INGLEWOOD, Calif. — It takes just one.

And if I told you a chess-playing, voracious-reading, Shaolin monk-Kung Fu-trained, cosmopolitan European was the one?

Well, if you tuned in at all for the NBA’s new-look All-Star Game on Sunday at the Intuit Dome – and I hope you did – you would agree, obviously.

It was Kawhi Leonard’s house and Anthony Edwards’ hardware, but it was Victor Wembanyama’s world.

The San Antonio Spurs’ dexterous 7-foot-5ish center wanted competitive All-Star play and he got competitive All-Star play: Incroyable, fantastique, super bien, the Frenchman is a true American hero.

Because it was an impossible ask. A 7-foot-something tall task. A wish upon a superstar.

But Wemby got his painfully cool peers to play along, to pick up the tempo – and their defense, often at half court.

He got the risk-averse millionaires and billionaire in the building to take these silly mini-games seriously – instead of coasting for 48 minutes, they refused to take off a single possession of the round-robin series of 12-minute games.

He got them sweating. Sweating the outcome, certainly – and actually, literally sweating.

“I think it was pretty good,” Wembanyama said. “… it was a pretty good display of basketball. Better than last year, in my opinion. It was fun.”

Sunday’s exhibition – three truly taut contests leading into the Stars squad’s 47-21 torching of the Stripes in the final – felt like everything Kobe Bryant was talking about when he said on the Knuckleheads’ podcast in 2019: “Fans want to see the best pickup game in the world.”

Wembanyama wanted the best pickup game in the world.

What’s going to make the 22-year-old Wemby – the doe-legged monster with an elastic, Gumby-esque 7-foot-4 or- 5? frame (he doesn’t even know) and mind-bending skillset – the next Face of the League is his deliciously insatiable level of compete.

That relentless drive to do and be his best, what we in L.A. call the Mamba Mentality. As we know, that’s a contagious and inspiring philosophy.

It pervaded the whole starry enterprise Sunday, so Leonard’s 31 points in the Stripes’ 48-45 victory in Game 3 over Wembanyama’s team of international All-Stars were anything but empty calories.

That offensive explosion from the Clippers’ leading man on his home court held so much more weight because he was being guarded hard, including by Wemby, the human eraser who is averaging a league-leading 2.7 blocked shots per game this season.

“I tried my best,” said Wembanyama, the league’s most formidable defender, visibly dejected as he handled a microphone like a toy during his postgame news conference.

And Edwards’ MVP award – named the Kobe Bryant trophy – means more because of how hard the Ant-Man had to work for it. He wouldn’t have, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ honest and often hilarious shooting guard kept saying, if Wembanyama didn’t start it, even letting him know in the tunnel before they took the court: “I’m matched up on you.”

“I’m not gonna lie, Wemby set the tone,” Edwards said during his on-court interview after his Stars eked out a 37-35 overtime victory over Wemby’s World team in the second game. “Like, he came out playing hard so it’s hard not to match that – so, [expletive], that’s what happened. Sorry for my language; that’s what happened, though.”

Edwards matched up well, finishing with 32 points across three games for the winning team. He answered the call, but he didn’t make the call.

That was Wembanyama, who had 14 points, six rebounds and three blocks in the World’s first loss and 19 points – including a pair of clutch 3-pointers – in its second.

He did all that, but more, he made it official Sunday: He’ll be the guy. He’s going to be the guy.

He is that guy.

“It’s something that’s got to be natural, of course,” he said. “Obviously social media, the NBA can promote whoever they want.

“But at the end of the day, it’s going to be the best players and who the people ask for. Being the ‘face of the league,’ it’s something that can be manufactured but only to some extent. It’s only going to be the best players. This is what it’s all about.”

Or, as he told NBA insider Chris Haynes before tipoff: “Supply and demand, and I’m here to supply.”

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