As much as I’d like to see him on the big squad, my guess is the best thing for his development is to get minutes as a primary scorer/ball handler in Austin for a good part of the season. If he were to play in SA early, he’d probably be stuck in the corner a lot.
About 40 seconds into this interview, you also see some of things he showed that intrigues. (About 1:20 of highlights).
The ability to play on and off the ball is there. He makes that one handed whip pass across the baseline too, like he did in the scrimmage, a staple of the Spurs hammer play.
That hammer play baseline pass makes me miss Boris Diaw, that pass used to be automatic, or if the defense overplayed it he'd just use his body and do a little reverse layup.
He might play right away. Even If it’s off the bench. This team doesn’t have enough shooting and may lose 2 of the teams best in Mills and Gay. I think he has a chance to play.
Primo's role at Alabama leads me to believe that this could easily happen. He seems to know when to defer and when to take over, and is willing to do either as cir stances dictate.
That’s a good quote but I think it’s in reference to other questionable picks. I thought the Grizzlies moves weee extremely risky and they took a guy that could have been there at 17 anyways. Ziaire has more upside but may also very well bust. Grizzlies will be worse in the short term without JV and they helped a division rival improve!
GSW ended up with one guy Kuminga who is a specimen of tools alone, low BBIQ, can’t shoot, and awful defensively. He’s years away and not who they wanted at 7.
There’s a few GM that ended up with questionable fits like Davion Mitc to Sacramento.
But the Spurs took the cake with a massive reach of a guy they likely could have taken later and traded down for. It’s unknown though and teams surprise you with picks all the time so they weren’t willing to take that risk, but they got the most heat for their pick.
It’s possible Primo was rising too, bit if he went outside the lottery and after Sengun and Moody were gone the reach is minor, not even that questionable.
Couple pudnits had Primo top 20 after the combine and the most likely teams to take him outside the spurs were picking after the spurs. I fully believe he would not have lasted into the 20s, just as much as some believe he was a late first( most of who never saw a minute of his game). The kid was 17 playing basketball in the SEC. Became a starting point and the team turned into a winning team. At 17. He should have been a senior in high school but was helping a SEC team turn their season around.
Has what looks to be above average to elite shooting beyond the arc, the most valued commodity in the game today. Has above average size for a PG and above average athleticism.
All accounts that have spoken with him point out his intelligence and knowledge of the game And his ability to adapt it to his play.
At 18.
At 16 he was running with a national team.
At 16.
When people take the time to actually diagnose the kid, what he has to offer, and what he has accomplished, he was not a massive reach or even a reach at all.
Not debating his qualities I’ve been here asking for info about him. I am trying to get familiar with his game.
Rather it’s revisionist to say a team right after was taking him. We don’t know and it’s unlikely. They could have and that’s why the Spurs jumped up and grabbed him at 12. Only time will tell if this will pan out. I was talking about a few very questionable moves from other teams that this perceived reach by the Spurs took the heat from. Do you understand my point? Bc you are arguing completely different points.
He basically played a year of college early. He’s essentially a high school kid with one year college experience. What was the last player at his age to have any impact on the game or crack a serious rotation at that age? Maybe Bron?
I always want a good look at our rookies but with this pick being so out there I’d rather they just bring him along as slowly and patiently as they need to. They can take their time. We’re not winning next year barring a miracle offseason.
They could take nearly 3 years grooming this kid before he has his first legal drink. So I suppose that’s good. He’s got all the time in the world and this team doesn’t even really have a window or timeline that would create any sense of urgency.
I am 100 % on board with this thought. I think he can contribute shooting right away, which the team needs, and if they were to feel that they don’t have a spot available the they need to swing a trade. But right now, possibly the best outcome is letting Mills go and going all in with the BPA at 12 that you just drafted and let him earn reps and time from there.
100% agree that for a lottery team, it’s not the same than a playoff team drafting for a niche and letting that player get reps and play situationally (when there are injuries) until he “earns it.”
They need to bake that in to their draft prognostications. A poster above you just mentioned this fact. What is his upside? For us to see him in 2 years put up 8 and 3 off the bench? Surely not.
Last edited by SAGirl; 08-01-2021 at 05:06 PM.
He isn't ready yet SA Girl. Our second round pick is though.
He will get better with time, just like the following players have: Devin Booker, Giannis, Jaren Jackson Jr. I am sure there are others, but these are high profile enough that I remember.
One issue I have with stashing in the Gleague your lottery picks is a point that Chinook makes and I quoted ahead of this reply. The team isn’t good enough to be stashing guys. What’s worth a gamble on a lottery pick if he’s in the gleague 2 years? That’s a question of perceived ceiling. What’s a lottery pick to the team that won’t contribute to the team minutes for a full year or two, and then at that point needs to be brought in with baby steps? That’s ok for the Spurs when they had a full rotation of veterans that were in win now mode, and those development players played rest games for Manu and Tony, when there were injuries, etc.
The Spurs are no longer good enough to take two years developing guys.
He can finish with both hands, his 3pt shot has a consistent wonderful arc to it...looks good. I hope he pans out.
Video won't allow it to be embed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwzzNYnJczY
It was a cringing face and cringe emoji
What's wrong with the g-league and long development cycles?
Putting Primo in the g-league is part of the process.
It's especially important if he's ready to play now.
He has to be broken down, lose his swag, and start doubting every move he makes on the court. He needs to start looking over his shoulder at the bench to see if he's being subbed, several times a possession.
Then he'll get a couple of games opportunity, and if he performs well, then Pop will talk him up post game with praise about how he's earned more opportunities and is forcing himself into minutes.
Then he'll get the DNP-CD and feel completely crushed, an empty s of a player that can only doubt himself and realize that nothing means anything.
That's when he'll have gotten over himself. And he'll get chances the next year.
But the good news is that next year's draft will bring a new 6-5 lottery pick to watch in the g-league.
It’s never been a problem here but you can absolutely ruin a player by playing him too soon. I actually think Lonnie would have been a good example of that. He would have been blown off the court if he played his first couple seasons on most other teams.
His pace defensively and ability to move off ball are light years ahead of his rookie year. He just needed to develop around players that moved at his own level of play with a few sniffs of the next level.
If Lonnie becomes anything here or on another team it’ll be because our team was patient for two years while he came around and learned how to play beyond playground ball.
the spurs vaunted player development is simply not adding any bad habits, not forcing them to be chucker, and letting guys play off Manu making them look better than they are. obv the last factor is expired which is why the strategy is less effective.
I remember reading from you specifically that it was your personal preference to not even look up at point guard prospects because you believed they weren’t looking for one because it takes Pop so long to train a PG to run the offense he wants and you just didn’t think they’d look to replace DJ.
Part of what stunned is not the reach alone, but what drew them to this kid was that he showed passing and dribbling abilities at the combine that he didn’t show at Alabama. They see him as a PG prospect who can already shoot well, has good size and will likely grow some, and who has a very high character.
If they had seen him just as a shooter he would for surely not have gone 12, he would have gone in the 25-35 range like he was initially mocked just based on past production.
More TO than assists in college, it’s definitely not without question, but him being a super young PG prospect that can shoot is what bumped him up their charts to BPA when they picked.
How do you feel about that? Bc I know that wasn’t your personal preference.
They haven’t called him a PG. they’ve noted that he’s played PG in spurts, which lines up with their post draft comments (and even some comments from today’s interview) that they’re looking for versatile players: players who can pass, players who can shoot, players who can defend multiple positions. That’s what they value. I recently posted a tweet that had Wright today regarding this.
Primo is as much as a PG as Lonnie is.
it’s hard to go by quotes in snippets. I recommend listening to full interviews for context.
Last edited by Dejounte; 08-01-2021 at 06:32 PM.
Huh?
I presented a counter to your point on Primo being a massive reach, as clearly stated. I literally argued word for word a point you brought up.
Primo was not a massive reach based on the information provided.
I am almost 100 percent with you on this post, except I think this won’t be able to be fully judged until years down the line because there’s also an opportunity cost component of who else they passed up on to grab him and whether they were right to expect this guy to be a PG who had more TO than assists in college and produced efficiently when played as a SG, but is unknown as a PG (we don’t know how he will produce as a PG yet bc he didn’t do that at Alabama as you rightly note.)I still can't wrap my head around this pick ...
-Primo's value was mostly due to the thinking that if he had gone back to Alabama and played really well, he probably becomes a late lottery pick in 2022. He wasn't going to become a high lottery pick because he doesn't have the physical tools to be a high lottery pick -- but he could have gone back to Alabama and worked himself into that 10 to 15 range if all went well.
-Primo decides to stick in the draft after elevating his stock from the middle of the second round to the end of the first or beginning of the second. Teams drafting in that range would have viewed him as a pretty good investment, with the logic being that they'd spend a ~28th pick in 2021 on a guy who had like a 50/50 shot of being a ~12th pick in 2022. That math checks out.
-But ... the Spurs pick him instead with a late lottery pick in 2021. Trying to get that logic to work is difficult. For it to make sense, they have to be like 100% certain he is going to make that big jump. Without that big jump, there was no way he was going to be a lottery pick next year -- he would be a second rounder to undrafted without a sizeable leap forward. Picking him in the lottery this year made so little sense that Primo himself was shocked. I don't remember seeing a lottery pick who was so blown away by being picked in the lottery. I bet his agent was equally as stunned
So, yeah, just a real head-scratcher. One scenario that may make sense is that the Spurs really wanted a developmental perimeter shooter. The two developmental perimeter shooters that stand out in this draft were Ziaire Williams and Primo. After Ziaire went tenth (a little surprising), perhaps that scared them enough to not trade back. Trading back when there's two guys you like is a lot easier than when you're down to the final player you really want.
I've also had the thought that this could have been a Chip Engelland pick. After taking a closer look at Primo's form, it's exactly how Engelland teaches. He prepares for the shot well, has a short, repeatable stroke, releases his off-hand before the shot is released and gets full extension. I could imagine Engelland looking at Primo shooting in a gym and telling everyone that he's going to be a great shooter down the line. Then if you look at him only as a shooting prospect, his 38% three-point shooting as a freshman in the SEC when he was the youngest player in college basketball makes him an enticing pick for a shooting starved team -- especially when you add in his elite character traits. On the other hand, though, using the late lottery to take an unproven shooting prospect with little upside elsewhere in his game is not a good use of that asset.
But bottom line, this goes down as at best a strange pick ... at worst a wasted pick. We'll see but it certainly doesn't give me confidence that the Spurs know how to pick in the lottery. Locking into one or two guys is okay when you're picking late in the first but it's a bad strategy when you're in the lottery.
It was risky obviously and requires a lot of projection.
Like you, Chip Engelland came to my mind, because he was the coach pushing Forbes forward the most. I hate to bring up Forbes because I hope Primo is much better and less one dimensional. But I remember when Forbes was a prospect the coaches hoped he could develop point guard skills and they sought to widen his repertoire from a gunner to add playmaking. He didn’t develop well in that regard and him going undrafted, they had nothing to lose trying.
But the point is that Chip was pushing for Forbes. He even made the team when the Spurs had no roster spots available and had to cut somebody IIRC. And it was because Chip had seen that Forbes’ shot was one of the most pure 3 pt shots he had seen in any prospect and they were super high on his shooting ability. That turned out to be right. Let me be clear. I don’t place any doubts on Chips ability to evaluate shooting talent.
However it’s the rest of his game what got him drafted 12 on top of that shooting talent. Its as you say, what would have made him a worth a lottery pick next season if he had gone to Alabama and shown passing and dribbling skills as a lead guard.
We won’t be able to completely judge this pick, specially considering the opportunity cost; the talent still available to the team at 12, what they passed up on because they ranked Primo higher.
I do think that because the team is starved for shooting and specially shooting prospects as you said, to them he was the BPA considering what they need, what the team is thirsty for.
Pop has always liked scoring PGs. Tony and Manu both were elite scorers with different styles but they could get their own bucket and set the table efficiently. His love for Patty knows no bounds and while playmaking is not Patty’s strength, his shooting most certainly is. It’s because of his shooting that he’s a consistently positive impact player when he’s on the court.
Primo has that same potential with his shooting (even moving off the ball) but is bigger with a better prospect for development as a lead ballhandler than Forbes and Patty and like both of them, he’s a high character team player, so I can see why they loved him.
There’s a lot of risk because if he doesn’t develop as a PG and he’s just a gunner wing, years down the road this won’t age well. Bottom line I think they valued shooting highly in this draft, and as you said he was the best shooting prospect in the board, as the others were much older, much more known qualities and not playmakers. It’s safe to say they are looking for a playmaker that can shoot.
Last edited by SAGirl; 08-01-2021 at 10:21 PM.
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