Victor Wembanyama apparently enjoys ping pong in addition to hoops. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Spurs Sports & Entertainment

There’s been another public sighting of top Spurs draft pick Victor Wembanyama, this time playing ping pong and shooting hoops with NBA Hall of Famer Manu Ginobili beneath an Interstate 35 underpass.

Spectrum News broadcast journalist Jose Arredondo shared a video Wemby and the legendary former Spur on X, the online platform formerly known as Twitter. The clip, reportedly shot by Arredondo’s barber, racked up more than 70,000 views as of early afternoon Thursday.

“My barber saw Manu and Wemby at the downtown outdoor basketball court under I-35 playing ping-pong and doing trick shots with the highway pillars,” Arredondo wrote on X.

Although fans were excited about another Wemby sighting — he was last spotted buying art at Southtown’s Blue Star Art Complex — plenty of X users were shocked to learn that San Antonio has a park housed in a highway underpass.

“There’s a recreation area under the freeways in San Antonio?” X user @HOUmanitarian asked.

“I’m sorry, when did SA get an outdoor basketball court,” user @nimamotiee chimed in.

The 8,000-square-foot park under I-35 between Dolorosa and Commerce streets opened in August, according to the San Antonio Report.

The city’s Department of Arts and Culture planned the public space near Market Square in collaboration with Center City Development and Operations, the San Antonio Report notes. Texas Department of Transportation, which owns the land where the park sits, also had to sign off on its creation.

Allergy medicine Claritin’s Clarity Parks Project donated $100,000 to the project, a sum matched by Rackspace founder Graham Weston’s charitable 80⼁20 Foundation, according to the SA Report.

Wembanyama, who recently said he plans to win a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, will make his NBA regular-season debut in an Oct. 25 matchup against the Dallas Mavericks at Frost Bank Center.

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This article appears in Sep 20 – Oct 3, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...