Victor Wembanyama misses NBA game after stepping on ball boy

It’s the “freak accident” that has all of San Antonio asking the same thing on Sunday, December 24: Who was the Mavericks ball boy who accidentally injured Victor Wembanyama?

Wemby reportedly left to the locker room after the incident before eventually returning and finishing his warmups with no issues. However, that didn’t stop coach Gregg Popovich and the Spurs holding out the 19-year-old, ruling this year’s No. 1 overall draft pick out through injury since he had already been dealing with a sore ankle on that same foot entering that night’s game.

“If it was a playoff game, I probably would have played him,” Popovich said to reporters after the contest, per the Express-News’ Tom Osborn. “He’s not happy about it, but I would rather err on the conservative side since it’s the same ankle that he just got a time limitation on.”

The whole sequence was bizarre to say the least. But the question still remains: Just who was that Dallas Mavericks ball boy?

And, well, the short answer is, no one still knows. Yes, in the year 2023, where anything and everything you put online can easily be traced back onto you, no one still knows who that ball boy is.

Comments have been flooding online about the boy’s identity and whether the incident was an inside job seeing as to how the game was against one of the Spurs’ biggest in-state rivals (which we all clearly know it wasn’t). 

The search continues to remain a mystery. But my findings did yield this, each year, 90 “Mavs Ballkids” are selected from various Dallas Mavericks Hoop Camps, according to the team’s website. 

Ballkids must display a good work ethic, have good grades and a great attitude in school, and must be between the ages of 13 and 18. So, let’s be sure to go easy on the kid, San Antonio. It is Christmas eve after all.