I don’t think it should take 4-5 years before knowing whether a young player is going to be any good. You should have a sense by the end of Year 2 what they’re going to develop into.
Like, I think it’s clear by now that Jeremy Sochan is going to be a glue-guy role player. He’s not going to be Draymond Green.
And I don’t think Malaki Branham or Blake Wesley are NBA players. If they were, they would have shown something by now.
So if the Spurs go the draft route to build the team, and the picks pan out, the team should be on a pretty clear upward trajectory pretty quickly. If they’re not, and the team is still preaching patience, it means they failed.