San Antonio Spurs forward (or should I say, unicorn?) Victor Wembanyama is the NBA’s next unstoppable force.

The French phenom and his squad were facing off against the Denver Nuggets last night in San Antonio. Mind you, these are the same Nuggets who steamrolled their way to an NBA title last year. They’ve faced dominant players, know how to gameplan well for an opponent, and themselves boast elite talent (Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr.).

But even this squad was incapable of stopping Wembanyama.

Wembanyama (with ball) had himself a night against the Nuggets. (Photo by Ronald Cortes/Getty Images)

He finished with 34 points (a great night by any stretch), but that wasn’t the most impressive part of his evening. In the third quarter, he scored half of those points in three minutes of game time. 

With 8:11 to go in the third, the Nuggets had an 81-60 lead. That’s when Wemby caught fire.

His scoring stretch started innocently enough, he walked into a three-pointer from the wing.

Then he layed in a lob and got his fifth point. At this juncture, the Nuggets were fine. So what their best player got a quick five, they still had a 20-point lead.

But then he completed an and-1, and made his next three three-point attempts – the last of which was from way downtown – to help narrow the deficit to eight points.

Devonte’ Graham would end up hitting a floater with less than a second on the clock to seal a 121-120 come-from-behind victory for the Spurs.

Mind you, Wemby’s dominance wasn’t just a symptom of the Nuggets not taking the game as a whole seriously. With the loss, they locked themselves into a three-way tie for the No. 1 spot in the Western Conference standings. They wanted this win badly.

But then they learned that a new era of the NBA is coming, an era in which (barring anything drastic) Wembanyama could make even the best teams look foolish when playing against him. And there might not be anything Denver – or anyone else in the NBA – can do to stop it.