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One question is can Bricktor score 30pts this season? The way he’s playing right now i think its a long shot
That wasn’t what you said, though
No mention of running at all, which is the primary culprit.… and not be gassed trying to wrestle position in the post.…
One question is can Bricktor score 30pts this season? The way he’s playing right now i think its a long shot
If he wants to be a unicorn, he's only a unicorn down low -- dunking like an alien over guys who have position between him and the basket. Doing it taking off seven feet away from the basket.
That gets you Sportscenter highlights, not nonchalantly hitting vanilla threes that every player in the NBA has made at some point. That's not unicorn.
Before Pop was too controlling. It seems he has learned to adapt to that part at least around superstar players.
I also think the league has figured out better how to guard him, considering he wants to dribble the ball out on the perimeter, so putting a physical small forward on him is a smart choice.
VW definitely looks tired out there, and for whatever reason less motivated at times, or at least more frustrated.
Chet is getting more attention now. Maybe that will add some fire.
I wouldn't be that confident.
It looks like a much longer process than we hoped but they can't admit it publicly.
Next season we'll have at least 2 new propects to develop added to an already young roster minus cp3
We're not playing in the weak eastern conf
Why is he?
We've seen him play entire 4th quarters last season.
Shouldn't the staff try to force a bit to help his body get used to? At least try 10' in the 1st qt once in a while no?
Chinnok made good points, imo the issue is that he seems to have a definitive opinion and argued based on it.
For most of us the reality is a lot more nuanced, it's not an individual sport so you can't supress +50% (his teammates part) just to focus on Wemby's issues and not the impact his teammates or coach have had on said issues.
What seperates us is just the % we attribute to Wemby and the % we attribute to the coaching and roster.
Tbh I'm still agnostic in that regard even if I lean toward a 40% on Wemby 60% on coaches/roster
Chet has a high level playoff team with a MVP candidate built around him. His role is narrowly defined and they're set to get him points because of the gravity of other players. Don't worry about it.
Chet is a human version of what some spurstalk want Wemby to be.
Rim protection, decent rebounding, ability to find the open man, vertical threat and a decent 3pt shooter.
He's got no playmaking or self-creating skills whatsoever.
Not to mention that even though Wemby has obvious issues against stronger bigs, Chet becomes a non-factor in those scenarios.
Just watch the Nuggets game from the other day. Jokic rebounded and scored on the inside as if Chet wasn't even on the floor.
Not to mention how Mavs bullied him with their average bigs.
A great player to have as a second/third option, but I'm not sure he'll ever be good enough to be a #1 guy.
Jesus, we have baby Jordan at home and yall can't sit through some growing pains.
Be thankful to be witnesses, and let the story unfold. We Spurs fans should know it may not last forever.
why are people saying he had a long summer? Are the Olympics longer than the playoffs?
well they should've taken care of that during training camp. Instead Pop babied him and played him a combined what? 20 minutes in 2 preseason games?
Great deal. Point still remains that guards do make a difference.
I won’t even get into the sochan comment because that is just pure ignorance.
I think the issue is that we saw the blueprint how Wemby should be used. The last three to two months were absurd for a rookie. That blueprint that took down the nuggets on the second last game of the season. We saw it and thought now we added better players around him. Wemby was going to be a top 15 player in the league on season 2.
But what we've been getting is that first quarter of his rookie season Wemby. But the scouting reports are out and the spurs are giving what the defenses want.
The fact that we have already seen the success of the "blueprint" is why all the B&M is so puzzling. Like this isn't some "OMG is Wemby a bust??" type regression, everyone saw what he can do already.
He is now choosing to force a specific aspect of his game he wants to develop, to his game's detriment which he and the coaching staff are expecting and aware of, and people doubt if he'll ever bounce back? Like we haven't all seen him play a completely different type of game through the Olympics like 1.5 months ago?
You would think Occam's Razor would hit people like Newton's apple and they'd figure it's more likely that he's forcing his development, instead of assuming that he's been Monstar-drained of his basketball talents in his sop re season.
And by the way, it all sounds veeery similar to the B&M last season about Jeremy "Not An NBA Player" Sochan.
And what do you know, the guy starts the next season with a much improved game and being a key piece to the team. Shocker!
The issue is that Jeremy was seen as someone who's not even guaranteed to become a legit player if we talk playoff rosters and Wemby is supposed to be on GOAT trajectory.
With that being said, anyone with doomer takes before 20 to 30 games is just overreacting or doing it out of boredom.
Could be the explanation, or not.
We don't know anything and can only guess/speculate really. + The lack of pre season games should have been erased 2-3 games into the season.
The datas (official weight) don't match the reality (Wemby's own words), nobody has any idea what they worked on and what specific area he's expected to have improved on.
He clearly didn't bulk up, so what did he work on??
I understand the lack of transparency in a compe ive world, but too much isn't beneficial to Wemby, bc medias and fans seem to expect a lot moe than what's on PATFO's timeline.
There's a world where we might be unfair to Wemby who's just following PATFO's slower paced "strategy". I don't know tbh
That's only an issue because of people's perception and short-term narratives.
Whether you're a midget or baby Jordan, the development of basketball abilities tends to follow a very similar curve for most players (position specific, of course). There's not some "training regime for 5-star players" and some "Scrub Regime". Especially in this modern, geneous league. Most players practice the exact same way, but personal work ethic (eg Kobe, Giannis) and natural genetic talent (eg Jordan) simply separate the cream of the crop.
It's exactly why I'm drawing the parallel to Jeremy, who was also instructed to focus on a specific part of his game by the staff to the detriment of his overall short-term game. Now, tell me how many people have doubted he's an NBA/caliber player at any game of this season.
Agree with the last, btw, people just can't sit and wait these days.
For me the issue is that Jeremy was (and still is) a fundamentally flawed player and they chose to work on fixing those flaws.
Wemby looked like a borderline top10 player at the end of last season. He kept dominating even when other starters got shut down. He obviously had aspects of the game that needed work, but nothing was fundamentally broken.
Now he can't make three dribbles without being stripped. As I said, a lot of it is due to everyone realizing to just pressure him and guard him with forwards, but still.
As for the 3pts, he'd be unstoppable as a 35% shooter from regular 3pt range. The issue is that a lot of his 3pts are from Curry range.
I get the focus on shooting, but can he at least become reliable from normal range first? Then we can move into Curry territory.
There is the interesting theory that perhaps the Spurs are engaging in another 20-game experiment... but I think this begs the question of "Why?". Why do the Spurs feel the need to engage in these long trial periods to test something that almost everyone can see going in (or very quickly into the experiment) isn't going to work. We didn't need 20 games to see if Sochan was a point guard. We don't need 20 games to see if Wemby is Steph Curry. What will start with next season? Finding out if Steph Castle can be our starting center?
Why can't these things be figured out in the off-season, in pre-season, or in practice? Does Wemby give some short of insane shooting signal in practice like being able to drain every three he takes from any spot on the court? Steph Curry was a 41% 3pt shooter in college - a natural indication that he can be a shooter of that nature in the pros. What has Wemby ever demonstrated to give us the indication that developing him into an early-shot clock logo 3 shooter is going to be successful? As LeBowen points out, Wemby being a 35% 3pt shooter on a normal, natural selection of 3pt shots would be huge. Him being a 35% 3pt shooter on the selection of shots he takes would take a miracle.
Why did the Spurs just punt on the pre-season with Wemby? Wouldn't that have been a good time to explore these things, fail fast, and move on?
So maybe we're ing around for 20-games to find out whether or not Wemby is a ballerina... but why? Last year was supposed to be about "finding out what we have". I *thought* we had found out after the ASB that Wemby can be a dominant player with the style of ball they were playing with. So why did we pivot to trying to find out if he's something else entirely? Assume for a moment that Wemby was making 33% of his 3s this year, on all the exact same shots, instead of 21%. That still wouldn't be a better brand of basketball than what we closed last season with... so what's the objective to this experiment?
All indications from what is communicated through the media is that this isn't the plan. Wemby isn't going rogue, and the coaches aren't forcing him to do things he doesn't want to do - they are in this together. Who came up with this plan and WHY?
And this goes to the point of this entire thread. There is no one on this team to drive accountability and teach Wemby how to play the right way and be a franchise player. We can see with our own eyes the coaching staff isn't doing it. CP3 can be vocal about it in practice or on the sideline (and I hope he is) but how much impact does that have when he can't lead by example with his play. Wemby and the Spurs would have benefited from a vocal leader who can not just say what needs to be said, but go out there and demonstrate what to do with his own play. Leading by Example. Going over to Wemby after he goes 2-13 from the arc and saying "hey man... cut that out. I put up 27 and 9 last night, but we lost because you effectively had 14 turnovers between your bad shots and sloppy handles. Play to your strengths, stop trying to be an astronaut."
Maybe Wemby wouldn't respond well to this kind of tough love? Maybe the Spurs figured out that, despite his talk of wanting to be coached hard, that Wemby is actually sensitive little butterfly who needs to be coddled. Who knows. If that's the case, as least this would start to make sense.
There is one other explanation that fits... and that is that the Spurs are still committed to a soft tank and these 20-game experiments help set that up. I don't like this strategy, but at least it would make sense.
Too much is being made of last year. Defenses have adjusted to that. Look at how many of his highlights last year came from him getting clean isos against opposing centers. That's not happening this year, and spacing has nothing to do with that. Victor struggles to beat wings off the dribble. That's true even in iso situations without help. He doesn't have the dribbling or girth to get from the arc to the rim. So any offense that is supposed to be built around Victor isoing from the perimeter just isn't going to work. It's fine if it's something he does when he's hot or has an advantage/mismatch. As I said, that one play against OKC was actually great if Wemby throws to to Barnes for the open three. But Victor's evolution should be primarily as an off-ball guy who plays on the ball as a change of pace,
But again, it's not what he wants to do. It may or may not be what the Spurs ideally want. He wants to develop his on-ball game as his primary weapon, and he's getting his chance to do just that. And there are growing pains. He's not Lebron. He's not Doncic. He's not KD. He's a very different kind of player who's nonetheless on track. If the plan was for him to become more and more productive each year (which for the record would've been my plan), then he would have a lot fewer shot attempts but much better efficiency. That's within his power, but it requires commitment and a certain mentality. Maybe if the team can get fully healthy and Vassell and Paul take up the bulk of the on-ball touches with the starters and Jones solidifies the second unit, Wemby will be content to play more in the role that best suits his immediate success.
Two other things:
1) Wemby doesn't have to shoot a bunch of threes in a game to eventually become a good shooter from distance. He can totally take the ones he naturally gets in the flow of the offense while cutting out the iso attempts and get plenty of complimentary in-game experience.
2) Wemby still wastes a ton of energy on both ends of the court. He has to get low to set screens, box out, or get/hold post position. That's going to be really tiring, but a lot of that is necessary. Sprinting down the court ahead of the ball or setting up in the post early isn't nearly as necessary.
teams have adjusted to that blueprint. If you look at tape from last season you mainly see Wemby going 1-on-1 against centers. That’s where he has an advantage with his handles, etc. Being guarded by wings and double/triple teamed is a whole different ball game
True
But it should be added that he can't or just isn't being used as a hub/playmaker anymore. The ball used to always go through him, we're back to pre ASG at ude from his teammates.
It's a combinaison of many things, not just one cause
Last edited by Pauleta14; 11-10-2024 at 12:18 AM.
For me, to try and simplify, there are two things different with VW:
1. He's forcing shots.
2. He obviously looks tired.
Hard to say if there is a cause effect between the two. In other words, let's say he is working on part of his game purposefully, is THAT why he looks so tired? Or is he just tired, and jacking up easy shots?
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