https://www.spurstalk.com/reevaluati...or-wembanyama/
In reassessing, IMO, I think the Spurs need to be more stubborn about handing out long-term deals. Previously, I liked the idea of extending Vassell, Jones and Collins. Now? Man, I like the idea of having cap flexibility until we get a better read on what Wembanyama is currently and the best type of players to surround him with going forward.
not too high on wesley and hope the spurs do not choose him over - say langford - langfords defense is better than wesleys defense AND offense - COMBINED...
thanks for the write - up but i was hoping to read something about the spurs efforts to acquire another point guard in the draft?
Relatively speaking, none Vassell, Collins or Jones (the notion of ever giving him 4 years was insane) is likely to break the bank.
I wouldn't go more than 2 guaranteed years with Collins or Jones, but something like MLE type money would be fine.
Vassell is trickier, but slightly ($2M annually?) more than Johnson sounds about right.
Presuming relative health, they (less so Jones) should have decent or better resale value going forward.
Even if they start Sochan as the nominal PG and move Jones to the bench, I don't see how it would affect Branham. More like Graham.
I'm not too worried about salaries. The team needs to acquire a ton of salary just to make the floor. I do think Jones is a future backup somewhere. I don't think the concerns about Vassell are too upsetting. No one was playing defense last year. I think he was held out on purpose. But the team will have a better idea of his health than we do.
Each of those players, including Keldon and especially Collins, are going to be attractive to a lot of teams if they need to be moved. I don't particularly think they will. The Collins-Wembanyama-Sochan frontline seems to have a ton of promise already.
The biggest question to me is how to handle Keldon and Sochan in the starting unit. I absolutely do not think this "Sochan is a PG" has merit. Can he run as a point power forward (or SF)? Yes. But you don't want him matching up with quick PGs full time. You might be able to up-match and have Vassell guard those guys - the Foxes and SGAs and Kyries - but Sochan won't work there. On the other side, you probably want a PF to try to match a much faster Sochan.
So you have to solve the PG problem and the Keldon/Sochan problem. To me, Sochan comes off the bench, which he did at Baylor.
And I'm not terribly concerned about Wesley and Branham. To me there's no overlap between Vassell and Branham. They're completely different players. I don't think any room has to be made for Branham's court time. Wesley is another matter. His freshman numbers were similar to his friend Jaden Ivey's numbers as a freshman. G-League, some NBA, work out his issues.
I actually think the Spurs should lock up young role players on good deals with declining salaries. Front load the contracts so you have more cap room later down the line. These guys will still improve and only become more expensive later. Lock them into good value contracts early.
Good article.
But minus 2 points for not using "Wem-bomb-yama".
Romeo is four years older and is pretty close to what he is ever going to be as a player. Wesley was a home run swing. He could be a superstar or he could be...well, Langford. If you have to choose between them there simply isn't any debate about it. Langford hasn't shown anything, and he doesn't have the excuse that he's just a crazy young pup.
Timvp touched on it, but it bears repeating: Wembanyama turned Dougie from a "trade now" guy into one of the most valuable players on the team. He will absolutely punish teams for doubling Victor, and he can be covered on the defensive end. Before the draft lottery he was at the top of my to-trade list. Unless the Spurs are planning not to make the playoffs, he needs to stay at least until the deadline.
Good write up but having more confidence in keldon than Vassell as a fit is pretty mind boggling imo
if the cap is increasing by 10% a year, wouldn't it make sense to do the opposite?
Gotta keep Devon (and Tre) even just for asset preservation. If they do it right those could be good value in future moves. I just also see Devon as a great fit with Wemby generally.
And the Tre situation is tricky. Can’t just let him walk without having a solution in place, and I echo another commenter in saying Sochan isn’t the solution long term.
Either KJ or Vassel and Jones should be traded for PG upgrade before the end of next season. Assuming Malaki is the future SG, DG and Doug should be traded by the end of next season. Wesley will be kept for 1-2 seasons and KBD should be re-signed for defence. Langford should be let go. Mamu and JC should be brought back. KB and GD both retire and Barlow should be re-signed if he is not expensive. Spurs should sign a FA centre to rebound and box out to keep Victor healthy
I disagree with the polarity of his takes on basically every player. I'm not sure I like the Spurs team he's envisioning, and I'd be curious to know what other takes his source has had to get a sense of how their opinions have fit in with reality. That the Spurs were supposedly preparing for Wemby for years actually bothers me quite a bit. Like I'm glad they won the lottery and all, but they were way more unlikely to win it (especially going into last season) than win. What was their plan then? What's their plan if Wemby is a slow-starter, just a decent pick? Tim was a GOAT candidate, and he still had multiple eventual HOFers on his teams. To think the Spurs' plan was to win the lotto and then turn into the Pelicans is disheartening. Even if everything immediately translated with Wembanyama, the Spurs aren't a good team, and they shouldn't be taking on a win-now posture, ESPECIALLY if that isn't accompanied by more aggressive moves to bring in talent.
Only PATFO and Vassell's doctors know how much of his missed time last year was truly for injury. If they think Devin is a real injury risk going forward, moving him at what would be the peak of his value (during the draft when they can trick teams into thinking they're just trying to move up and before Vassell has to play more games) could make sense. But I don't think Johnson being a "fit" with Wemby is a plus, since it's basically in the same way Wemby should make everyone better. I like Keldon, but I don't think he adds anything that Vassell doesn't have besides driving grit, while Devin adds quite a bit that Johnson doesn't. If health isn't a real fear then I think win now or win later, Vassell is easily the better option.
I'm not sure why a Spurs team that in this scenario is changing to a win-now posture (which apparently means not really wanting to bring back Jones and wants to shunt Wesley to Austin) wouldn't embrace having a vet combo-guard who can space the floor and run a unit. The target of Sochan learning a new position and the team in general having to learn how to shoot threes being a pathway to early wins is optimistic. I think the team could make a real playoff push with enough investment and luck. But unless they get an unnatural amount of luck, I don't see them doing that while relying on guys like Branham, Collins and PG Sochan to carry them. They were arguably the worst defense in the league last season and as far as I remember not a great offense. This roster is not a rookie Wemby away from success.
Chinook, serious question: what article were you reading? His source had one quote in the article, and the rest were speculation from timvp. I am really confused here. The Spurs haven’t made any indication what direction they’re headed in as of this moment.
I'm reading the same article you are. I did mention the source in the second sentence in my response, but most of my response was talking about LJ's write-up. I was replying to SR21's post disagreeing about Wemby making Keldon a better bet than Vassell and then going into other aspects of the article I disagree with. I did wonder if his source had a pulse on the team's thinking or not. My issue is of the vision of the Wemby Spurs. That vision was expressed in the article, whether that was merely the speculation of the author or the author's interpretation of a conversation with a source. I'm not attacking either individual personally
I agree with this. The Spurs should have a pretty good read on Vassell's status already, if it's bad (nothing so far makes me believe it is) then trade him now, otherwise if a good deal is on the table (a bit above Keldon's, same structure) then no sense in putting it on hold. Locking up young players long term on good deals is never a bad idea.
I think Vassell will benefit the most from Wemby. I think he'll score 25 a game. Unless the injury has longer lingering effects.
I don't think Jones is good enough for even an mle deal. Any deal with him should be short.
KBD isn't good enough for more than the minimum. No impact player.
Don't have much faith in Wesley ever being an NBA player, guess we'll see if he's any better in summer league.
I think there is still too much hand-waving away of Keldon Johnson’s, and to a lesser extent, Devin Vassell’s bad defense. KJ is one of the worst perimeter defenders in the NBA. He’s bad man-to-man, he’s bad on ball screens, and he’s bad on rotations. He is to defense what Blake Wesley is to finishing in the lane, except he has four years in the league. His supposedly heavy offensive load is not an excuse. I understand not having the lateral movement, but not knowing the proper play to make on defense over and over again is about preparation and effort. Four years in, and it’s still “maybe he can improve to league average.” What? And he’s considered a natural leader? A leader? What message does he send to the rest of the team with his example other than “defense is irrelevant?” No wonder the team was historically bad on that end. Are we going to excuse his bad play because his contract is “team-friendly?” Is $74 million for a guy who scores 22 and gives up 25 a night team-friendly?
And Vassell - he was heralded coming out of FSU as a 3 and D guy who “had all the tools.” Well, when is he going to display those tools? Are we going to make the same excuse, that he was just asked to score too much? Or blame the injury? Or maybe say that everyone just played bad defense on purpose for the tank?
So what, is the plan now to let Wemby clean up their messes on defense, and just hope that Wemby is as nice about it as David Robinson was back in the day? Somehow I doubt it.
I got the gist from the article that the Spurs’ strategy is going to be roster conservatism together with an unwillingness to commit salary long-term until they know how guys play with Wemby. I think I opined last week that I thought 2023-24 would be another rebuilding year, and the gist I got would support that opinion.
But if their plan really is to be more aggressive in finding complementary pieces earlier, I doubt they’d leak it to the media (which the esteemed Mr. Ellis is) anyway.
The article does seem strangely apocalyptic. We may need to give money to players that can be moved? That tends to be something that happens. Trading some of these guys at this point makes no sense. I can only see Keldon as a possibility, and only if the right draft room deal comes up, and this is because of fit, defense, and the inertia of likely having him on the block pre-Wemby.
The only real roster questions revolve around saying goodbye to Langford and a couple others. Cap questions about how to use it to get more assets. Of course Tre Jones is worth keeping. And see if the PG role can be bolstered somehow. That's it, other than the starting unit.
Think it would good to have a good long strong small foward along side with wemby and sochan....Think kbd should be brought back if theres not anything better we can sign
Yeah, definitely would say some of the defensive woes were due to undervaluing on purpose. Too many blown rotations and laziness in transition went uncommented-upon by Pop. That said, I don't think Johnson is going to be good. I do think Vassell will be fine. And we're going to see Pop start lacing into guys on blown assignments once again.
ok so how do you trade Johnson? How many 1st pick do you send with him and for whom?
There will always be a market for young Spurs developed players on reasonable $18-20M contracts, and in fact, teams may prefer a few years of contract control to, say Vassell on the Spurs 4th year option pickup.
There’s been a lot of talk in the forum about moving him as part of a package to move up in the draft and get a playmaking guard. Admittedly that doesn’t work if other front offices see him the way I do — for me he’d be the kind of player you take back to make the salaries work. But some GM’s might appraise him higher.
Yes, the Spurs were extremely bad on defense. They aren't the first team that was trying to lose games. They weren't the first team devoid of elite talent. There's not much of an excuse for them being one of the worst defenses in the NBA. Johnson has been among the worst in the NBA for basically his entire career, but his move to small-forward was a huge blow to even his anemic defense at PF. Moving more toward two-guard is going to make it even worse. Dude is a power-forward. I get that he had defensive issues there, but he'll literally have those everywhere. He's not fundamentally different than DeShaun Thomas in that way. He might work with Wemby, but basically everyone would. He's not even a guy with elite scoring potential like apparently Branham has to where he's might actually add things if the team can protect him on the other end. Keldon, like a Lopez is a fine short-term training-wheel player for a couple of years. But I don't see him as long-term high-option player on this current team.
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