When Robert Horry sat down with FOX 26 ahead of the 2026 NBA Playoffs, he had already flagged that the road through Oklahoma City looked too steep for most challengers. Nobody disagreed. San Antonio disagreed loudest. Now, with the Spurs in the NBA Finals and the basketball world in the middle of a full coronation ceremony, Big Shot Bob has taken his seat at the skeptic’s table, and he’s not moving.

On the Road Trippin show on Wednesday, Horry pushed back against the groundswell of opinion forming around Victor Wembanyama in the wake of San Antonio’s Western Conference Finals victory over the defending champions.

“They’re trying to make him to be all now. They’re trying like he is God’s gift to basketball,” Horry said. “I’m just saying, give him time. Give him time. Let him mature. Let him take it. Don’t give it to him.”

The argument was not that Wembanyama is undeserving, Horry was quite explicit on that, but that the timeline of the conversation has outpaced the evidence.

“Give him three to four more years,” he added. “And if he wins two championships in three to four years, then he is the face of the league. Don’t anoint someone too early because he hasn’t played enough. He’s been injured. One season – okay, he’s been great this season. Give me two more seasons like that. Then I would anoint you.”

The part of Horry’s argument that carried the most analytical weight is not the one about patience; it’s the one about context. Wembanyama leads the Spurs in playoff scoring with 394 points, which is 49 more than the next best contributor, Stephon Castle, but Horry’s point was precisely that the distance between Wemby and his teammates is not as vast as the narrative suggests.

“Think about those guards they got, they’ve been killing it,” he said on the show. “Think about how they come out. This guy’s getting 30. This guy’s getting 20. They’re killing it too.”

In Game 7 alone, Julian Champagnie knocked down six threes for 20 points, Stephon Castle added 16, De’Aaron Fox chipped in 15, and Dylan Harper, Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson all delivered meaningful contributions in a performance that looked far more collective than individual.

“That’s why I don’t say don’t anoint him just yet,” Horry said, “because it’s not just him. He’s not LeBron. LeBron had to carry those bums to get to the Finals.”

At some point, the numbers stop looking like projections and start looking like proof.

For years, Victor Wembanyama’s ascent was framed in the language of possibility, what he could become, what he might eventually achieve, how quickly he could reshape the league.

This postseason changed the conversation. Against the defending champions and a 64-win juggernaut led by back-to-back MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Wembanyama didn’t merely meet expectations; he overwhelmed them.

In the Western Conference Finals alone, the 22-year-old averaged 27.3 points, 10.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 1.4 steals, and 2.7 blocks while earning unanimous MVP honors. Across his first 17 career playoff games, he has posted averages of 23.2 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 3.5 blocks – production rarely seen from a player this young on this stage.

And he wasn’t carrying an established contender. San Antonio became the first Finals team in NBA history whose two leading scorers, Wembanyama and Stephon Castle, were both 22 or younger. By weighted minutes played, the Spurs are also the second-youngest Finals team since the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers.

The hype, in other words, no longer rests on imagination. It rests on evidence. What once looked like a glimpse of the future now looks very much like the present, and it raises a question the rest of the league may not be ready to answer.

Horry’s Seven Rings Give Him the Mic, but They Also Frame His Blind Spot

The credibility Robert Horry brings to this conversation is genuine and hard to argue with. He won seven NBA championships across three franchises, two with Houston, three with the Lakers, and two with San Antonio, making him one of the most decorated winners in league history outside the 1960s Boston Celtics dynasty.

He was never an All-Star. He averaged only 7.0 points and 4.8 rebounds for his career, and his entire philosophy is built around complementary roles, team fabric, and the idea that championship basketball is rarely about one player.

Seen through that lens, his wariness about anointing Victor Wembanyama makes complete sense, as it comes from a man who watched greatness from the inside and knows how much goes unseen.

Horry won his first championship ring at 23 years old with the Houston Rockets in 1994, alongside the great Hakeem Olajuwon. Wembanyama is 22 and in the NBA Finals. The very timeline Horry is asking him to extend, Horry himself never had to wait for.

Spurs coach Mitch Johnson offered a different read entirely:

“He has such a vision, in my opinion, of who he wants to be as a person and a player. The commitment and investment he puts in that vision is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

That is not the testimony of a supporting cast carrying their star; it is the testimony of a coaching staff watching something uncommon unfold.

When the final buzzer sounded at Paycom Center on Saturday, Victor Wembanyama hugged De’Aaron Fox first, then Stephon Castle, gripping his head with his left hand while he continued to sob. As the stands around him emptied, only the men in his huddle mattered.

“I found resources inside of me,” Wembanyama said afterward. “Relentlessness. I already knew that, but doing it at this level, this is the best basketball on the planet that’s being played right now.”

Castle, during a TV interview on the court moments later, offered the simplest verdict:

“He’s the best player in the f***ing world.”

Horry’s caution is not without logic, as history rewards those who wait for proof. But with Game 1 of the NBA Finals tipping off tonight in San Antonio, the proof is arriving on an accelerated schedule that nobody, including Big Shot Bob, fully anticipated.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​