The Deep 3 Podcast - Victor Wembanyama OWNS The Best Team In The NBA | TD3 Clips

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Victor Wembanayama is completely dominating the NBA champion Oklahoma City thunder #nba Check out the TD3 merch: https://the-deep-3-shop.fourthwall.com/ Listen on Spotify!: https://open.spotify.com/show/3elbbqVumwqz8wlIdknsLW Listen on Apple Podcasts!: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-deep-3-podcast/id1657940794 Follow us on TikTok!: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedeepthree Follow us on Instagram!: https://www.instagram.com/thedeep3podcast/ Isaac's twitter: https://twitter.com/byisaacg Mo's twitter: https://twitter.com/Mojo99_ Donnavan's twitter: https://twitter.com/Dsmoot3D Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is only right that we start talking about the biggest story of the NBA season, I think, so far. And that is, the San Antonio Spurs are officially, tier one contenders. They are officially the boogeyman for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Wembe officially owns Shed Holmgren. San Antonio officially owns Oklahoma. We are going to go ahead and make Oklahoma as a state a part of Texas now via basketball team. We've decided that they have to absorb them because they have bent them over so unbelievably hard. Three times in a row in the span of two weeks, this is monumental.

I cannot remember last time we've seen a team as all-time talented as Oklahoma City Thunder as dominant against 29 teams in the league where two weeks ago we were talking about will they break the 73 win record that was on the table with the pace they're on and now all of that has been put to bed by one single team that completely has their number

what is y'all's initial reaction on Christmas Day to seeing this? This is what happens when the prophecy is being fulfilled. Okay. Right? Like you have to have these moments where you have the young goat taking down the Death Star. And we're seeing the first part of that.

And it really is like when OKC plays everybody else, even whenever they play Yokic, you have you have styles that you can match up against. You have certain matchups within the game in terms of like player versus player that are very favorable to you. However, even whenever you play Denver, you know that Yokic is going to control everything offensively.

What if that happened on both sides of the ball, right? What if your best player can, dominate offensively and then can change the mindset of everything that you want to do defensively and that is what wemby is doing to to the thunder as a whole and then like you mentioned earlier what if he's just slapping chet humburn around every single play and chet humgren literally looks like little brother to wemby there's so much what if that happens there's so much to get into with this and it's obviously wimby owns this team as a defender completely shuts down the paint all that we'll get into the spurs the spurs guards are not scared of

these okayc defenders at all the athletic advantage they have has proven to be another advantage that okayc can't contend with on a day-to-day basis so far so many layers to this are you more concerned about okayc or excited to see the spurs kind of prove themselves most definitely i don't give a fuck about what's going on in okay c because at the end of day they're champions j-dub just came back and he's still like obviously getting into himself and whatnot same thing can be said about lewd dord like i'm not worried about okay c this is more so all of us taking note and taking the San Antonio Spurs legitimately serious as a championship contended. Now, this is like way sooner than any of us thought.

None of us had them as a highly-touted team in the Western Conference this year. We all know they're going to be good. We didn't think they were like going to completely missed a playoffs or playing or anything like that. But none of us have seen this level of like competency coming, even when Wimby is not playing at like the highest or elite level. And these games, these three games that he was playing against OKC, I think one of them or maybe two of them, he, like, came off the bench and whatnot.

And he's been on a minister's restriction the entire time. All of them is coming to bench. Yes, exactly. And I think what's more fascinating about the Spurs and, like, all-time Wemby conversation, like, aside, this team is legitimately good outside of him, bro. Yep. Yep. So we'll start the rest on the Spurs side.

Then we'll get into the OKC stuff and whether or not we're concerned. But San Antonio's proven that they are a, I don't know if you say Tier 1 contender, but actually, know what, if you could beat the defending chance, them three times in a row. That means you can beat them in a playoff series. And that means you can get through the hardest obstacle in the West. If you can come out of the West, you can damn sure be whoever comes out of the East. So yes, I think we can say the Spurs are a tier one contender. I think we probably still view the Oklahoma City Thunder as the team to be, probably the champion that if we're going to predict today, after that we talked all year

about the Denver Nuggets having by far the best chance out West to beat them because we know the advantage of Nicole Yokic. And we know that in a fourth quarter, they out execute them every single time in the fourth and be able to push them to seven, just like they did last year, right? So we've always viewed the Nuggets as the team that if anybody's in that dethrone them, it's them. Add the spurs in that category. They are neck and neck to me now with the Nuggets equal, if not better chance of being the Thunder because the match of Avengers will get to. And if that's the case, you are one of the three to four at worst five best teams in the NBA that has a legit more than just cute championship odds. Like you have a

legit chance as good as anybody to hoist the trophy at the end of the year. I think this is one of the first times that like that the Thunders legitimately have pressure on them. to make a move at the deadline to try to try it and be aggressive make a move we'll figure something out yeah because i think like two years ago when we were all screaming like oh trade for it back a big train for back a big and then like you go out and you get gordon heyward it's like ah like you could have did something that was supposed to be cool right you could have did something a little bit better to address the very specific need that you that you needed at that time and you did it you stuck with continuity this year like you kind of addressed your um

your faults in the in the draft right where you know or you thought that you were going to get topage back this year you drafted sword bear he obviously got hurt before the season and you're coming into this year saying you know what it doesn't matter chet's going to get better um j wub is going to get better ludo just had a good season like we're going to stick with everything that we had last year we're going to bank on that now now that the spurs have come in and in two weeks have shown the entire world. You guys can't beat us. This is legitimately where you kind of have to bake in, you kind of have to make yourself spurs proof. You have to figure out a way to get past Stefan Castle, to get past Dylan Harper, D.R. Fox, which is so crazy. But we're, we're three

games into the season series. And this doesn't feel like, like, because sometimes it happens where teams play over the course of a regular season. Like one team, you know, may win the season series it's like 3-1, but you know, oh, in the playoff series, it's, you know, it's probably going to flip. This is not one of those cases. No, no, no, this is real, 100% real. Yeah, I was going to say, the thing about those three guards, Stefan Castle, Dylan Harper, and obviously Darren Fox, who is like the head of this, the face of this, someone who I've

been consistently calling, like, hey, he's the most underrated all-star in the league because of just nasty conversations that was had about him when they first traded for him, and then when they started winning games, I think they started out 5-0 without him to start out the year and whatnot. The thing about those three guys, you mentioned it earlier, mad athletic and they're mad quick and none of these guys can be stopped by OKC, specifically because a couple of days or a couple of weeks that we talked about how Stefan Castle had a turnover issue and whatnot. That's no longer a thing because he has Darren Fox and obviously

Dylan Harper over there making decisions for him and whatnot. But this team right here does not make mistakes offensively. Defensively, obviously they're top class, but the main story to me is talking about how their offense has been thriving in this case in the scenario. And when you think about why OKC is so dominant, they literally took away like their number one superpower, which is they're able to hack you, which is being able to cause turnovers in the most chaotic way possible. And they take care of the ball. Yeah, exactly. I think you just nailed the two things that I guess the question is obviously the Spurs now own O.KC. That's all we're saying. But why? You said it's not fluky. I think you just said exactly why. Obviously, when be completely

shuts down the Oklahoma City offense. When Wembe's on the court, they have like an 80 defensive rating right now against them. They are making that offense completely fall apart because Wembe is proven to be the greatest rim deterrent in modern NBA history like we all knew he would become. He is that right now. And this Oklahoma City offense is obviously, it's not an all-time offense, right? They're great because they're an all-time defense and they can turn you over, get in transition, use that to supplement their offense in the half court and get a good offensive rating,

but because the defense leads the offense. If one, you're not turning the ball over because you're guard. are more athletically gifted than OKC's guards and can't be bullied and are playing with upmost confidence to get through Kason Wallace, get through Caruso, get through Shea,

the lack of turnover is obviously hurts the O'KC offense. Then in the half court, if you could make it so Shea can't do any room pressure because Wembe's there and when he swings it to these other players, they won't even think about attacking the rim

because Wembe's there. Now you're a jump shooting team. Every single time we saw this team get pushed to seven in the playoffs against inferior opponents is because they were turning to a jump shooting team and this team has a bunch of inconsistent

jump shooters. Chet, especially being guarded by Wemby, can't get a jump shot off to save his life because Wembe's length is way too lethal on the three point line and Chet shoots the ball way too slow so he's getting absorbed Jadub has been absolute dog shit coming off the wrist injury but we'll give him grace because the wrist injury Kays and Wallace, Lou Dort and most of those two

Caruso, yeah. Caruso to some extent he played a bad game but he's been a consistent shooter from time of time. Really those two Lou Dort and Kays and Wallace have proven to be inconsistent shooters against good defenses when their jump shooting is super relied upon. So this defense looks pretty much exactly how it looked in the playoffs when Denver did a great job of taking away Shea's drives with that really, really aggressive gap help they did and made it so those guys had to shoot a lot of threes. When that happens, this team will go cold.

And if they can't be a dominant defense because your guards have those advantages, this cycle starts to break. And a lot of people are going to be like, they have the blueprint out for them. The blueprint is have the best rim defender in the NBA and the most athletic guards in the NBA. That's not really a blueprint. That's just a recipe for great basketball in any era. Yeah. And for the for like the case of Wallace's and Caruso's and stuff like that, I understand that they are inconsistent. I'm giving them a little bit more. more of a of a past just because it's that's that's your role anyways right you are always going to be these types of players that are going to benefit off of off of the pressure and the creativity

from your from your main ball handlers however we're here and once again this offense is 100% built on hey shay you go do everything and then everybody else can kind of figure out every you know where they fit in afterwards we are looking for a chet leap we are looking for a jadob leap And for those two things to not happen, now you're putting Caruso and Case and Wallace in positions where those drives are so much more valuable than they should be because Jado can't get his game off because Chet isn't getting his game off. Lou Dora hasn't been shooting great this year either. So none of your, none of your supplementary players are even in a position to be actually supplemental. And so that's why for them, for this specific season, you have all of these draft picks. You know where your future lies.

You know it's going to be with Shea, J-Dub, Chet. I'm not saying you have to go out and trade for Yonis or do, you know, anything crazy. But going out and getting somebody who can create their own shot a little bit more consistently than what J-Dub is giving you right now. Because even in the playoffs, we've seen J-dub have issues getting to his shot and getting by guys and being creative in that way. So they're going to have to figure something out just to... I think it's the opposite.

Really? Well, I do think you're right that they need to address things, but I don't think it's necessary creation. Yes, it would be nice if Jada played better coming off first injury and can create a little bit more. He needs to play off ball a little bit more. I think AJ Mitchell can be enough of an answer. He wasn't there in this game. I think he makes a gigantic difference, which a lot of people on Twitter are like, you're the best team in the NBA and you need a backup point guard to be the difference. Yes. He is that important to them. Like, that's not a slight to anybody. That's also, I mean, that's been a weakness of this for two years. And he's helped that. I think what they need is better shooters. Then you consistent shooters.

Like, that's been the case in this last year. The only reason they got pushed a It said they did not have consistent jump shooting. When teams made it so they said, Shea won't beat us. We're going to double team him on these drives. We're going to gap help extremely hard. Kason Wallace beat us. He cannot.

Ludo, damn sure, cannot. Like, they need to have consistent shooters that they can either close games with or fill some of these minutes that you can't just make it so we are 100% okay with that. We know what went out because more often than out,

those guys will go cold. I mean, this is the greed that they talk about in biblical times, right? Sure, sure. But, you know, like asking for the team, asking for a team with the all-time defense to also say, hey, can we get you guys to also be the, like, some of the best three-point

shooters in the, in the league? We don't need the best. That's a, exactly. You don't need a regular. That's still a lot asking, asking for three to four, because we're talking about Caruso, Ludo, Kaysa Wallace. If every team had three guys who can legitimately, you know, be talked about in, in all defense conversations,

and then say also go shoot league average or above at three, like that is extremely greedy. Fair, but I think we're also seeing that. It's greedy and somewhat unrealistic for that level of the player. I think that what I'm focusing on, it isn't have everything. It's right now they're completely defensive slanted. The goal is to be insanely overwhelming defensively, turn you over, and that's going to be our MO, right? We have good, not great offense in terms of an all-time team style, but our defense is what takes us overboard.

I think they need to have a little bit more balance there. Because we've seen in the playoffs, we've seen in a regular season, you're going to be the greatest team of all time with that style of play. in the postseason especially when teams can sell it on Shea and really makes those three-point shooters have to beat you you're gonna keep seeing these long series that you get upset a few times because the shooters don't come through like you probably need to have a little bit more of a balanced approach or at least have that in your tool bag

like have the ability to go towards the shooters and go towards the offensive style instead of only having the defense as your one card yeah I agree and that guy that you're looking for when it comes to someone who can create their own shot is AJ Mitchell he hasn't been there at all throughout the at least specifically last game what's such like

an eyesore to me is seeing how yo Alex Crusoe why are you taking 12 13 threes in a game that should never happen he's never taking that many threes in his entire fucking life

in the NBA because they can't take two against Wemby it's crazy like we're focusing on this stuff right what you just mentioned end of the day this is Wembe

end of the day like we're talking about this greedy stuff it takes some greed on offense to beat Wemby like this whole style play we're talking about worse against every other team

in the league this one like it's really more about the spurs than it is okayc like ultimately okayc will be fine it they just got a hope they don't play they got a hope that denver and the spurs played you in the second round and one of their ops takes care of each other well well yes and like even with jadov and his wrist injury even if that never gets back to like oh it better hit better no it's like it needs to right but i'm saying in terms of priority if they do the things that that you're saying where now we are a little bit more offensive slanty we go get ourselves some more some more shooters because realistically if you're like building out a team

and you get like better shooters they're probably not going to be as good of defenders as yeah right whatever so if you slant yourself a little bit more offensively the number one person i'm looking at is chet because because you know offensively we're going to have shay he's going to do his thing everybody else is going to get open shots based off of what he's doing and now defensively if we're if we're lowering down our perimeter defense hey man you got to like you got to lock everything up you have to be our version of wendy obviously i'm not expecting you to be wendy but you are a guy where coming into every year we say if it wasn't for wemby chet would be d p o why right and those two guys are fighting for for this positioning in in the league chet has to

play so much better on both ends of the floor for them to actually have some type of versatility in terms of team building or approach or playing the spurs or whatever and he hasn't been able to do it because again Wemby is little broing him, big bro and little broring him every single time, slapping him upside the head, clapping on free throws. He looks so shook playing the spurs. And it is so, like, visible on every single place. 17% true shooting when Wemby's guarding him. Yeah, bro, he's cooked.

This boogeyman has been existing since he was 16, 17 years old, and they're playing Team USA basketball versus France when it comes to their under 18 team and whatnot, bro. This has been a story for, Chet's for Chet's life over the last fucking five, six years. And there's nothing that she can do about it. Yeah, you know what I think? I think Chet's just fucked.

And Wembe is going to big brother no matter what because Wembe is much better and is perfectly suited to shut him the fuck down. And we had the hope that J-Dub gets better and gets healthy with his wrist. He looks terrible right now for his standards. As somebody who is a top 20 player in the world, he is not playing anything close to that. Chet is playing that level on most

teams, against most teams, I guess 20 out of the teams. He's just not going to beat that against Wemby. He's going to be a pumpkin against Wemby. And that's just going to be what it is and they have to try to find a way to survive without Chet being good offensively. I can't that's the problem is. It's a big problem, but that's the problem that Wemby brings. That is, that's impossible.

It's impossible. Like, for it, you are asking a team and you are asking a team to take out their defensive anchor and take him from DPOI, all NBA conversations. Well, defensively, he'll be fine. It's really offensively. And putting them, if, I'm still talking about if you find a way to make the rest of your lineup,

more offensively slanted and putting even more of that burden on him. But taking him from that level on defense and on offense and dropping that down and then saying, also your matchup is the fifth best player in the world every single night for two weeks, you can't really like bank on that. I think the defensive side is a little flawed. Like just because you bring another defensive player, I mean, better offensive player than Lou Dort, you're still going to have four elite defenders out there. So like, I don't think the defense would be super impacting that way.

I think check and handle that. Yeah. But it is the thing that you have to try to find a way to win without. Chet being an offensive impact. This is just one of those things where it just happens every single generation. It happened with Jordan. It happened with LeBron. It happened with Chack, of course, too.

Whether it be fucking LeBron in Toronto or all the guys that Jordan just murked in the 90s as well. Like we see it time and time again, and this is just one of them victims, right? Also, you said something earlier about Deere and Fox being like the face of these three guards. Hey, man. Listen, what's the podcast is doing right now. It's special. And I think, like, the pressure that we have come accustomed to seeing from OKC defensively

whenever they turn it up, Stefan Castle is doing that every single night, every single play. He don't have an ounce of bitch in his blood, right? No. And that's no, they're not scared at all the whole time. It's straight dog. Dude, they're not even a little bit scared of OKC. The confidence they're playing with. They know we are bigger, faster, stronger than you, and have physical advantages.

Yeah. Shout out Mitch Johnson. This team is clearly so well coached and playing with such immense confidence. and what they do. Dude, and we talked about all this. Their starting lineup feels like incomplete because Julian Champany is over there not. He's playing not fake basketball.

He's competing really hard on offense. He tries really hard to get rebounds and whatnot. But he's not shooting threes for all at all. He's not producing real offensive impact. I think he's pretty good. But there is a level that can reach by upgrade that position. You're right. Julian Champani should be a really good bench player for you.

They have another level to get. If they can find that wing that, you know, everyone links him to Trey Murphy, MPJ, whoever may be, they have another level to get to. too. There's so much like recalibrating that we have to do. And it goes back to this is why like this, this is the story, the biggest story of the league so far is that like, yo, like Darren Fox. Again, we have to have those conversations about him reasserting himself into one of the elite point gardens of league. We have to recalibate our expectations. We go up to Stefan Castle. Kettlein Johnson has been in trade movement rumors for the fucking longest, right? He revitalized his career. Jeremy is on. We don't have to see those minutes anymore. Thank God. Like there's so much to talk about when it comes to this team. And at the end of the day, like, they're just a tier one contender. Yeah, they're either second or third-based team in the Western Conference.

They have lapped a lot of teams out there, and that's a real story. I think OKC for them and their story, I think this is kind of good. I think they need adversity. I think we're going to see what they're made of, right? We're going to see if they can rise and beat this team that has a number in terms of X's and O's. We'd to see if Mark Dagnol is a coach that can figure this out. We have to see if Chet can be a man instead of a mouse against 51 and Yama. I doubt it.

We have to see if J-dub is ready to rise like he did in the finals. We had to see all these things that if you, you are this all-time team that everyone wants you to be figure it out you know this isn't i think we think about them like the warriors because the last time we saw a team this level was warriors and they kind of felt unbeatable because they were so much more talented than everybody else this okayc team isn't that they got to earn it like they're not going to walk in and out town everybody just because you're going to see a team that matched up well with you and it's not a given you beat them off a talent you had to figure it out and do the things that every championship

team that strings together the multiple chips you look across all their runs there's a moment where they had overcome an obstacle and beat a team even the warriors the 2018 rockets that was a legit school they had overcome and figure it out they had to lock in and figure out a way to out duel that crazy math equation that james hard and chris paul had with the threes they did it now we've got to see them do their version yeah i mean even even before 2018 the thunder were up three won on it and and you had that duo of kd and russ and their their athleticism the the size that the o kc was throwing at at people with you know then and it's cancer and stephen adams like they and abaka like they had so so much size to to combat what the warriors were doing and they were all

also a very physical team. So I think for the Spurs, like they are that version of that. And the two biggest questions that we had for them in the offseason were, can your shooting be good enough to support this offense and allow your guards to be able to get downhill? Check, right? We're good on that. And then is Mitch Johnson actually the guy?

Because he came in to start coaching this team whenever Pop was, you know, was having his health issues. And so they double down, right? They gave him the contract. Right. But it's still, we didn't really know if he was an actual coach. And now that is also a check. So when those two things are off the list, now we, now we're into First World Problem, you know, issues. Like, oh, yeah, can we, can we upgrade our starting lineup a little bit better, right? Can we, can we, can we notch this? Can we get Wemby off the minister's restriction? Like, they're, they're cruising right now. This is, this is great to see. You know what else is great to see? A real rivalry back in the NBA. Needs. So with that note, let's talk about the best robberies in the NBA. who are the five best rivalries currently in the league right now with this in mind

yeah we talked about number one easily it's okay c versus the spurs we can see this going on for the next seven eight years and whatnot right dude I look at this on Christmas Day and I say this might be the defining rivalry of the 2020s this might be the type of all-time rivalry that we look up and say Shaver's Wembe

had wars in the playoffs and that defined people's childhoods yeah okay that might be like that might be the next generation versus the Bronvers low Curry if things go well need that I would say I would say Denver, Minnesota, even still because no matter what, I'm going to get a good game. Yeah, true.

I'm going to get a good game. Somebody's going to do something crazy. And like for Yolkich to go and have 18 in overtime and drop 50 and then Anz doing his thing, like those two still feel like anything can happen whenever these twos play. But they don't have the animosity of how much Victor Rubin Yama wants to see Chet Hongin in a grave. I don't know if anybody has to be right. Like he's on a different level of hate.

Yeah. Yeah, he definitely like Kendrick doesn't hit as hard as which woman Yama does. Shearing after a Frito Miss like you're crazy. You're sick, man. Is Nick Celtics up there?

Kind of. It's kind of back. I would say, well, you know what? Nick Pacers are for last year? Oh, I think it's fully there.

I hate those dudes. The Knicks hate that Pacers enough that I think I guess number three. Yeah. Actually, do we still go, do we still go Boston Lakers? Are we going to focus on 2025? Nobody cares about that right now.

Yeah, we'll focus. Oh, right now, LeBron Dillon Brooks. Yes, exactly. That's the, that's definitely. Dylan Brooks also standing ovation. Yeah. To give LeBron a high five at the free throw line. LeBron was so mad that he napped him up.

He was furious. I haven't been, I haven't seen LeBron actually have hate for another player or actually anybody else get under his skin like Dylan Brooks has. This is like unseen levels of troll from Dylan Brooks right now. We're at seeing peak Dylan Brooks on and, I guess on and on the court. Yeah.

I think Anthony Edwards wants to make Tim Bulls versus Thunder that they gotta try to they gotta have a competitive series first. They have to do what the Spurs are doing. Yeah,

yeah, they had to punch back a little bit first then we'll get there. I mean, listen they got a win this year. They did, they got one one.

We need two wins. Yeah, we need a playoff series that goes like seven or something. We need to have some real motion. Man, the east is so on the board. That's four. That's four.

We don't want to go for the last one. Okay. Adam Silver and good ideas. The Hawks. and being like over 500 to battle of the centuries The Palo versus Vrons They're just on the same team

There's not a lot of good rivalries Is there even a fifth one? Not anymore, right? Look at a team logos I feel like there's got to be one rober looking Like just potential Giannis doesn't really got a rival right now Yeah everyone's in Philly is just blah right now

Nothing's happening in Toronto Oh I mean shit I guess you could say Jared Allen in pressure Jared Allen lights At number five Do we just go Liquors versus Warriors

To grandfather in Curry versus LeBron Every time it's a little The fans really make it a robbery still Okay yeah Listen we don't really have anything else So yeah there you go That's number five

Curry versus LeBron You get your legacy pick