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Great deep dive
Personally, I'm hesitant to put too much stock into season-long team stats and ranks since Wemby missed so many games and the two best players on the team hardly had any time on the floor together.
This probably came like 2 months late, but hey, I am not full time on this thing and I am just trying to consolidate all the thoughts in one big thread. Overall, I see common themes from this forum about what the Spurs need, I have my own perspective and I am not going to say I am right and anything opposing this is wrong, but hey, we all think our perspectives are righter than anybody else's.
To that point, I am also sure my views, or at least some/most of it, will age like milk, but if I am that good, I'd be working in a FO making millions rather than pushing a normal 9 to 5 like everybody else.
Feel free to add to issues I haven't mentioned, or disagree with my points. All my numbers are per 100 possession, unless otherwise noted.
Offensive issues
1) Overall offence. There has been a lot of chatter about various offensive issues (3pt shooting, which I will talk about shortly, being the most obvious one) so I wanted to address this. My view is that the Spurs, while not good on offence and certainly require improvements, require more improvements on defence (again, will talk about that later).
The Spurs ranked 19th in the league in ORtg at 114.4. Statmuse has the Ortg w/o wemby at 114.8 and with at 115.9, which doesn't make any sense as the overall rating is lower than both, but I will use these as directionally correct numbers. Spurs being worse on offence with Wemby is a surprise at the surface, but when you really look at it, it's not that surprising.
The team's offence clearly ramped up with Wemby out at the end of the season, with a combination of change in style and more reps together as a team. Players also improved during that time as the year end run helped improved the offensive cohesion. More importantly, the other teams are just shutting down for the season to tank, giving the Spurs more opportunities to score more easily.
Another aspect that I have always argued is that Wemby is actually very difficult to build around offensively. You have a gigantic wing that takes up 1/4 of the court in one drive and spacing is most definitely an issue. One step to the left or right and you are going directly into a double team and this makes spacing horrible. See below video,
at around the 1:10 mark, thank God Trae is a traffic cone, Wemby literally just drove into his area, if he cared about defence, Trae could've striped that quite easily. I reminds me of the NBA of the mid 90s, when they shortened the 3 pt line in the hopes of improving offence, but it did the opposite, because instead it cramped the offence with less room to operate. Wemby is like that, because his length made the NBA 3 pt line like the college 3 pt line, if that makes any sense.
So what is my point? That Wemby isn't a good piece to have on offence? Of course NOT. I am saying, you can't have a bunch of guys standing around watching him on offence, the Spurs require a constant motion to run the defence around to open up space for Wemby so that he can either shoot, drive or pass. The coaches MUST put in a better system the coming season, and I think Mitch would be the right guy to do it. Having Sweeney would hopefully also help.
It is unnecessary, in my view to have four 3 pt shooters camped out at the 3. I would even argue it makes the offence worse. Yes we do need three point shooters, but this leads to .......
2) 3 pt shooting. This is probably the most cited issue of the Spurs. From a pure numbers perspective, the Spurs don't have too many issues. They ranked 7th in 3PA, 8th in 3PM, and 19th in 3P% all per game numbers. However, keep in mind that Wemby led in the team in both 3PM and 3PA, shooting 3.1/8.8. I asked google how many 3 pt attempt and makes does an nba starting center average last season, and it spat out 0.9/2.47. Not sure how accurate that is, but assuming we decrease our makes and attempts by 2.2/6.3 such that Wemby would average the same as an average starting centre per game to gauge the 3 pt shooting prowess of everyone else, and it takes us down to 11.9/33.3, or about 28th and 29th in the league, which is baaaaaaaaaad.
So while I previously (as in last week) thought we don't have to worry about adding more 3 pt shooters, I am changing my mind, but I would argue we do not want to add stand still spot up 3 pt shooters, but players who would run, cut and get open for 3s. I do not feel like the Spurs sufficiently addressed this, I don't need a prime Klay Thompson here, but someone who is a Temu version of that Klay would be ideal.
This would have to be supplemented with players who can cut to the basket for easy dunks, layups and floaters, which leads to .....
3) Scoring in the paint.
The Spurs are ranked 20th in PITP. In a per game basis, Fox (11, including his numbers in SAC), Wemby (9.1), Sochan (8.1), Keldon (7.4) and Castle (7.3) were the only players to have more than 5 PITP/G last season. 5 would rank you 155 out of 569 players (including those who plays 2 minutes a game), along the ranks of Luke Kornet and Tyrese Haliburton. With a threat like Wemby out in the perimeter, and drivers like Fox and Harper, there are no reasons not to increase this number substantially.
With Kornet joining this could help, Harper and Fox will definitely help. An offensive season is probably more important than anything. I do not want to see a Wemby get the ball out front, dribble then pull up 3 from 30 feet type of offence anymore, having teammates cut and weave around the court would open up so many opportunities for easy buckets. I would say this is TBD for me.
4) Fast Breaks.
On a per game basis, the Spurs surprisingly ranked # 10 in fast breaks. Given that we are ranked #21 in TO forced and #20 in DREB per 100 possessions, it is rather surprising. In the coming year, with these young legs, hope the Spurs can get out and run, but also work on having a pressure defence to force some more TOs in the coming season. I am not sure if Corliss Williamson can help on that front, but I am not counting on it as I think he is more of a half court defensive coach. I could be totally wrong though.
5) Offensive IQ. The Spurs actually ranked #4 in assists last season, while this is not the be all and end all, it does indicate that they have at least a reasonable amount of ball movement. I don't really see this as a huge issue personally.
6) Overall defence. The spurs are often out of position on D. Collapsing in the paint leaving shooters wide opened. The number reflect that as they gave up the 5th most 3PA and 7th most makes last year. We also gave up the 5th most assists, which means that our guys are running around ball watching while passes whiz by them. Not surprisingly, we are ranked 25the DRtg, which is just pitiful. To make matters worse, they are 115.4 with Wemby (would've ranked 19th) and 121.4 without (dead last by a solid POINT). The Spurs should not be that bad on defence based on personnel, but they are, and I am pointing the finger straight at the coaching staff. Simple things such as rotations and rebounding were not enforced, players were not being held accountable.
I hope Corliss Williamson is the guy to chew those young asses out, but more importantly
7) Rebounding. We were ranked number 18th in rebounding, 20th in defensive rebounding and 19th in offensive rebounding. Worse yet, we gave up the 3rd most rebounds, 7th in defensive and 3rd most in offensive, in the league last year. Us not crashing the boards is bad, and us not making the shots is just as bad. We need a PF, especially one who can defend and rebounding. Alas, I don't believe we addressed this one. Kornet is all nice, but I am not sure how feasible it is to play him heavy minutes with Wemby. Hope I am way off on this one.
8) Backup center. As mentioned earlier, our team was just absolutely putrid defensively without Wemby. I believe Kornet more than filled this role. I am happy with this.
9) Aggressive defence. The Spurs were 28th in fouls last year. While this is often cited as a positive, and in most cases it is, it also confirms the eye test that the defence we play arent' that aggressive. We were also 28th in fouls drawn so we don't attack the paint with enough aggressiveness, despite being one of the poorer 3 p shooting teams. This has to be addressed and with Castle taking on more of an offensive role and Harper taking it to the basket will help on the offensive.
Feel free to add more.
Great deep dive
Personally, I'm hesitant to put too much stock into season-long team stats and ranks since Wemby missed so many games and the two best players on the team hardly had any time on the floor together.
#4 and #7 may have been at the expense of one another. Are we giving up lots of opposing offensive rebounds because our guys are leaking out early to start the break? The eye test would seem to suggest that, but who knows.
Of course, they don't HAVE to be at the expense of one another. Upgrading the talent on the court and better coaching will provide more opportunities to grab defensive boards and get out quickly on the break. Hopefully that happens.
I'll put this under #8, but in terms of aggressive defense, the Spurs after the Fox acquisition averaged 9.1 steals/game (compared to their overall season average of 8.2/game. This would have ranked them #6 in the league. If we look at the period before Fox went out (Feb 4 - March 12), the Spurs were at 9.7 steals/game, which would have tied them for 2nd. Fox does not deserve all of the credit for this, of course, but his arrival did coincide with a noticeable improvement in defensive playmaking (I started tracking this because in Fox's first game, we had 16 steals as a team and I was noticing just a lot more aggression in that area). Looking at how OKC and IND play defense, as an example (both top 10 in steals, OKC at #1), I think this is a good sign for the direction of our D. I'm excited to see where it goes with the new coaches.
All I know is that the Spurs are becoming 48 minutes of must-watch TV, not just however many minutes Wemby plays.
If Castle keeps developing the way he is, and we keep seeing more ooh-and-aah dunks and crossovers, that’s going to be entertaining as .
If Harper is as good as advertised and becomes a layup machine, that’s going to be entertaining as .
If Fox continues to be lightning quick getting to the basket, that’s going to be entertaining as .
The Spurs have 100 percent fun guard play for the first time since Tony and Manu.
to simplify this, I'd say the Spurs need 2 high level starting forwards. We are set with our C rotation and our guard rotation (I'm counting Steph and Devin as SGs). Let's say Sochan and Bryant are the 3-and-D forwards of the future, but currently bench players (Champagnie can take Bryant's minutes if he's not ready).
If you want to improve the defense, the first thing is getting rid of your worst defensive players which are Keldon Johnson and Harrison Barnes. Both have the same negative DBPM of -1.7.
You replace them with 2 better forwards who are both 3-point shooters (before the Barnes lovers complain again: I know he shot 43% last season).
The PF should be a good rebounder who can also play big on offense and is at least a slight positive on defense. The usual suspects mentioned all the time here: John Collins, PJ Washington, etc.
The SF would have to be an All-Defensive caliber wing (Herb Jones) or one with self creation ability (Trey Murphy, RJ Barrett) who's still a better defender than the ones we have on the team.
Adding more size on the wings will give you more defensive playmaking ability to increase the amount of deflections, fast break points, etc. plus more rebounding. A wing with self creation ability will help you get to the line more, create better ball movement and therefore better shots. You can play him as the first option against second units.
The rest is pretty much a coaching thing. With Sweeney and Williamson we should have way better defensive schemes. The issue of rebounding is mainly one of not boxing out at all, although I'd still like to add a rebounding 4 anyway. The back up C problem has been fixed completely and as long as you get enough shooting from the forward spots, Fox, Harper and Castle should make us elite as far as points in the paint.
Wiliamson's specialties are trainsition defense and rebounding
I don't see coaching as the main issue.
The defense should come around. The coaching changes indicate a new focus and the personnel is changing.
Offense is a major consideration, as you point out. Wembanyama does take up so much space and it's hard to plan around him, a major reason they took their time a little to see what was working. You want the other team's biggest player/center to guard him usually, leaving attack opportunities elsewhere. While it may not be constant, the team may try more and more outside-in attacks, where Wemby draws out and the guards attack the open rim.
What we may see are continual cuts and actions that run players past potential doubles or even triples on Wemby, past and away, to force decisions. As we get better shooters, they can simultaneously pull in their direction. My hope is that Fox and Harper will be so good at attacking that teams will be forced to decide who to double or at least feint toward, leaving a lot of room for error as the defensive situation keeps changing. Wemby is such a good passer and so tall that he can pick out players as a hub, and may be strong enough as a shooter that he can move to the wings as the guards attack.
My concern is that Wemby gums up everything because of his radius causing problems for three paint-attacking guards. That's where midranges come in, I suppose.
Tre Johnson was my hope to move up for in the draft, before the lottery. He's the sort of multi-shot, movement shooter, repositioner that would be extremely helpful.
Right now, it looks like they may be focusing on locking down the defense and will try to work on the offense.
Spurs are clearly doing the slow rebuild so fixing all the issues in one offseason is not realistic. They got better and hopefully that shows on the court and in the standings.
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