Wembanyama Led NBA in Blocks and Stocks Per Game in 2025-26
Victor Wembanyama topped the league in blocks (3.08/game) and combined steals-plus-blocks (4.11/game) last season, but crowning him the single best defender requires impact data the box score can't provide.
Published: · Figures as of September 3, 2026
Asked: Is Wemby already the best defender in the NBA?
Wembanyama leads the NBA in shot-blocking and total defensive plays
Judged on every countable defensive stat we track, Victor Wembanyama comes out on top of the league: he led all qualified players in blocks per game (3.08) and in stocks per game (steals + blocks, 4.11) during the 2025-26 season, the most recently completed one. Whether that makes him the single "best defender" in the NBA depends on metrics — plus-minus impact, DPOY-style voting — that either don't exist in our data or are too confounded to rank individuals on, so here's what the numbers do and don't support.
What the box score shows
- Blocks per game: 3.08, #1 of 234 qualified players. The gap to second is real — Chet Holmgren is next at 1.90, so Wembanyama blocks about 62% more shots per game than the next-closest shot-blocker.
- Stocks per game (steals + blocks): 4.11, also #1, ahead of Ausar Thompson (2.95) and Scottie Barnes (2.88).
- Steals are not part of that profile. At 66 steals in 64 games (about 1.0 per game), he isn't among the league's top-10 in steals per game — that list is topped by Ausar Thompson at 2.0. His defensive event production is almost entirely a shot-blocking story, not a ball-hawking one.
- He also grabbed 9.5 defensive rebounds a game (606 in 64 games) — a real defensive contribution, though we don't carry a league-wide per-game ranking for that specific stat to say where it places him.
| Player | Stocks per game (stocks per game) |
|---|---|
| Wembanyama | 4.109 |
| A. Thompson | 2.945 |
| Barnes | 2.875 |
| Maxey | 2.643 |
| Holmgren | 2.522 |
Team context, held at arm's length
San Antonio finished 3rd in the league in defensive rating (109.4 points allowed per 100 possessions), well below the league's pooled average of 113.5 — about 1.2 standard deviations better than a typical defense. That's a strong team number with Wembanyama at the center of it, but it's not the league's best mark (Oklahoma City and Detroit graded out ahead of the Spurs), and a team rating is shared credit across five players on the floor — it isn't evidence that isolates his individual impact.
What we can't check
Our data doesn't compute Box Plus/Minus, Defensive BPM, PER, or any adjusted plus-minus/RAPM figure — the tools that usually settle a "best defender" argument by isolating a player from his teammates and opponents. Raw on-court plus-minus is stored, but that number is confounded by exactly who else is on the floor and off it, so it isn't a sound way to rank individual defenders on its own. We also don't carry Defensive Player of the Year voting or All-Defensive honors.
Bottom line: on the defensive numbers a box score can actually show — shot-blocking and total defensive plays — Wembanyama was the clear league leader last season, by a wide margin over the field. Calling him the outright best defender in the league requires the isolation-and-impact data (adjusted plus-minus, lineup tracking) that isn't part of what we hold, so that broader claim is unverified rather than confirmed or denied. Confidence: High on the shot-blocking/stocks leadership, Low on the full "best defender" title.