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Victor Wembanyama San Antonio Spurs’s teammates see what we see. Even more, they feel it. And in real time. Almost as if officially putting the NBA on notice, Devin Vassell isn’t holding back after the Spurs blew out the Raptors 122-99 on Monday.

“He’s a tremendous player and this is his rookie year so it’s going to be scary to see his next three, four years, what he’s going to look like, what our team chemistry is going to look like, what me and him playing in a duel is going to look like,” the Spurs’ second leading scorer declared following Monday’s win over the Raptors.

With 27 points, 14 rebounds, and 10 blocks in Toronto, the top pick in this past summer’s draft became the first rookie since fellow Spurs star big man David Robinson in 1990 to record a triple-double with blocks.

“He did a little bit of everything. Obviously, he’s an all-around talented player. He’s got a great feel for the game and it shows in a variety of ways, whether he’s passing or making decisions, blocking shots, it doesn’t matter,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.

Asked whether a quadruple-double crossed his mind considering he finished with five assists, Wembanyama admitted he had one eye on the rarest of statistical achievements.

“As a second thought, yes, but I was trying to win first,” the French marvel answered.

Only four players in NBA history, including the aforementioned Robinson, have registered quadruple-doubles. As it stands, Wemby’s performance against the Raptors marks the league’s first triple-double with blocks, period, in more than three years.

Devin Vassell added 25 points in a win that broke the Spurs’ seven-game losing streak. At 19 points per game, the fourth-year NBA guard is right behind Victor Wembanyama’s 20.4 average for the season. He’s glad his 20-year-old superstar teammate is behind him on the court.

“The way that he makes the game and how easy it is, I mean, I’m playing defense and I get beat, it’s almost like, well, go ahead, just try him at this point. I know he’s back there. He’s got my back.”

“For some reason, we felt great today. Had some great rhythm, started the game strong. I don’t know, I guess it’s just the NBA. We’ve got ups and downs in terms of shape and today was an up day,” Wembanyama continued. “There’s just days where you feel like it and we’ve go to play off of this as well.”

Vassell is pointing to a time when success will come with much more frequency for the now 11-43 Spurs.

“It’s interesting. It’s special. We’ve got something good here, it’s just we’ve got to put it all together and tonight it was a good implication of that.”

After Dhruva Balram’s family emigrated from India to Canada, he came of age in a new city, the optimistic soundtrack provided by emerging megastar Drake. Here he celebrates the breakthrough mixtape which provided the background to first love but also looks back and asks, what went wrong?

It is 2014 and the Toronto Raptors are playing the Brooklyn Nets in an NBA Eastern Conference playoff game. The camera pans to follow the action on the basketball court, stopping when a Raptors player is fouled. In the background, sitting court-side is arguably the world’s most famous rapper, Drake. He is using a lint roller to tend to his fleece trousers while watching the action unfold. The next day, a 20-second clip of this act of self-grooming spreads like a rash across the internet. It sparks a wildfire of memes and conversations across mainstream and social media. A few games later, a Drake-themed lint roller is unveiled by the Raptors and handed out to 1200 audience members, one of whom sells it for $55,100 on eBay.

In July 2023, British rapper Central Cee, looking effervescently cool, a reflection of his youth and status as one of the world’s biggest artists, sways in the background of a freestyle video while Drake, looking like an uncle at a family reunion trying to fit in with the teenagers, is decked out in a bright cherry-red jacket and reading glasses. He takes to the mic and cocks his eyebrows ever so slightly, looking up at the camera, stating “it’s a madness… and a badness” before pausing, and in a faux-patois accent, saying “combinayshaan”.

Within hours, the clip proliferated throughout the internet and the way Drake says ‘combination’ is permanently etched into my brain. Pause the video just as he says the word and even Central Cee is smirking. These days, Drake’s cultural value is present as more than a rapper: he may still bend culture to his will, a voracious vacuum which sweeps up anything relevant, but his power lies in his ubiquity. He is inescapable, a meme that seems to never disappear.