Victor Wembanyama’s remarkable start to his career will be put on hold due to a blood clot. On Thursday, the Spurs announced the 7-foot-5 phenom had suffered a deep vein thrombosis — a blood clot — in his right shoulder and will be shut down for the remainder of the 2024-25 season.
It’s a scary diagnosis for the 21-year-old and a devastating development for the Spurs, who just acquired one-time All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox at the trade deadline for a playoff push. Wembanyama, who made his first All-Star appearance over the weekend in San Francisco, solidified himself as one of the league’s top players this season and ranked as the odds-on favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year, leading the league in blocks by an astounding 74 rejections.
But more subtly, Wembanyama also led the league in a different category this season that felt ominous on Thursday: most miles traveled.
The San Antonio Spurs criss-crossed the globe this season, flying thousands of miles from Portland to Paris and seemingly everywhere in between. Add up all the travel and you’ll find the Spurs traveled 37,852 miles by the All-Star break, according to Positive Residual schedule analysis. That ranks as the most for any team in the NBA and nearly 80 percent higher than teams like the Charlotte Hornets and Detroit Pistons.
It’s a fact that was initially alarming to this writer, who covered Chris Bosh in Miami and chronicled the unfortunate story of blood clots that forced him to end his career in the middle of his prime at age 31. The timing of the Wembanyama news and Bosh’s was also eerily similar. Both of Bosh’s blood clot occurrences came around the All-Star break in February of 2015 and 2016.
At the time, Bosh told me that extensive travel within the NBA schedule contributed to his blood clots in his legs that had reached his lungs. Long sedentary rests on flights aren’t ideal for 7-footers who need to pump blood throughout their limbs.
“You sit so much,” Bosh said, slouching in his locker chair. “You’re like this for two hours. If you get kicked, blood just pools up somewhere and you don’t move it, it just sits…
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