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I still vividly remember trying to convince people we should trade two of those picks for Markkanen last summer.
- Hired a great Coach who is good at squeezing regular season wins out of middling/mediocre rosters
- Turned The Pelicans franchise into a farm team (sent them a plateauing, soon-to-be Achilles-ed Murray and robbed them of a DPOY-candidate and a valuable unprotected '26 FRP)
- Didn't panic and kept Trae who is still an underrated floor-raising PG especially in the regular season.
- Got lucky and won the 2024 lottery from 10th spot adding a wing with All-star potential.
- The East is collapsing around them with injuries.
- They are preparing ammo for a potential Giannis trade.
Dem picks won't be good
Last edited by spursistan; 06-26-2025 at 12:25 PM.
I still vividly remember trying to convince people we should trade two of those picks for Markkanen last summer.
Props to them, they’ve done great. Spurs have gotten way too lucky with regards to draft odds for me to feel bad tbh. We could lose the 26 swap and the 27 pick could end up in the high 20s and the spurs will still have gotten way luckier than I ever could have hoped for
Yep, everyone just assumed the Hawks were going to roll over and die “with no way to improve their team” and “no choice but to deal Trae and bottom out”. Lo and behold… they’ve gone out and improved their team.
Just goes to show (and someone recently bumped the thread I did on this a year ago), that most picks acquired via trade well in advance don’t convey into top lotto picks. NBA teams aren’t run by complete morons (though sometimes it looks like they are), and it is easy enough to get into play-in range if you just run your organization even semi-decently. There will always been enough teams tanking below you if you yourself need to avoid tanking.
FRPs are still FRPs though, and you never know what might happen… I’m glad we have that pick and that swap, but I’m not counting on landing our next core piece with them (which is fine).
Atlanta will be low key fun to watch next season.
I doesn’t matter if they won’t pay Trae his $60 M or whatever.
It's just obvious that the NBA is 90% GM competency and 10% lucking into generational talent.
Just look at the Pistons that looked hopeless and are right back into it in no time with some competent GMing.
I'll say it again, '28 Celtics swap will be worthless because Stevens is a top2 GM in the league.
'30 Minnesota swap won't be anything special with the new ownership looking competent and willing to spend money.
The best we can hope for is another disaster in Dallas by '30.
I don't think the needle has moved much for Atlanta. They did fleece Nola (side note-we should talk with nola about TM while they are in the getting fleeced mode), but that 26 pick isn't going to really impact their 27 picks because rookies don't move needles. Then you have the Porzingis trade, that one could impact them either way depending on his health, so it's a crap shoot. Then the big question is, are they gonna pay Trae $60M/per? Trade him? Etc. That's the next big decision and it will impact them more than any other. At this moment, I think they are a play-in team again. Another move might improve them a bit and an injury would knock them out. There's no need to overestimate them at this point and there's no reason to expect a top 5 pick at this point. In essence, they still are who they were...
Kings too but reverse, had a great future & roster and shipped it off to attempt to compete NOW and it predictably blew up in their face.
ATL fans should be pleased with the way their FO has navigated roster building for the past year, BUT there's still opportunity for them to feel real pain losing out on the rights to Carter Bryant.
Would actually expect a worse overall outcome if they don't deal Murray to the Hawks.
I see a swap as an option on a team having an unexpectedly bad season, like the Pelicans or Suns this past season. It isn't likely but it's still a positive asset.
I love what they've done, but I'm still convinced no team starting Trae Young is ever winning a championship, so it's still a little frustrating to watch. Their entire roster is built to make up for an undersized non-defending PG who wants to play like Steph but has shooting efficiencies closer to Russell Westbrook, and who is actively in the "worst defensive starter in the league" discussion. It's nearly an impossible task, but I guess if the goal is to simply make the playoffs some of their fans will be happy.
Well, what I like about those swaps, even if they won’t land you in the lottery, is that they are just enhancers to your pick if you think (as the Spurs should) that you’re going to have a Top Team. So even if BOS28 and MIN30 are still playoff teams, if the Spurs are the #1 seed (which they ing should be, tbqh) - then the result is the Spurs get a pick better than they “deserve” by normal drafting methodology and that’s a good thing.
But this is also why most swaps end up having the same value as an early SRP… because teams won’t tank on your behalf. They’re nice to have (and they make future picks more valuable) but they aren’t some golden ticket like some people want to make them out to be (although occasionally they are, like PHILLY/BOS/SAC a few years ago).
I actually think it is not good optics for us if that swap doesn't convey. It means, in part, we haven't met our own expectations. I understand the East getting decimated by injuries is not our fault, but Hawks would be scoring an important late goal in that trade retrospective..
The OKC Thunder's success tells an important story about the need to harvest FRPs. A team might strike out with a few but having a lot of FRPs allows them to combine a lot of misses with just a few hits and the odd home run. So far the Atlanta picks have gotten Carter Bryant to the Spurs and it remains to be seen id he will be worth it but considering the fact they got an athletic 3 and D prospect suggests they are trending in the right direction.
I agree. I said this in another thread… if you trade for a far out swap, and then that swap doesn’t convey… then your job should feel a little jeopardized. The exception would be if you finish 24th and the other team is 27th or something… nothing you can do about that. But if you trade for a swap and then end up in the lottery… you might need to consider another line of work.
I think that's part of the lesson, but the other part is being flexible, jumping at opportunities and making good decisions in any given scenario, which in OKC's case was handed to them when Paul George demanded a trade. They didn't initiate a trade for Shai, but without that move they're not the 68 win championship team we see now. If Presti had refused PG's trade request and insisted on some generic "not skipping any steps" philosophy, he'd most likely still be a ringless GM.
every NBA team is a couple of devastating injuries, or disgruntled player(s), away from having a terrible season and dropping into the lottery, and with what happened with Dallas this past lottery, any lottery pick will have value. Far away unprotected picks or swaps are still valuable assets to have, so they shouldn't be dumped out of panic.
Atlanta did a well above average job of retooling the past couple of years, their trade of Dejounte was actually kind of risky and they absolutely nailed it, the Risacher pick was also bold (plenty of people here bashed him non stop) and he's definitely a starting caliber NBA wing with room for growth, they made the decision to part with Hunter who was having a great season and got back a couple of useful players including Levert and Niang that helped their depth, they pulled a highway robbery yesterday... that's a string of bold AND very good moves, they didn't let the fear of conveying a high pick get in the way of making moves that would help them long term and the results were almost immediate. That deserves a lot of credit, this wasn't your average GMing, but well above that. Spurs were as unlucky here as they were lucky originally.
One of those picks landed us Carter Bryant and the other probably facilitated the Spurs parting with their own 27 pick in the Fox trade, I don't think I'd rather have Lauri at his current contract than those 2.
Spurs still get Wemby, Castle and Harper in that order. No need to be greedy even though there's nothing wrong in wanting more, our front office still needs to work in evalauting/picking players outside Top 5 in Wright's era. Sure the '26 (FR Swap) and '27 (FRP) might be worthless now in terms of lottery range potential but the '25 (FRP) landed them with Carter Bryant (who still has to prove himself). Who knows, '27 (FRP) might be valuable in getting a rotational player to compliment the Spurs' young core
Well getting the 14th pick and a pick next season, even if it isn’t a lottery pick, is a great return for DjM. Next season’s draft will be deep so I’m glad we have two picks even if they are late teens to early 20s. Spurs are likely to be a playin team or maybe a 7-8 seed next season unless they get a solid vet. And Atlanta will be good, but I’m not sure they are top 4 in the east. Certainly they won’t finish top 10 in the NBA. So their pick will be ok next year. Whether we use the pick swap is anyone’s guess but I’m glad we have it.
You can't deny that having Lauri rather than Fox would've been a way better fit with Harper, despite Fox being a better player and his contract is lower than what Fox gets with his extension.
But we're going into whataboutisms since then we probably wouldn't have landed Harper and would've still needed a point guard.
My overall point being that picks from teams that have no incentive to tank are never that valuable unless you want to rely on dumb lottery luck.
Not wanting to tank is an easy +10 in W column by itself, especially in the East.
Tell us again how they are overachieving and can't keep up their win pace.
You just answered yourself for me (butterly effect). Bottom line, not trading the picks didn't yield worse results than having traded them. You don't need dumb lottery luck, you need average luck to get an average pick, Spurs got very unlucky with the combination of a string of genius moves by Atlanta along with the total collapse of the East. That does not mean the original trade wasn't good or shorting Atlanta was dumb.
To be fair, Atlanta has improved on paper, but you won't know how good they will be until you see it on the court and we've seen teams that should win go south, for example, the Suns with Durant. It doesn't take much bad injury luck to derail a season. But even if Atlanta plays to their potential, it's still probably in a range of 16 to 22 and that's not a bad range to see if the Spurs can find a gem.
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