Victor Wembanyama’s on-court dominance is already bending the league, but one NBA icon believes his greatest impact won’t be on the scoreboard, but on the San Antonio Spurs’ salary cap. Three years into his NBA career, Wembanyama continues to work on that combination of size, shooting, and shot-blocking that bends opposing game plans every night. Now, a 17-year NBA veteran believes we’re definitely witnessing something that hasn’t existed in decades, with traces of Wilt Chamberlain, LeBron James, and Stephen Curry.

“Wemby is the best cheat code in the NBA since Wilt [Chamberlain], and if people think they can’t win it all,” Eddie A. Johnson, 1989 Sixth Man of the Year, turned analyst, said on X. “They don’t get how this man impacts the game. Players will take major pay cuts to play with him soon!”

The boldest part of Johnson’s statement wasn’t even the Chamberlain comparison, but the projection that veterans will eventually be willing to sacrifice money to play alongside Wembanyama in San Antonio.

That kind of pull is usually reserved for dynastic teams, like the 2016-2019 Golden State Warriors with amazing supporting casts (something that Kevin Durant still receives flak for), or the LeBron James-led 2011-2014 Miami Heat. The Akron native also carried a reputation for infamously stomping away from his hometown team to form the Big 3. However, Wembanyama is still at the beginning of his NBA career, which is exactly what makes the prediction so striking.

The Spurs are an extremely young team, with rookie Dylan Harper and sophomore Stephon Castle serving major rotation roles in the backcourt as they grow. That, combined with Wembanyama on his trajectory of elite defense and offense, might make Johnson’s take read more like an early warning than a hot take.

The Spurs (41-16) already look like a Western Conference powerhouse, and that roster has age on its side. Johnson’s take is unsurprisingly not the only one predicting ‘face of the league’ greatness.

Victor Wembanyama deserves praise of the highest order, and why it makes sense

The initial comparison isn’t anything to scoff at, either. Eddie A. Johnson is a respected analyst and voice online and in NBA circles, and invoking Chamberlain puts Victor Wembanyama in the highest historical tier possible.

Obviously, we all know that Chamberlain was ‘the example’ of dominance: a strategy-shifting level of scoring to facilitate generational offensive prowess while also being an out-of-this-world defensive matchup. He was the only NBA player to reach 4,000 points in a season. Chamberlain set single-game records for most points (100), most consecutive field goals (18), and most rebounds (55). He averaged 50.4 points in 48.5 minutes per game during the 1961-62 season. An NBA game is 48 minutes, but Chamberlain played in 10 overtime periods in seven games. That’s where the “cheat code” comparison comes from.

As a 7’4″ player with deadeye perimeter shooting, guard-level mobility, and unmatched rim protection, Wembanyama causes opposing teams to rethink everything. He spaces the floor like a wing, deters more shots than nearly any defender, and has explosive stat lines almost nightly.

Just this week, NBA legend Paul Pierce spoke about how Wembanyama feels like a natural addition to the discussion about the next generation of faces of the league. He compared today’s reality to the same level of organic confidence that people had in Jordan, Chamberlain, and LeBron James when they were young.

“We anticipated his arrival two years before he got here, right?” Pierce said on No Fouls Given. “So that’s the common denominator when we talk about who the face is going to be. It ain’t somebody we just said, ‘Oh, he can be.’ It’s never been that way.”

Just today, despite shooting an abhorrent 6 of 16 from the floor against the Detroit Pistons, Wembanyama still finished with 21 points, but more importantly, 17 rebounds, including eight offensive boards, and six blocks. He has already elevated the Spurs this season to the #2 spot in the West, and if things keep going as well as they are, they might even reach the Conference Finals (or beyond).