Victor Wembanyama won the Magic Johnson Award for the 2025-26 season on Thursday, adding another line to a year that already put him at the center of the NBA. The award from the Pro Basketball Writers Association goes to the player who best blends excellence on the court with cooperation and grace with the media and fans.
Howard Beck said Wembanyama “thoroughly embodies the spirit of this award,” calling him a superstar who is as thoughtful and engaging off the floor as he is dominant on it. Beck said he is “giving of himself, amiable and patient with reporters, and eager to discuss just about any subject,” from the MVP race to social justice to the Northern Lights.
That reputation has been built in public, game after game. Wembanyama speaks after nearly every game he plays, and he takes a few extra questions in French for two reporters who relocated from France to San Antonio to cover him full time. He also showed that composure under the heaviest circumstances: after the Spurs’ NBA Cup Final loss to the New York Knicks, he appeared at the podium while grieving the death of his grandmother, answered only two questions and left in tears.
The award lands in the middle of a season that has made Wembanyama hard to ignore. He averaged 25 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 3.1 blocks while leading the Spurs to a 62-20 record, and San Antonio went 30-4 after he became fully healthy at the beginning of February. The Spurs posted a plus-14.7 net rating in that stretch, a number that explains why Wembanyama is expected to be a finalist for MVP and a lock for first-team All-NBA. He could also become the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year.
The recognition fits the arc of his third season, when he has become one of the league’s most sought-after quotes and one of its clearest ambassadors. Before the season, Wembanyama formed the league’s first full-time ultras supporters group, the Jackals, and later sat down with The Athletic for one of his few non-TV exclusive interviews of the year to discuss his recovery from a blood clot last year and the Jackals project. The contrast is part of the point: the same player driving one of the league’s strongest teams is also helping define what modern stardom can sound like when the microphones come out.
Beck called him “a deep thinker who understands the power of his words,” and that may be what separates this honor from the rest of the hardware piling up around him. Wembanyama does not just produce the kind of season that wins awards; he makes himself available in a league that often leans the other way.
