Victor Wembanyama tells 60 Minutes he should win MVP this season

Victor Wembanyama has walked back one MVP claim and made a new one. In a 60 Minutes profile that aired Sunday night on CBS, correspondent Jon Wertheim reminded the Spurs center that he had said last year he should have won the award. Wembanyama asked, "Did I?" When Wertheim asked again whether he should have won it, he said no. According to the CBS transcript, he followed with a laugh and "I should win it this year though." The 13-minute cut that 60 Minutes posted to YouTube stops on the "no."

The Spurs are 5-2 going into Tuesday, and Wembanyama, 22, is in his fourth NBA season and is the league's reigning Defensive Player of the Year.

The Finals and the Brunson play

San Antonio beat Oklahoma City to win the West last spring, then lost the Finals to the Knicks in five games despite being favored. The segment says Wembanyama was far from his best in that series and shows his cheap shot on Jalen Brunson. Wembanyama said the villain label didn't bother him because players aren't paying attention to that during the Finals. He was blunt about the play itself. "It showed my limits more than anything else," he said. "Going out there, you need to play basketball."

Feet first

After a blood clot in his shoulder ended his second season, Wembanyama rebuilt his conditioning from the ground up, starting with his feet. He told Wertheim that big men have always had foot problems, that he goes barefoot as much as he can and wears minimalist shoes otherwise. A rookie, he said, was surprised to see him at practice without shoes. He wears a size 20, and he argued that foot strength sets up the knees, hips and back.

He also talked about the summer of 2025, when he lived and trained with Buddhist monks in China. The first day included an hour and 40 minutes of silent meditation. He said he was locked in for about 30 minutes and spent the rest wondering when it would end. Asked about pausing between free throws, he said "you could call that meditation, I guess." He shoots 82% from the line, a number he said "could be better."

Popovich, France and the clot

His favorite lesson from Gregg Popovich, who retired in 2025 after a stroke, was about humility: after a win you're rarely as good as you thought, and after a loss you're rarely as bad. Wertheim followed him to Nanterre, outside Paris, where he runs a tournament that mixes basketball and chess, and where, by the segment's count, a 9-year-old named Louise needed 16 minutes to beat him.

Wembanyama traced how open he is in public to the thrombosis diagnosis in early 2025. "After that it's like, life is so short," he said. "I don't even wanna waste it being somebody else."