Grip Strength Theory: Victor Wembanyama Can’t Palm The Ball Well…Yet
As I watch more and more Spurs games, I keep picking up on something off with Victor’s attempts near the rim: the ball looks unsettled coming off Victor’s hand.
And because of this, I think it leads to him attempting different, less effective, and/or less desirable types of shots near the bucket.
Obviously, Victor’s hands are huge. If you look at the screen capture above, his fingers extend quite far.
But he doesn’t have “mits.”
I haven’t seen him demonstrate the ability to vacuum up the ball with his hands. In fact, look at the following Victor-palming-the-ball clips I found:
In this first clip, Victor is asked to palm the ball with two fingers and he does, but not with ease; it takes some adjustment on his part to complete the hold and it’s a light grip.
You might say, but this is palming a basketball with just two fingers, this is still quite the feat.
Yes, but given the length of Victor’s hand, I would expect an easier and more instant hold.
We get a better insight in this next YouTube short:
In this video, we get multiple angles of Victor grabbing a basketball and he never gets a sure grip. To the contrary, there is a significant amount of space between Victor’s hand and the ball when he’s gripping it.
This is a negative sign. To effectively palm a basketball for in-game advantage, we want to see a stick’em type grip where the hand acts as a suction cup against the ball.
This is the type of grip that players like Michael Jordan, Kawhi Leonard, and Chris Webber have leveraged for tremendous gains over the course of their careers.
With incredibly large hands, large palms, and likely strong finger pressure, these players had/have significant advantages in being able to fake shots and passes as well as dunk and lay the ball up with ease.
Note that when Jordan, C-Webb, and The Klaw grip the ball, it’s right up against their palm.
In contrast, with Victor, it’s away from his palm.
Check out this palm fake montage of Michael Jordan:
You will not see Victor maneuvering the ball around like Jordan is in this video.
And I can’t say for certain what exactly Victor is lacking. It could be palm size, finger pressure, grip strength, hand strength, or a combination thereof, but it’s clear to me he’s missing something because he can’t effectively control the ball.
There’s nothing Victor can do about palm size, but he can work on grip strength, finger pressure, and hand strength to improve his control over the ball.
My grip strength theory is that improved grip strength (including finger pressure and hand strength) would significantly open up Victor’s game; I think Victor could springboard his already huge advantages to yet another level.
If you watch Victor on offense, he frequently doesn’t have control over the ball when he takes up close shots like a layup or a push shot up close (his jumper too, but I put this in a separate category).
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Victor shoot a traditional hook shot. I know he can, but it could be he opts for other shots because he’s not completely comfortable shooting hooks.
What I’ve observed is Victor needs to have his hand under the ball or behind the ball, but he usually doesn’t have his hand over the ball. Of course, you don’t have your hand over the ball when you shoot, but you might have it over the ball as you bring it up to shoot.
Although this may not seem like a big difference, it is. Because if Victor can control the ball with his hand over it, he’ll have more control over the ball and be able to shoot it more quickly and naturally.
There are any number of exercises that can help with this. I’d start light with lots of repetition and put Victor’s hands through all sorts of scenarios.
If he can just improve his control over the ball just 30%, it will yield immense benefits.
