Inside the Shaolin Monastery that Helped Build Victor Wembanyama

San Antonio Spurs player Victor Wembanyama is a generational talent, combining a 7-foot-4 frame with an unprecedented skill set. After Wembanyama’s second season was cut short by a blood clot, his agent, Bouna Ndiaye, sought unconventional ways to help him grow—physically, mentally, and spiritually. Ndiaye sent Wembanyama to the Shaolin Temple in China’s Henan province, where Master Yan’an, a 34th-generation Shaolin Warrior monk, put him through a customized training program: 4:30 a.m. wake-ups, hours of meditation, and kung fu forms focused on controlling his center of gravity. ESPN‘s Ramona Shelburne takes us inside the retreat—and shows how the intense training has transformed Wembanyama’s game.

“Power comes from inside,” he said. “I would look at him and say: You are not a cat; you are a tiger. For power to come out, you have to change the inside first.”

Once Wembanyama did, Master Yan’an said, he could challenge him to do something nobody else could do.

One day he told Wembanyama to dribble a basketball up another dangerous mountain route to Sanhuangzhai, a monastery deep in the Song Mountains. The hike traversed cliffside plank paths, suspension bridges and ancient forests, and was five times as long as the one to Bodhidharma Cave. The trail forces you to climb roughly 2,500 feet in elevation across uneven ridges and stone.

Master Yan’an said it would take an average person seven to eight hours to reach the end.

Wembanyama did it — while dribbling a basketball — in four and a half.