Basketball behemoth Victor Wembanyama is a 7-foot-4 phenomenon, the favorite for both Defensive Player of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the NBA. He’s a once-in-a-generation talent.
Rookie Aday Mara blocked him in the first game of the season.
With 4:24 left in the third quarter, Victor Wembanyama thought he spotted a hole in the Thunder defense. He rolled down the middle for a dunk … and Aday Mara met and rejected him at the rim. Mara immediately sprinted down the court to the other basket, where Ajay Mitchell met him with an alley-oop pass for an easy dunk.
Two points saved, two points made. A four-point swing in a matter of moments. That’s the promise Aday Mara holds for the Thunder.
The Biggest Men in NBA History
Few in the annals of the league have successfully married size with fluidity and skill. Size is a huge advantage in a sport where scoring starts 10 feet above the floor. But size isn’t everything.
Many tall players have washed out of the NBA because they were unable to guard a spread floor. Hasheem Thabeet, Moses Brown and Tacko Fall didn’t even make it past their rookie contracts. Timofey Mozgov and Alexis Ajinça’s tenure in the league ended once guard three-point shooting became the norm.
This new era of 7-footers is different.
Rudy Gobert was the first to make it in the modern league. Though he was exposed defensively in his early playoff experience, he built up his mobility and became a versatile defensive player. Kristaps Porzingis, Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren followed in those footsteps and added the three-point shot.
Enter Mara.
Mara Magic
Aday Mara is 7 feet 3 inches tall. There are only a few thousand men worldwide who are as tall as he is; a significant percentage of those men play in the NBA. From the time he was born, he was destined to play basketball professionally.
Many people referred to him as a “Wembanyama stopper” in the NBA draft. This is a trap. Casual fans love the “stopper” idea, that there’s a guy who can keep another guy from scoring at all. It doesn’t work that way—defense is just too difficult and offense too potent in the modern NBA to stop a player for an entire playoff series. But what Mara did was noteworthy.
He played within himself. He made smart passes (barring one John Mateer-level outlet pass that wound up immediately in the hands of the Spurs). He scored when he had opportunities.
And he blocked Victor Wembanyama.
A Summer of Growth
At the start of the summer, people didn’t expect a lot out of Mara. Rookie skills in the NBA are a mixed bag, and rookie big men who don’t require the ball often languish; they don’t score a lot of points, and they don’t jump out from the box score. But their influence lingers well beyond the points on the board.
Mara struggled in Summer League; it was a bad showcase for his skills. The format plays to the strengths of ball-dominant players. It’s a lot of guards and wings looking for roster spots, scoring when they can, and bigs without on-ball skill tend to underperform. The conditioning issues that came up in the pre-draft evaluations of Mara were fully on display, too: He w `as slow up the floor and floated offensively.
In preseason, though, Mara made his mark. The Thunder’s guards want to get the ball to their bigs. They run a ton of actions that engage the big man. And when Mara’s passing and basketball IQ had a chance to shine, he thrived.
Mara’s Basketball Background
Spanish big men grow up watching national icons Pau and Marc Gasol. You can see the Gasol influence in the passing and post buckets Mara made in preseason. He has balletic footwork in the paint.
In Summer League, he looked slow and indecisive. But after training in Spain before preseason, he looked sharp. Guards found him with the ball; he scored with deft footwork in the post, set good screens and threw smart passes. In short, he looked like a Thunder big.
Don’t get too excited yet. Mara is still a rookie, and his conditioning will get a tremendous test over the 82-game season. His rebounding is still underwhelming for a player of his size. There will be ups and downs. But in Aday Mara, the Thunder have a rookie who can immediately contribute to the team at center. Watch for him to get opportunities this season. He’s ready now.
Just ask Victor Wembanyama.
This article appears in Fall Flavors.