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You mock, but it is sort of true...if your goal is to win championships in the next 10 years, your first move needs to be converting Duncan/Ginobli/Parker into draft picks
Spurs ended up getting some good value out of hill. I agree with the spurs trading him because hill hasn't shown much signs of improvement and will be getting up there in age soon. Hill's lack of pg skills made him expendable. Spurs need a true backup pg. I don't know how much these rookies will help. James Anderson is pretty much a rookie also. But I think hill had pretty much reached his potential on the spurs so the trade is justified even if it is a lateral move in the short term. Spurs still need a big though obviously.
You mock, but it is sort of true...if your goal is to win championships in the next 10 years, your first move needs to be converting Duncan/Ginobli/Parker into draft picks
I'll miss hill. He always had a knack for showing up against big opponents like the lakers and mavs.
I'm going with a B.
Trading Hill was the right thing to do. He is a nice player but at the end he lacks skills to play PG and is too short to play SG. Add to that a new contract in one year and trading him was the right think to do. Spurs get a great value in him with 15th, 42nd and Lorbek.
Kawhi Leonard at #15 looks like a good value. Spurs were weak at SF with a disappointing RJ and no quality backup.
Cory Joseph was a surprise at #29 but I won't judge Spurs ability to draft PG with a late first round pick while they drafted Parker and Hill.
Bertans at #42 is a damn nice pick. He is a very talented player with a high upside. In 2 or 3 years, this may look as a steal.
I was hopping for Rabaseda at #59 but it was only because I have never seen played Hanga. Hanga played well at a low level in europe. Let's see what he will do at a higher level. Nevertheless, it's a good pick at #59.
Lorbek is a very nice little bonus of the Hill trade. He is one of the best player in Europe. If he wants to come one day in NBA, he could help Spurs.
On the downsize, Spurs made good moves but these moves won't significantly help them in the sort term. 2 19 years old rookies and 3 players who will stay overseas shouldn't have an impact for 2011-2012. Another negative point is that Spurs have a huge problem at PF/C and Spurs have done nothing to solve it yesterday. A good draft for Spurs but it should be followed by some trades and/or FA signings.
Good evaluation.
Excellent draft for the future. Some complain these guys won't help next season. Actually, they might seeing how next season may not begin until 2012 or 2013.
Seeing as RC said in the post-draft interview that Joseph was their target at 29 from the start, I'm pretty sure the Spurs do see something in him that others don't. Given the Spurs FO history of drafting well, I'd tend to say RC is right and the rest of the scouts are wrong. Time will tell, in any case.
I liked the fact the Spurs finally got a long, defensive-minded 3. I don't care if he can't shoot. I care if he can defend. Bowen wasn't a stellar shooter, he was good from behind the 3pt line (40% or so), incidentally he was shooting the same from 2pt or 3pt range, he averaged 8 ppg... Bowen contributed, but he wasn't an offensive force. And nobody cared.
One thing to remember about Leonard is that he was probably miscast with SD, having to shoulder a lot more of the offensive burden than he will with the Spurs. The stats show he was a bad shooter, but I don't think he was shooting a lot of wide open corner 3s. The Spurs have a lot of other offensive weapons, it doesn't really matter.
What I'm still wondering about is why Leonard over Singleton. That's also something the scouts disagree with in general. Again, the Spurs have seen something and I trust them.
I'm honestly not worried about the draft or willing to double-guess the FO choices given their long, successful history in this matter.
What I'm afraid of is that Leonard will not get any PT because that wouldn't be fair to the team, or some comparable nonsense.
Actually the best that could happen for the Spurs at this stage would be a lockout until the very first game of the season (like in 95). That would mean no summer league, no training camp, therefore no injuries over the summer, and Pop couldn't hold against nobody that they missed a couple of days of training camp.
Look at it this way -- going into the draft, most would have been satisfied if the Spurs just got Bertans or Milotic at 29, and called it as day, period.
Instead, they got a guy many mock drafts rated as high as the #6 pick, and Bertans (in a more favorable draft slot than 29), and a Euro at 59 who will likely be better than De Colo or Richards ever will and then Cory Joseph (who may have been a reach, but looks awful good when viewed as just another piece to this draftday puzzle). The fact that Joseph got as much time as a freshman on that talented Texas team seems significant. For such a young player, he has a steadiness and deliberateness (vs explosiveness) about him that the Spurs seem to like at the point. Who knows, next year (taking on more of the load at UT) he might have been a lottery pick.
If you wanted TD to retire with a bang. D. plain and simple.
If you wanna rebuild. B.
Agree. The trade was great - I think Leonard will be a very productive player (the guy was a steal at #15). Joseph seemed to be a bit of a reach to me, but maybe RC sees something. I had a WTF reaction when Hill was drafted a few years ago (granted, I had never seen Hill play and I think we've all seen Joseph play at least a few games at UT). Bertans is a steal at 42 - watch his tape, it is earily similar to the Nowitski tapes when he was that age...
Short term FAIL...Long term TBD
C+
If they can sign Lorbek, it's a 7 (on a scale from 1 to 10).
If they can't, it's a 3.
Hill was a steal: 3 years into his development as a 12 ppg, 28' combo guard in a top rank NBA franchise, all the Spurs could get was a 6'7 prospect forward??
Pretty darn bad, I would say.
Although I like George Hill as a man and ballplayer, I think that this is a shrewd cap move and good on court move. I like this SDSU guy a lot, not to mention Bertans down the road.
I want to look closer at the two of them, myself. Singleton averaged like 2 steals and 1.5 blocks a game, which is filthy. I suspect, but don't know Singleton at all really, that Leonard's exceptional intangibles and gym-loving personality pushed him well ahead. Singleton may be even worse a general scorer -- Leonard looks like he can significantly improve there, anyway.
Kawhi has the physical size (plus arms) to go into a stretch-4 situation, while Singleton does not. Kawhi stands a much better chance of slowing down Nowitzki a little (8'10" standing reach).
Kawhi is an absolutely disgusting rebounder for his position. Singleton is good, but not at the same level.
Exactly. Given their draft position and assets, the Spurs came away with spun gold. A.
They often don't, and that's the point. It's the reason Parker and Ginobili are on the roster. Disagree with it being a red flag.
You're leaving out:
1)Bertans;
2)the fact that Hill is redundant with Manu, Anderson, and Neal on the team, and;
3)the fact that Hill would be up for a more expensive contract at the end of the season.
All things considered, it was a pretty good draft IMO. And a lot of intriguing players were left undrafted, which will make for a compe ive training camp if we can bring them in.
A (time will tell on the +) but good moves by the spurs...Anderson/neal will pick up the scoring slack....im sure the spurs will get a C/PF or veteran back up PG to fill in their needs.....Leonard will play solid D...Joseph will blossom into a solid player for POP.
Getting Bertans moved us from a B to an A.
People need to understand the business aspect of the NBA. A lot of teams will keep their young guys around without accounting for the fact that they can't pay them in the future. Look at Celtics last year, yes they weren't as "tough" without Perkins but do you really think he was worth $9mil to a team that was going to have to rebuild at some point?
Depending on how many minutes Hill gets, he might actually improve unlike this past year when he averaged virtually the same stats. Even then its not a bad move for the Spurs because 1, there might not be a mid level exception in the new CBA so how could they have afforded to pay him? Yes Tim comes off the books, but wouldn't you want that money for something else? A team like San Antonio is built to win every year, they can't afford to have young guys like Hill playing 40+ minutes if it hurts the team's record. Assuming he gets those types of minutes with the Pacers and improves, people still need to remember that the same couldn't have happened here.
I'll wait until I see the guys play next year but I like the trade. From what i've seen on youtube Bertans is damn athletic but a streaky shooter.
Blowing up the team and accepting a few years as a cellar dweller is a strategy that no team has tried that I can remember. Your theory is flawed for several reasons.
The main reason is money. You'd generally wind up losing attendance at a rate that would force the team to be sold or moved elsewhere. You have to have a team on the floor that will generate enough entertainment value (wins) to make the fans want to pay to see them. Oklahoma got a high draft pick after the team had several bad years in Seattle--but they left Seattle
And simply being in the cellar with high draft picks doesn't always work out--ask the Clippers, Golden State, Milwaukee, etc, all perennial losers with high draft picks. What have they done?
Because sometimes you get a Gred Oden situation or the lottery picks want to leave as soon as they can get out of a small market into the bright lights of a NY, LA or Chicago. Can you spell Bosh and King James?
This FO has consistently done more with low draft picks than any team in the NBA and the runners up are team that have ex-Spur trained GMs.
This draft was at least an A-, considering our draft position, and could wind up being better than that if Cory Joseph at age 19 can develop as hoped in the future.
Yeah, Bruno, but look at the upside possibilities for C/PF. We have Splitter and TD. Blair can split some time based on matchups. What if Ryan comes in as a rookie and can play somewhere behind them? I think you are right about the Spurs shoring up the front line via FA. The Spurs always seem to find at least one serviceable old vet to backup C/PF in FA such as Dice or Kevin or Ratliff who they can entice to end his career here. Those kinds of backup guys aren't that hard to find.
Maybe we are all underestimating the FO commitment to a straegy to stock up on some youth for the future of the franchise. Throw enough of these guys--Anderson, Blair, Neal, Splitter, Joseph, Bertans, Ryan, Butler, Green-- into the mix and we'll come up with some players who can make it.
The problem will be finding the future all-stars like Manu and Parker with low draft picks. We will likely never get another Tim because the franchise always wants to win enough games to make the fans turn out and that means low draft picks.
Pretty much this.
Was there really a player the Spurs could have picked at 29 that would have had an immediate impact as a rookie? Any big they drafted, say JaJuan Johnson, Jeremy Tyler, Keith Benson...would be a project. There was a logjam at SG. Hill's loss is offset by more playing time for Neal and Anderson. At worse the Spurs break even in production. But now the Spurs picked up the SF they needed since Bowen retired. Leonard could step right in and play 20 minutes a game as a rookie. Saying what the Spurs did was a "short term fail" is failing to understand the current Spurs roster.
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