Wembanyama has legitimate shot at accomplishing never-seen-before record

Last season, Victor Wembanyama pulled off something NBA fans hadn't seen since 2018 when he finished a February game against the Raptors with a 20-plus-point triple-double with blocked shots. He made a habit of pulling off things—whether it be a highlight or statistical record—that seemed to defy logic in his rookie season with the Spurs.

Anthony Davis was the player who pulled it off in 2018, and Clint Capela had a triple-double featuring rejections in 2021. Capela only scored 13 in that game but grabbed 19 rebounds, so there is no underselling how impressive his night was. In fact, not including Wembanyama, the total of 10 or more blocks has been reached more than seven times in the past decade.

Don't get it twisted, though, five of those occurrences were by one player, Hassan Whiteside, and Victor's age makes his feat even more impressive. He even came close to a quadruple-double in April versus the Denver Nuggets, finishing the night with 23 points, 15 rebounds, nine blocks and eight assists.

But even if (or when) he pulls that off, we've seen it before when David Robinson put up 34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, and 10 blocks in 1994. What remains the one true stat (not one of those nuanced stats that require mental gymnastics to comprehend) never seen before is the quintuple-double.

Wembanyama has all the skills necessary to pull off the impossible

For the sake of transparency, there is one person reported to have pulled this off, but there's no real accounting for it. There is no video evidence to be found to detail Wilt Chamberlain pulling this off in 1968, nor did the NBA officially count steals and blocks back then.

Many stats back then were tracked by NBA lifer Harvey Pollack. He worked for the NBA since its inception in 1946 and was the person responsible for reporting Wilt's 100-point performance as well as the alleged quintuple-double. He tracked those stats before the NBA decided to include them officially in 1974.

But again, there is no video evidence of this game, and Pollack, while a respected statistician, also spent time as a PR director. It's very easy to picture someone with that background trying to influence the league by gassing up the numbers of the NBA's superstars in those areas to gain the momentum to force change. It's hard to say, but with no concrete evidence, it just doesn't count.

In comes Wembanyama, who has every basketball ability you could possibly think of. The hardest stat for him to reach double-digits in is the steal category. But there should be optimism there when you take a look back through his numbers last year.

In an early season game, once again versus the Nuggets, Wemby had six steals in 25 minutes. He's had five steals on two separate occasions. We've already seen him reach 10-plus in every other category; only steals remain, and after what he's already done in that area, pulling off ten doesn't seem out of the question.

At this rate, no accomplishment can be ruled out for The Alien, including the one that should be impossible. In one of his old songs, Jay Z said, "Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week." Now, getting this done in the first week of the season is likely not going to happen, but the point is to get comfortable with removing that term from your vocabulary when discussing Wemby.