Victor Wembanyama made quite the impression in Las Vegas this week, as the presumptive No. 1 overall pick surpassed even the loftiest expectations for what he’d show in two showcase games against Scoot Henderson (who also impressed) an the G League Ignite.
Wembanyama put up some preposterous numbers, including a 36-point, 11-rebound effort in a win on Thursday afternoon, and simply did things that no one should be able to do at his size — which is somewhere between 7’3 and 7’5 depending on who you ask. He launched threes from Dame range, threw down vicious putback dunks on opponents, and just generally makes the game of basketball look upsettingly easy.
While Wemby drew the majority of the attention, one of his Metropolitans 92 teammates also became a viral sensation simply because of his name: Steeve Ho You Fat. The “Ho You Fat” jersey became an immediate meme on Twitter, and Shareef O’Neal got the coveted jersey swap with Steeve after Thursday’s game.
Even Wembanyama had to note that he has a “crazy name” when he got asked about his teammate by Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, who couldn’t help but talk about Steeve when the French wunderkind joined them for the Lakers preseason game in Vegas on Thursday night.
$t3ve H0 f@t pic.twitter.com/HjX0Nbcjss
— CyrusTheVirus (@CyrusTheVirusP) October 7, 2022
As Wemby notes, Ho You Fat is enjoying his viral stardom and embracing it all, even though as JVG notes later (not in this clip), it looks like an XFL jersey — which, as an aside, I’d love to see Van Gundy try to explain the original XFL to Wembanyama who was not even born at the time. For those looking for more on Ho You Fat and his name, you should read this excellent feature from Yahoo’s Jake Fischer, who talked with him about the origins of the name and why he loves the attention he’s getting because he gets to spread his family name far and wide.