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Hey let us dream that the Wemby injury allows us to draft our next Tim Duncan to pair with Wemby.
Yeah, this is why I'm not too worried about jumping into the Top 4.
Just keep surrounding Fox/Castle/Wemby with solid, Barnes-like players. I'm comfortable with our star power at this point. The only thing that would change that would be some unexpected horrible news that Wemby is retiring... in which case I will erect the Voodoo Shrine in my home and begin ritual sacrifices to land Flagg.
Hey let us dream that the Wemby injury allows us to draft our next Tim Duncan to pair with Wemby.
Setting aside the Top 4, what does everything about the idea of doubling up on size? Something like two of CMB/Fleming/Newell/Essengue?/Queen?
We could then make someone like Laravia our FA priority with our MLE (something like 3/36 for him) and have LaRavia/Barnes/Champ as our SFs and load up the PF pipeline?
CMB -- a bit small and a bit old
Fleming -- a bit more old
Newell -- a bit intriguing
Essengue -- a potential bargain
Queen -- too big and slow (would just get in the way)
Right on!! Any combination of Ace Bailey, Asa Newell, or Danny Wolf will work for me.
Last edited by Thomas82; 02-22-2025 at 03:13 AM.
you need knock down shooters with elite defense. Their scoring is not that important, they just have to be able to make open shots at a high rate and guard.
@ thinking 20 and 21 is old
We should definitely draft a PF. Fleming and CMB are ahead of the pack if you ask me. I give Fleming the edge cause he can shoot the 3. Can stay in front of guys, has a 7'2'' wingspan, can block shots and has an NBA body. Super underrated in my book.
CMB is a Draymond type with elite defense, the problem is his 3-point shot. You'd have to split minutes with him and Jeremy in the rotation. But then again his shooting form is not nearly as bad as Sochan's.
Newell and Essengue are projects to me. I'd rather go with the other 2.
Barnes type of players disappear too often.
I'd rather see the Spurs land in the top four and get a player with a higher ceiling especially now with the uncertainty of Wemby's health.
Is it a SF/PF or a PF/C that Spurs need? Spurs don’t really have an answer to likes of Zubac, Embiid, Jokic, even sometimes Sengun, big body Centers who like to put their weight on Wemby. Sochan is definitely not the answer, and I would hate for Spurs to draft another tweener, i.e. Keldon, Sochan. I thought Samanic was a good size but didn’t have the motor. I rather they draft a good size PF/C who can man the post but nimble enough and can shoot. That’s why I like Danny Wolf who’s slowly going up the draft. Sure I’d like another athletic SF, but I wish they draft the likes of Danny Wolf with their 2nd FRP.
I'm too dumb (or lazy, take your pick) to figure out how to post a YouTube link to start at a specific time.
A mixed bag from Danny Wolf last night. 11 points, 7 RBs, 8 assists, with a couple of glorious highlights to maintain his upward trajectory; but UM also got handled by Mich St (MSU looked excellent).
Check out the span from 2:30 to 3:00, and then again at 9:30, and tell me which highlight you like more.
Andre Drummond would be a great back up for Wemby. Just my opinion
I thought Danny Wolf should’ve been more aggressive offensively but again he distributed (not counting hockey passes) and rebounded. But which is what he brings as a Diaw-type of player, imo.
I just know he’s gonna be a Spurs or a Celtic with that hair
But boy those nifty passes, diving for the ball, finding the open man. You just know he’ll make the right play.
Last edited by John B; 02-22-2025 at 11:27 AM.
is he a good defender tho
The philly fans I've heard on podcasts hate Drummond passionately and are mad that he has a player option for next year. Basically he's not the player he used to be
Danny Wolf isn’t going to help stop these 20 pt runs opposing teams suddenly make out of nowhere during games. The key needs are defense and rebounding.
It's pretty crazy to think about.
But I did a quick look at the top ten picks in the last four drafts and only 6 of those 40 draftees weren't teenagers when drafted.
In other words only 6 of 40 top ten picks were 20 or older (I might have missed one or two in my quick survey but that's what I got).
So if you're using one of those top ten picks, age seems to be a big factor in who you take.
That's actually a key question that the Spurs need to settle on an answer for. Last year, Wemby was playing C, very definitely. DAF86 was right. But, with this years 3 pt shooting and generally perimeter oriented offence, Wemby's muddied the waters considerably. Is Wemby's theoretical front court partner a PF, a C or do we need another unicorn to fit beside our current one...
If you go into the Knecht thread, there is a video, Knecht based, that explains why. Basically, they analyzed the past like 15 drafts, and what the productivity was on average at each slot. Then, they analyzed the age and productivity of each player, and how it compared to the expected productivity of that slot. It wasn’t terrible for 20 and 21, but it dropped off a ing cliff for 22 and 23. Unsurprisingly, 18 and 19 year olds outperform expectations at their draft slots. That’s why they get picked. It explains why guys like Duarte, Podz, and Jaquez come into the league and make a splash as rookies, and then just fall of the map. No one is even talking about Podz or Jaquez this year. If you wanted to make a killing, draft one of these guys, let him show out as a rookie, then trade him over the summer. You’ll almost never be sorry.
I think the issue with this is that none of those 5 guys project to be +shooters with any amount of confidence. Even Fleming, who has the most promise of all of them from a shooting standpoint, is a question mark - 1 season of good 3 point shooting on medium volume primarily on catch and shoots with a career <70% FT percentage - compare him with prior drafted players with similar FT%, 3P%, volume, and mid-range touch and it's actually a mixed bag, with guys like Taurean Prince, Chuma Okeke, Justise Winslow, Jarrett Culver, and Mo Wagner being fairly similar (just referring to shooting, not playstyle). I think you really need high volume wing shooting to make any of the other four work, more than what Barnes and LaRavia are able to give you. Champ's volume and gravity are good, but it's a question of whether he's able to scale up his per 100 possessions stats to higher usage.
Essengue is many years away I think - he might be good or he might not, he puts up good numbers in Germany, but I think his defense is sort of overrated right now, and his primary appeal is his ability to get to the line and the fact that he's a mystery box. Queen is awesome offensively but I don't know about his motor - if he can undergo a Naz Reid-like transformation with his body, I actually trust his dribble jumper to get there more than most. Newell I'm higher on than I used to be, but I think I'm biased against him just because I see a lot of similarities to Marvin Bagley.
CMB is like your ultimate high risk-high reward gamble, because he's so dependent on who the 3 is next to him. His combination of self creation, ball-handling, and passing don't come along that often for guys his size, and certainly not defense-first guys - Wolf's the only guy who's better in this class, and of recent classes, Paolo, Zion, and Oso are the only ones who really stick out (probably missing a bunch of people). He probably can't space the floor except for from mid-range, but take a look at Miami/Golden State/Sacramento. Everyone thinks Draymond can shoot, but he's been a non-shooter (not just a bad shooter, look it up) for well over half his career playing next to another non-shooting big in Looney. Bam (playing next to famed sniper Jimmy Butler) and Sabonis can't shoot. And yet Sacramento had the #1 offensive rating in the league 2 years ago while Miami's gone to the finals twice in the last 5 years. Ultimately, physical passing bigs with high bball IQ are going to find a way to succeed offensively, you just need to put at least 2 high volume shooters around them (Curry-Klay; Herro-Robinson; Monk-Murray). Wemby is one. If you can find the second one (since I'm projecting Fox and Castle to be league-average eventually), you can unlock everything that CMB brings on defense. But if you can't, then you're definitely going to run into spacing issues.
you don't waste a lottery pick on a back up big. There are plenty of good bigs in the 2nd round and I hope they sign one to an NBA contract. The lottery picks have to be used on forwards. PFs like Fleming and CMB are physical with huge wingspans and can easily play smallball 5.
both of those guys are mocked outside of the top ten. So most likely targets for the ATL pick.
The other thing is, would you rather take the younger Newell who can't shoot at all or the older Fleming who shoots a good percentage from 3? Cause in 3 seasons Sochan still hasn't developed a 3-point shot.
His ideal partner is a PF who plays good perimeter D, while playing like a C on offense. That's basically Sochan. CMB also fits that profile.
Last edited by RC_Drunkford; 02-22-2025 at 03:17 PM.
good point. You can also counter the spacing issues if you use the playmaking big as a ballhandler to initiate the offense (kinda what Cleveland does with Mobley and I guess that was the idea behind the Sochan PG experiment).
When you have a backcourt as dynamic as Fox and Castle, I don't think it would be logical to slow down the team by playing Wemby at PF.
On the paper the ideal profile to be paired with Wembanyama is a PF with some mobility who can defend, rebound and hit an open 3. Rasheer Fleming has exactly that profile in the draft but the question is whether or not he is good enough to be a NBA starter.
Thanks for the detailed write up. Lots of food for thought here.
It appears to me that this isn't the best draft to find what we really need (which is multiple wings who can shoot and defend), which is just how things go sometimes.
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