game, he found himself isolated against a smaller defender behind the 3-point line. After losing and recovering his dribble, Wembanyama broke out a series of between-the-legs moves before launching a one-footed, running 3-pointer that hit nothing but net.

Imagine being in the arena to see this? Oh wait, it’s 2022 — you don’t have to imagine, thanks to the miracle of smartphones.

And how about a close-up with a little slo-mo? Man, the NBA is going to have a field day marketing this guy.

You see this on rare occasions in the NBA, but it’s usually a last-second, desperation effort. Wembanyama did this with four seconds left on the shot clock — he easily could have tried to get closer toward the basket, but he had the confidence and audacity to go right into this absurd shot that he clearly works on regularly.

The only other players we’ve seen brash enough to attempt this kind of shot are top-10 all-time talents like LeBron and Steph Curry. Watch Curry after he made this shot last year. He celebrates like he just won a billion-dollar game of horse.

Wembanyama just jogged back on defense like he swished a free throw. Cold-blooded.

The other thing about this dude is that he actually produces. A lot of times we see flashes of talent from young overseas prospects, but then we look at the box score and it’s eight points, three rebounds and two assists. On Friday, Wembanyama finished with 33 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and three blocks. In his first game against the G League Ignite, he went off for 37 points and five blocks.

“No one has ever seen anyone as tall as he is but as fluid and as graceful as he is out on the floor,” James said in early October. “At 7-4, 7-5, 7-3, whatever the case may be, his ability to put the ball on the floor, shoot step-back jumpers out of the post, step-back 3s, catch-and-shoot 3s, block shots, he’s for sure a generational talent.”

When you’re getting praise like that from arguably the best to ever play the game, you know you’re the real deal. If Wembanyama’s already confidently hitting shots like this at 18 years old, imagine what we’ll see once he gets to the NBA.