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  1. #101
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    But that is an artificial distinction, especially in the modern era. You can't build through the draft nowadays -- especially by tanking. Players' don't have the patience for it. You have to build through player acquisitions and development. So tanking isn't a really a viable strategy, let alone one of just two possible ways a team can go. Treading water while improving the team's long-term hand is a legitimate path toward a star. It requires them to be willing to make the trades they need to in order to upgrade their talent -- and I do have my doubts about that. But no, "The rules when to comes to acquiring superlative talent to improve your team" isn't to be bad. The Lakers can afford to do that because their brand doesn't depend on them being good. SA can't.
    No, there's no artificial anything. I don't know why you keep trying to crowbar that in. There's only three ways to acquire talent in this league, the draft, trades or free agency. Nothing artificial about that, and nothing I came up with, that's just the rules of this league. If you have a 4th or a 5th, spell them out, or we can move on from this silly argument.
    If your strategy is the draft, logic dictates you want picks, the higher the better. If your strategy is free agency, then you wan to have cap space and be convincing. If you have neither of those, then trades is your avenue.
    Ideally, if you're rebuilding, you want to have more than one of those, in the hope you have more options to find that talent you need to turn things around.

    And I disagree about that you can't build through the draft. Philly tanked for Simmons and Embiid, and they didn't win, but they became contenders. Cavs tanked for Lebron. Sonics tanked for Durant. Lakers tanked for... Lonzo Ball (lmao).

    I don't disagree with "Treading water while improving the team's long-term hand is a legitimate path toward a star" but "treading water" can mean a number of things. From actually tanking, to focusing on collecting picks while being mediocre, to singing talent to short deals to be a player in free agency. The notion here is that you don't want to stay mediocre and that you're taking clear, precise steps to get away from mediocrity. I don't think those steps are clear, based on the moves the team makes.

    You need assets to do that kind of trade, and those take time to develop and collect. You're acting like they need to trade immediately just to satisfy your desire for instant gratification. In reality, such a trade right now would overleverage them. They could get Simmons, but it would require them to give up their future. Give them time to make Primo, Vassell and the like into good pieces, and it probably doesn't take as much the next time. Or maybe Primo develops into a star or whatever.
    What future? You have a chance at Simmons, you take it. Talent brings talent, that's another axiom that works in this league. Teaming up, super-friends. But, you need that first piece.

    Saying, "I don't want them to be mediocre" isn't the same thing as "them being mediocre is confusing". The reality is they might not win another le for a long time. We should just get that out of the way. Pop deciding to keep Murray and Walker in 2018 basically shut the door on him getting another ring. To a very real extent, you're just going to have to decide if you want to be a fan of a mediocre team, because they'll be that for an indefinite period of time if they don't get lucky or sly. But what they aren't going to do is gut their whole team hoping to get a top pick that hopefully becomes a franchise talent who also hopefully doesn't want to leave.
    "I don't want them to be mediocre" I think is the motto for any fan of any team? What we'd like to know/infer as fans is what is the FO is doing to get away from mediocrity. That is confusing, given both the poor communication and the moves this FO makes. Understanding why your team is mediocre is never confusing.

    Contenders come together quickly and break apart quickly. The Spurs are going to have to be ready to make a flurry of moves to bring together a few stars for a couple of years and then just go for it. To do that, they'll need to be flexible with their roster construction and have a team filled with tradeable assets. They'll have to go from potential to realization over the course of like a season or two, so they need to keep the potential ready. That means they're going to basically be stagnant for a few years in terms of playoff chances until the right deal comes along.

    There are treadmill teams that are leveraging their assets to stay that way, like maybe Chicago and Portland. And there are treadmill teams that have a clean cap and lots of assets, like Phoenix before Paul. If you want a direction, it's toward being in that second group.
    Don't disagree with most of this, but what moves this FO has made makes you think they're getting tradeable assets or they're even thinking that way?
    We don't even re-sign our own project pets (Fathead, Forbes, Simmons come to mind recently), and we keep hiring or extending 30+ year old talent for money that make them untradeable. When we had a tradable assets in LMA before he was over the hill, we stood pat.

    Eh, one of my roles on this forum is to make cap projections and scenarios about what combination of moves are possible. I don't have a "Year XXXX Plan" now. I don't even necessarily think the Spurs are making the right moves toward that. I think John Collins instead of McD, Zach and Hutch would've been better, even in light of the DeRozan trade. I'm not someone who tries to pretend the FO isn't who they are. That said, this off-season looked great before the extensions come in. It's like how so many people were saying last year that the 2021 draft was so much better than 2020, then 2021 rolls around and people got to see those high-school players in a bigger setting and all of the sudden, that draft sucks too but 2022 is going to be great.
    Like I said, not a dig, I appreciate the conversation.

  2. #102
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    I’m excited to see how the Spurs engage in the trade market from here on. Two trades this summer already to wet the beak, but hopefully more ahead.

    Goals should be:

    - flip Thad and McBob for 1sts
    - trade Murray/Jakob for assets
    - use Aminu’s expiring strategically
    - move Forbes (just move him)

    reset clock with latest crop of youngsters and hope one becomes a true building block— Vassel, Keldon, Primo, Tre Jones, Luka

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