Victor Wembanyama Sketches Gramercy Park Statue Before Spurs’ Game 3 Win
Before he delivered his most complete performance of the 2026 NBA Finals, Victor Wembanyama found a quieter subject in New York City: a statue in Gramercy Park. A viral Instagram video posted Tuesday showed the 7-foot-4 French star sketching alongside his sister, Eve, in the private Manhattan park hours before the San Antonio Spurs’ 115-111 Game 3 victory over the New York Knicks.
The statue they drew depicts Edwin Booth as Hamlet. Booth, a 19th-century Shakespearean actor, founded the Players Club on Gramercy Park South, which commissioned the work in 1918 as a tribute roughly 25 years after his death. The sculpture was made by Edmond Thomas Quinn, a Gilded Age artist whose work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum.
It remains unclear how Wembanyama entered Gramercy Park, which is famously accessible only to nearby keyholders. But the scene fit the surreal scale of the moment: a global basketball figure, in the middle of an NBA Finals series, spending part of the afternoon drawing a historic New York monument with his sister, who plays professionally in Europe.
After the game, Wembanyama was asked about the outing. “Not bad. Pretty good,” he said, smiling. The answer matched the night’s broader result. He finished with 32 points, eight rebounds, six assists, and three blocks as San Antonio cut into the Knicks’ series lead, which stood at 2-1 after Game 3.
Game 4 was scheduled for Wednesday at Madison Square Garden at 8:30 p.m. For the Knicks, the question is no longer only how to contain Wembanyama on the court, but how to keep him from turning another New York landmark into a sketchbook before tipoff.
