Grades: San Antonio Spurs at Sacramento Kings – Game #20

[KobesAchilles]

He won't be an all-star player, but the cap will steadily rise and $30M will be the new $20M in a few years. It's supposed to go to $154M next summer and then to 170, 187, 205 over the duration of Devin's contract.
If he becomes a steady 22/4/4 scorer on good efficency and a solid defender, his contract will be fair value...if he can stay healthy. And will be easily tradeable for an actual star if needed.




This is the shot chart from that game.
He took so many threes because he got hot.
Just one attempt (miss) in the restricted area and 0 FTs isn't how he should play.
He played like that because he just came back from injury, but we need him to get to the rim, draw fouls and collapse the defense more.

We wrote about it over the past week, the biggest issue with our offense isn't that we go cold from 3pt line, that happens to every team, but that we have just a couple of players who can consistently attack the paint and because of it our offense is really easy to stop if 3pts aren't falling.

I agree with the sentiment. We don't have that player who can collapse the defense. It's why I was somewhat Bullish on CP3 starting. He just can't get to the rim anymore on his old legs. I remember there was a crazy stat last year that CP3 had 4 makes at the rim last year with Golden St when you take away fast break points. But it showed how he just doesn't have it in him anymore.

Ideally he will pass it off the Castle and Castle will pick his brain on everything and learn some tricks on how to get to the lane the same way Shay did in OKC. I honestly don't believe Vassell is a good enough dribbler to constantly get in the lane, collapse a defense, and get a high percentage of free throws. If he could be that player then that would be amazing. But I'm not banking on him to become that any time soon. For this year, I want Vassell to focus on being in more of a role player mindset. In the offseason if he expands his game then that's fine. But I just want him playing comfortable and getting a rhythm instead of pressing everything

[ambchang]

He's not going to live up to that 30 million dollar a year contract. So that's out the door. The only way he could is if he makes an all-star team and I would love for you to tell me that he is an all-star player.

Yes my argument was that he isn't a winning player. And the way he was playing before the Kings game wasn't how a winning player plays. I stand by that. Then I laid very specific conditions for him to learn how to become a winning player. Then he does those things literally verbatim and you come bragging about how great he is playing. There's no strawman. Vassell literally played how I wanted him to play all along. That's not a strawman.

There are exactly 50 players making $30M or more this year. There aren't 50 all stars. I would say that he is comfortably along players like Jerami Grant, Deandre Ayton, CJ McCollum, Julius Randle, Immanuel Quickley, Khris Middleton, Dejounte Murray, Jordan Poole, Tyler Herro, Desmond Bane, Nic Claxton, Miles Bridges, Anfernee Simons, RJ Barratt, Tobias Harris, Terry Rozier, De'Aaron Fox, Ben Simmons, Fred VanVleet, Zach Lavine, Bradket Beal and such.