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Is there an echo in here?
bro all the teams in the east look bad.Difference is they want to tank,Atl dont care to tank and gain nothing from tanking.They proved they
could beat the best teams and got to a confidence booster for them that can beat anybody.
Is there an echo in here?
Maybe the Hawks can’t beat a pelican team. We can always hope.
We need some bird on bird crime as the NOLA Pelicans are up 52-44 on the ATL Hawks 2:56 remaining in the 2nd Q
It seems almost guaranteed that the Hawks will have a top 8 record in the East this season. If only for the sole reason that they have no incentive to tank. The only chance was for them to be laughably bad, and that doesn't seem to be the case.
A west team losing to the hawks. What a disgrace!
This board was too blinded by delusions of Cooper Flaggscicles to see this coming, despite the warnings. Last year during the Trae rumors the usual suspects wanted to convince everyone (maybe even themselves) that the Hawks were doomed with no way of getting better and their only choice was to sell Young for pennies on the dollar. Instead, the Hawks went out and did a pretty solid recouperation job on Murray* and landed the #1 pick. They're an entertaining team to watch. It will be interesting to see Atlanta become small-move buyers towards the deadline as it becomes more evident they'll make the playoffs.
In the end...
San Antonio receives:
2025 FRP from ATL (will probably end up around #16-20
2026 FRP Swap (my estimation is that this will probably end up jumping us from like Pick #25 to Pick #18 next year)
2027 FRP from ATL (I actually think ATL will stay a playoff team for the next few years... Daniels, Jalen Johnson, Risacher and Trae ain't a bad core by any means, so I'll peg this around pick #20)
Atlanta Receives:
Dyson Daniels
Larry Nance Jr (who I'm thinking they'll probably flip for some SRPs at some point)
EJ Liddell (who they flipped for David Roddy, who is putting in some helpful minutes for them)
2025 FRP from LAL (will probably end up around pick 18-20)
2027 FRP (lesser of NOP and MIL, so call this pick #24 or so).
The 2025 and 2027 picks are probably about a wash (but we'll see... maybe the Spurs still get lotto picks), so ATL basically traded a 2026 swap for Dyson Daniels.
Right now it's looking like a rare W for both teams.
At least die Clippers are doing well too. Giving OKC one of the top players in this draft could create a pretty high hurdle to deal with in the Wemby era. (Not saying they are not our main hurdle anyway.)
Atlanta did good to recover from Murray debacle. The Spurs still made a damn good deal for a middling Murray, regardless of what Atlanta did later to save face.
The Derrick White deal on the other hand looks terrible with each passing day.
It looks terrible because they developed him into a way better player.
He was barely a 35% career shooter with us on low volume, he's at 39% on 6 attempts in Boston.
This is why I wasn't against trading Hawks picks for Lauri.
They're not a great team, but in a conference with so many horrible teams we were never getting a top10 pick without crazy lottery luck.
Having no incentive to tank is an automatic +10 in W column.
I will never Spurs fans that push this narrative. The Derrick White trade needed to happen for the Spurs to get Wemby. The moment we got Wemby, the trade became an unquestionable success.
It doesn't work like that. The Spurs didn't have Wemby when they made the trade; the quality of their decision can only be judged using the information they had at the time.
There is also no guarantee that the Spurs wouldn't have gotten Wemby if they had held on to White, or made/not made any of the other moves before 2023. A counterfactual can't be proven.
Sorry I didn't mean to suggest the Spurs didn't do well in the trade - just the the Hawks came out pretty good as well.
I agree with this. We can look back and see how perfect Derrick would be for this team today... but we can't build this team today if we had Derrick the whole time, it's a catch-22 retrospective.
The only thing we could potentially fault the Spurs for on that deal is not getting a better return for Derrick, but I think it says more about how FRPs are overvalued. You can get meaningful players for middling FRPs. Derrick may be on the higher end of the return spectrum for the pick we got back, but it isn't a complete aberration. Let this be a lesson to the Spurs as we approach the trade deadline with what appears to be our own pair of mid FRPs.
One goal now for the Spurs (and most teams really) is to identify Derrick White types who might be gettable for not too crazy of a price, but who could potentially blossom into valuable glue guys to pair with Wemby & company. My #1 target right now would be Jake LaRavia of Memphis. I liked his game out of Wake Forest the year he was drafted, and he's shown a steady acclimation and improvement to the point this year where, despite not being a big time scorer, he's near the top of nearly all impact stats for the team. He can play both forward positions, plausibly succeed as a starter or a 6th man, and Memphis has some depth at those positions, so an offer involving draft picks might be appealing to them.
https://www.basketball-reference.com...laravja01.html
It actually does work like that, because while not having Wemby in their hands, the trade was specifically made with the goal of advancing the Spurs' chances of getting him. It directly affected the outcome, and placed the Spurs on the best possible odds for their situation.
And we know this was carefully planned because articles were coming out a year out on how the Spurs were prepping for "getting" Wemby. It was a very deliberate move, a calculated choice to trade DWhite away, and had a generational prospect not been on the board, Spurs very well might've kept him.
This is exactly why it's so bull that this board doesn't give the FO the credit it deserves for what they did to get Wemby. They timed their tank perfectly, went all-out for it when many here doubted their commitment to a strategy, a losing one at that; and then they reaped their (very lucky still) reward.
Atlanta is beating the Cavs. They are looking like contenders the last few weeks.
Wow, isn't this the Cavs' 3rd loss to Atlanta? And weren't they like 16-1 before losing to them? Assholes...
Well, every smart person knew at that moment that the only reason the Spurs traded White was to tank properly. I don't know how there's any doubt about that.
? The Cavs play Washington tonight. Atlanta beat New Orleans last night.
Sample size! Atlanta has overperformed, but not even 2 months into the season yet so don't assume this is what they will be all season. They've definitely done better than expected, but I want to see this rate of winning continue for awhile before I believe its real. I still have a hard time believing that this team - even in the terrible East - is a legit playoff team.
Also, they've still have a really easy schedule!! I posted this before:
https://www.espn.com/nba/stats/rpi/_/sort/SOS
So far they are +2 in the W column based on their schedule. 9-13 looks a of a lot different than 11-11.
Here are some more stats from Basketball Reference. It is really hard to not make the case that they are punching above their weight right now.
PTS/G: 116.5 (8th of 30) Opp PTS/G: 119.0 (28th of 30)
SRS: -3.84 (23rd of 30) Pace: 103.6 (3rd of 30)
Off Rtg: 112.4 (19th of 30) Def Rtg: 114.9 (19th of 30) Net Rtg: -2.5 (19th of 30)
Expected W-L: 9-13 (19th of 30)
It doesn't matter, they will probably still remain in the top 8 of the ECF once the other teams go full tank mode.
early on they had b2b losses vs washington (the only 2 wizards wins of the season so far). could say boston slept on them without Trae. but then beating Cleveland back to back? sneaking up on them once sure, but b2b is something
They get to play 2/3 of their games against the East. The schedule ain't gonna get that much harder
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