Victor Wembanyama Reveals Why He Trained With Monks Last Offseason

San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama, 22, is unlike anything the NBA has seen before.

The 7-foot-4 supernova is in line to win Defensive Player of the Year and has been vocal about his desire to win MVP — his desire to win as many championships as possible and stack as many professional accolades as possible in the process. Wembanyama wants it all, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to be the greatest.

That includes staying for 10 days at the Shaolin Temple in Zhengzhou, China, as Wembanyama did last summer.

Ahead of his playoff debut, Wembayana sat down with ESPN’s Malika Andrews and detailed what led him to embrace the monk lifestyle and train with them.

“I was just thinking, I’m not able to do these things physically right now,” Wembanyama said. “My body still has some areas to fill, some areas to develop. It’s been very important for me to develop my body into what it can be and fulfill the potential as much as possible.”

Wembanyama added: “[We] meet a few monks. They’re very social, and they have phones and stuff. We were like, ‘Hm, interesting. Let’s see how it goes.’ But I’m not sure it is where I want to spend these next weeks in my summer because it’s an important summer. They go to show us a demonstration — a show of what they do. Thirty seconds in, we were convinced. All the doubts we might have had, long gone. I get extremely jealous.”

Wembanyama said he took it extremely seriously and wanted to do what the monks could do by the end of his stay. He believes that some of the monks’ training “overloaded certain muscles in my body that were not used to this kind of effort,” which made them “stronger” and “more resilient.”