I didn't hate the way Victor played for stretches last night. The Spurs made some runs with him on the court when he sat back and let the other guys score points. I don't know if his sickness made him run out of energy or if he realized he had to take a step back. But maybe it's a sign of progress.
Do people remember when Wemby used to try to cherry pick after every possession? He'd constantly sprint away when the opposing team got a shot up, and multiple times his man would be the one to get the rebound. It took several games to sort that out. As bad as some things have been this year in terms of his habits, it still hasn't regressed to that point.
It's extremely hard to build anything around a guy who doesn't do anything well. Brazil couldn't name a single thing Wemby actually does repeatably well. He just listed potential things ("He has good vision") that haven't yet translated to anything solid. If Wemby had focused on being an elite PnR big, they could've built their offense around that. If he'd spent time studying how to move without the ball, they could build a screening game where he got midrange curls. When people like Sean talk about how the Spurs have to "play through Wemby", they come off a completely tone deaf to the reality of their star player. There's no way you can build an offense where five guys move with a common purpose if the guy who keeps getting the ball has no idea what he's going to do with it.
I don't know if folks have noticed over the last couple of games that the Spurs have started to move away from Wemby as the PnR screener. It's very possible this is because they want the guy guarded by the opposing center to set the screen. It seems clear to me one of the Spurs' foci coming into the year was to attack the opposing centers to deter cross-matches. That's why Sochan has been so aggressive this year. The reason why it hasn't changed much is that despite having a productive year so far, Sochan has not been particularly efficient. He's using possessions decently but only to a level the opposing coaches can live with. Running 1/4 PnRs rather than 1/5 seems to be another attempt to play into the strategy, with the added benefit of hopefully getting more solid screens. However, I have seen Sochan and Barnes slip screens too, so I wonder how much of Victor's habits on that end are his own inclinations versus what he's legitimately being asked to do by the staff.
There's a knock-on effect from Victor not learning how to play as a center. Because Victor doesn't know how to be a center, the opposing team does not have to put their center on him. Because he's not being guarded by centers, Wemby loses his agility advantage. Because he doesn't know how to be a center, he can't take advantage of the massive height difference. Because he doesn't have anything he can really do at that point, he panics. Teams know all this now and send guys at him. It's not because they don't respect the other guys on the court. It's because they know Wemby has to put the ball on the floor to feel comfortable shooting jump shots, so they can send a guy to dig out his dribble. There's basically no downside to doing that, because Wemby's offense isn't at the point where he can consistently punish that.
I could go on. But this year folks are recognizing the things I was saying last year to a much less receptive crowd. The point of me bringing these things up isn't to trash Wemby or suggest the team trades him. It's to hopefully establish why it takes six or seven years for guys to make it to the top of the mountain. The dude isn't ready -- he's not even meaningfully on the path to becoming ready. While I'm disappointed in the way he's conducted himself on the court at times, I'm not worried about his lack of production. Maturity takes time. It doesn't matter if you're extremely tall and have skills no one that tall has ever shone. He's still a kid, and it takes time. Stop trying to age him up in your head to meet your fantasies. The player he is now and the player he will be when he's ready are very different, and trying to superimpose that actualized player onto the current one and then making demands based on that construct would be foolish.
It's hard to imagine how much worse things would look right now if the team had traded a ton of picks for Markkanen. They'd have a guy clearly better than Victor on the court but who can't get touches in any flow because his co-star is jacking up 35-footers and breaking off possessions by running to the post and calling for the ball while a guy a foot shorter than him shoves him 15 feet across for the floor. I suggest the fans who still cling to the notions of Victor being ready to win now take a step back and resist the urge to place his struggles at the feet of his teammates. We already know what it looks like for a player to be limited by bad teammates. Robinson in the 90s, Lebron his first couple of years -- that's what it looks like when a guy his great but the other guys on the floor let him down. He's a guy who fundamentally doesn't know how to score consistently at the NBA level and between him and the coaching staff, he hasn't made tangible progress toward that consistency yet.
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