Victor Wembanyama is one of the NBA's best players, but does he have a real chance to win his first MVP award this season after missing the past two weeks with a calf injury? The odds are against him -- he enters December at 150-1 to win the award on DraftKings Sportsbook -- but the San Antonio superstar shouldn't be counted out.
SAN ANTONIO -- San Antonio Spurs star center Victor Wembanyama will be sidelined for a few weeks due to a left calf strain, sources told ESPN's Shams Charania on Monday. The Spurs are erring on the side of caution in bringing back the franchise cornerstone, who underwent an MRI on Monday. Listed as questionable early Sunday due to left calf tightness, Wembanyama was ruled out ahead of tip-off of the Spurs' victory against the Sacramento Kings.
Doncic matched his career high for steals in a regular-season game Wednesday. The guard averaging 40 points per game claimed his defense was the only thing he did well on a night when he finished one rebound short of a triple-double. While collecting 35 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds, he was an inefficient nine-for-27 from the field and four-for-11 from three.
The premise is simple. Because of the different schedules across professional sports (the NFL plays only in the fall and winter, the NBA season doesn't start until mid-fall, etc.), there's an extremely small window in the year when all four of the major men's American professional sports leagues are all playing on one night. This year, Monday was that window.
While the Toronto Blue Jays were busy handling business against the Los Angeles Dodgers in a whopper of a World Series Game 3 at Dodger Stadium, the Toronto Raptors were getting their business handed to them nearly 1,400 miles away at Frost Bank Center against the San Antonio Spurs, falling 121-103 on Monday night. By the way, both the Raptors and Blue Jays games started at 8:00 pm ET.
Off the court, the league has been shaken by investigations related to illegal sports betting and rigged poker games. On the court, injuries and surprising surges have dominated the first week. Following 40-point performances from the Philadelphia 76ers' Tyrese Maxey, Utah Jazz's Lauri Markkanen, Denver Nuggets' Jamal Murray and Los Angeles Lakers' Austin Reaves on Monday, there have now been 16 40-point games, the most through the first seven days of a season in league history.
Last year, he took it to another level, dressing as No-Face, a character from the Academy Award-winning animated film "Spirited Away." Wembanyama wore an all-black one-piece fit and covered his face with the trademark mask. The costume preceded a 25-point, 9-rebound, 7-assist performance plus 5 steals and blocks each against the Utah Jazz -- the second time in his career he put up at least five each in five stat categories.
A thrilling start to the NBA season came to a screeching halt on Thursday, when Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and former player and coach Damon Jones were arrested as part of FBI investigations into illegal sports betting and rigged poker games. Questions remain on the status of those investigations. And while those indictments overshadowed the opening days of the NBA's 80th season, its first handful of games showed us plenty about what could be next on the court.
He's already shown flashes of his insane ceiling in his previous two seasons. He's such a difficult matchup with the ball in his hands, and on defense, he changes the entire calculus of opposing teams' schemes with his length.
