When it comes to mentors, not many young NBA stars have had as impressive a catalogue as Victor Wembanyama.
The French phenom has learned post moves and defence from Hakeem Olajuwon, physicality and attitude from Kevin Garnett, fundamentals from Tim Duncan, and zen from Chinese Shaolin monks.
Now, the 22-year-old is getting some important advice about his health from another Hall of Famer, and a player who’s had similar problems with blood clotting: Chris Bosh.
Speaking at a recent charity 3×3 event in California, the longtime NBA forward spoke at length about his blood-clot issues and offered a key piece of advice to Wembanyama.
“Take your medicine,” Bosh said to Sam Yip of HoopsHype. “Make sure that he’s staying on top of his regimen to make sure that doesn’t happen again because it only takes one more time. It happened one more time for me; it happened twice, and I couldn’t play anymore.”
Wembanyama, who made his first trip to the NBA Finals last season, missed the latter half of his second year in the league after discovering deep vein thrombosis — a sort of blood clot — in his right shoulder. He was shut down for the remainder of the year but managed to return in time for the 2025-26 season.
Bosh dealt with similar issues in the final years of his NBA career. He missed the back half of the 2014-15 season due to a blood clot in one of his lungs, and while he returned for the 2015-16 campaign, he was ruled out yet again in February of 2016 due to a blood clot in his leg.
Though he tried to return to the floor for the 2016-17 season, the clotting issues persisted and he failed a physical ahead of the year, forcing him to miss the season. It was later ruled by the NBA that his continued issues were a career-ending illness, and the former No. 4 overall pick from 2003 officially announced his retirement in 2019.
The issues have persisted to this day, with the 42-year-old mentioning that he had an emergency in February that nearly killed him.
Wembanyama, meanwhile, was kept under a microscope for much of the 2025-26 season. He missed 18 games in the regular season due to various injuries, started only 55 of 64 games and played a career-low 29.2 minutes a night.
Despite that, the 2023 first-overall pick was the unanimous Defensive Player of the Year, finished third in MVP voting and was selected to the All-NBA first team for the first time in his career.
