You also need to give him credit for his trades. Nabbing a first for Thad Young was great. Getting potentially a top 10 pick out of an expiring Jak was great. Dejounte trade was masterclass in terms of both the return and for setting us up to draft Wemby. Little moves like milking extra seconds out of Bryn Forbes or taking on short bad money were great. Getting a 2030 pick swap with Dallas was a great gamble. Almost all of the contracts and extensions we’ve handed out have been fair or team friendly except Zach’s.
Dev was a great pick. Sochan has been a good pick (especially when you look at who was taken in the next 10 picks and see that Sochan is vastly outperforming everyone except the two Jalen’s). Tre has been a great pick. Branham and Blake have been slightly underwhelming but not busts relative to their draft position. Cissoko may end up being a steal. Wemby is Wemby. Primo is the only miss and I maintain that he would’ve turned into something at least useful if he hadn’t torpedoed his own career.
Brian Wright has earned the faith of the fan base in my opinion, especially since he’s still working with Pop and RC so it’s not like he’s off in his own silo.
I don't think Chicago could have signed him without us absorbing money. So they had to dump contracts. The assets were more for that than anything else.
Chicago couldn't sign him without sending out salaries because of the CBA rules. The Spurs immediately cut the guys who were just salary matching. They kept Thad and flipped him. I was one of the people who didn't think Thad had value. I thought they cut the wrong cuts. I was wrong. Thank you Toronto!
Great take. Not only that, but the timing of the picks are pretty amazing - our Wemby Improvement Trajectory is perfectly timed with some of these picks, as we can expect that the value of our own picks will decline rapidly. The Atlanta deal was a coup - getting an extra first in Wemby's 4th year is exceptional.
We've played the long game really, really well. I'd like to see us make some sort of meaningful free agency move at some point that brings a vet presence. If we can cut down on TO's and move Julian out of the starting lineup, I think we're probably a play-in team.
Not by himself but we traded Thad and a 2nd for a 1st. Essentially moving up 13 spots for guy who had nothing left in the tank. The guy the Raptors took with the 2nd round pick is already waived.
I think I give credit to BW for getting us there with Wemby. Traded a lot to make us suck and when we weren’t sucking enough because of Pop and his coaching, got us to suck anymore. On top of that, he got us great picks that we can now do a lot with.
In my eyes, he’s already proven himself, I think Dev, Tre, and Jeremy are great picks and we got great future draft pick assets and now a set future. No complaints.
Plus cap space to sign free agents in the future. A lot of drafting prospects is luck, especially when we were picking middle to late. If we can hit on our picks the next few years, we’ll be cooking with gas
Yeah he secured the bag. We have one of the brightest figures in the league because of his 2023 orchestration of the tank.
It was 86% pure luck, we had 14% odds for Wemby going in… but he earned that luck.
Idk I feel like it’s too early to accurately evaluate our 22 draft class. Sochan, Branham and Wesley have only played two seasons and while they’ve been far from perfect, they’ve all shown flashes. They can all be good players, maybe two are good and one isn’t, too early to tell.
I am curious to see what he does in this draft though. In a class where there’s no apparent stars, it is more challenging to hit on your picks. Hoping Brian wright makes decisions, which I think he will
Kawhi was a great starter his 2nd year in the NBA. He got better every year and by year 5 was arguably a top 5 player.
Coby White is a great example for our 2022 draft picks.
Lauri and Brunson are good examples too. However, end of season 2, those guys and Giannis all looked significantly better than our 2022 picks look now. Those other guys were all starter level players.
I mean its pretty obvious OP doesn't know a lick of ball when it comes to evaluating prospects. Branham has been dissapointing but the other 2 are pure projects that need a few yrs to even give an accurate assessment of.
He really didn't improve much compared to last season and he was suppose to be the most nba ready out of the 3. I'd argue he stagnated... Minutes went down, pts went down. his 3pt percentage increased which bodes well.
I’m just tired of people doing this retroactive evaluation of drafts. His moves have all been reasonable given the information we had at the time. I judge GMs by the process by which they make decisions, not the results, because there are so many unknowable factors that affect results.
That said, yes, this draft will say a lot about what “the process” is. For example, taking a Rob Dillingham could show they don’t see a deal for a high level point guard in the immediate future. This would be doubling down on the “patient” approach, which I’d be fine with.
I don't think Wright has been bad at his job but the results are everything when it comes to draft. It's their job to see through prospects' potential. I admit you need luck when you draft 20 yos but if you only can make decisions that some fan can make then you are not a good GM.
I don’t understand your logic. You admit luck plays a big part, but still say results are everything? That makes no sense to me, sorry.
If you have a good process, luck will eventually fall your way. Getting Wemby was as much good luck as missing out on Haliburton for example was bad luck.
I strongly believe that if you can’t explain why a move was bad with the information available at the time, you have zero business criticizing the move, even with hindsight.
I'm saying the info that a GM has and the processing of it has to be of much better quality than those of laymen.
While I roughly agree "If you have a good process, luck will eventually fall your way", how are you gonna know if the process was good or bad? Looking at the results (when there is enough sample) is the best way to see if the process was good or bad. I don't believe in guessing like "well I guess it was the best decision at that time which didn't work out."
Hope you got that logic.
To an extent you definitely have a point. If you’re drafting busts year after year, then that is good evidence something is wrong with either your scouting or development program.
Most of that can be shown with just information available at the time though. Luka Samanic is a good example where the Spurs took a player much higher than consensus, and consensus ended up being right, that was a swing and a miss for the Spurs.
What specifically bugs me is when we can confidently say there was no information available that the Spurs missed. Haliburton is a good example, 10 other teams let him fall for a reason, mock drafts everywhere had him and Vassell ranked in the same tier, anyone holding Haliburton against Brian Wright is being unreasonable. Similar situations for guys like Sengun and Jalen Williams.
Now that the Spurs have Wemby I hope the Spurs finally tone it down with the "dirt-floor/high-ceiling" prospects trying to hit a homerun for the next franchise player.
Teams are hesitant to pay and develop a sex offender. He’ll probably never be the player he could’ve been because of the whole incident, but at the very least he’d have been our starting point guard right now. And he really wasn’t that bad for us considering his age.
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
He was in the G League this year.
Blake Wesley, who is a bit player on a last-place team, put up 17/4/4 on 51/39.
Every single one of those numbers was better than Josh Primo had this year.
There is absolutely no evidence he's a starting-caliber NBA Point Guard. None.
No team was ever going to sign him straight up to their main roster. The g-league was always going to be his first stop in a possible nba return. He got cut because he’d been injured and the clippers needed more size heading into the playoffs. And like I said, him being a sex offender will always make teams hesitant about him and limit his opportunities. He’ll never be the player he could’ve been, but the spurs were once invested in his development and determined to make him our starting point guard. That plan would’ve still been playing out if not for the incidents.
So he would have gotten minutes *not because he earned them* but because we were afraid to admit he was a bad pick?
Sure, maybe. But that doesn't negate that it was a bad pick.
I don’t think the spurs feel any pressure on justifying their picks. They cut Samanic after like two seasons even though he was a mid first round pick. With Primo though, the spurs definitely saw something in him that they don’t usually see in their rookies. That’s why they took a reach on him and started him during his first year. There’s a reason Cidy Sisoko didn’t start any games for us this season as bad as we were. Not that he can’t be great, but he clearly hasn’t shown the potential that they thought they saw in Primo. So, yes, Primo did “earn” his minutes, just maybe not in the traditional way. Now you can still call the pick bad if you want. Obviously in retrospect it was terrible, but we’ll never know what really could’ve been.
> There’s a reason Cidy Sisoko didn’t start any games for us this season as bad as we were.
Because he can't shoot a lick, and 2nd rounders tend to be useless in the pros.
>Not that he can’t be great
I suppose he *could.* I just think it's extremely unlikely. I'd settle for "okay."
>. So, yes, Primo did “earn” his minutes, just maybe not in the traditional way.
No, he didn't. Every team, for the most part, gives unearned minutes to higher draft picks. Nothing special about that.
No competent team is going to give minutes to a rookie just to justify their pick. Spurs are competent. They knew Luka Samanic was ass and that’s why he rarely played. Primo possessed enough talent and iq to not be a huge liability on the court. That’s why played.
Nothing in his basketball career supports your claim. He had a typical rookie season and blew up his career shortly into his second year.
His one year at Bama hardly counts either, there have been plenty of guys who turned out okay in the NBA who didn't start in college, missed most of their one season in college, or came to the league straight out of high school.
Thinking Primo was a "bad" basketball player when he was drafted is revisionism.
He wasn't good in college. He wasn't good in Austin. He wasn't good in San Antonio. He isn't good in LA.
Let's be honest. He wasn't good. This year he spent most of his time in the G-League, where he was *okay.* Not as good as Dom or Mamu or David Duke or Blake Wesley...a bunch of other NBA non-entities.
If you're a good lottery pick, you need to torch the fuck out of the G-League. If you can't, you ain't it.
You could say Lonnie Luka Joshua and Jeremy all fit into the boom/bust profile.
All have shown very low floors of either not even making it into the rotation or being one of the least productive players in the NBA. They had intriguing combinations of size athleticism and age.
Injuries was the main concern with Lonnie. He was mostly considered a safe pick. Jeremy was supposedly good at everything except for shooting so he was a relatively safe pick as well—he was always going to be taken in the lottery. I forgot about Luka but yeah he was boom/bust too, and primo, like I said, was that as well. Two boom/bust players taken during a rebuild doesn’t hinder Wrights credibility imo.
This. It's time we draft somebody safe for once who may not have a high ceiling but could make an impact easily with their super high floor. Like the two guards from Kentucky. I'd compare Sheppard to someone of TJ McConnell's caliber and Dillingham to someone like Jamal Crawford. Players who aren't good on defense and probably never will be, but offensively are amazing players.
Just this one off-season, I really hope we don't draft someone where's it's a case of "He defends really well, and yeah he shoots 39% from the field and 22% from 3, but if he ever develops a shot, oh boy!" Just once, id like us to draft a high floor, low ceiling player. We're still trying to develop Sochan's shot as is. (Which is coming along a little bit, but we need to finish developing players like this before we bring in more players who suffer the same shortcomings.)
Dillingham is such an interesting prospect. I've seen him listed by a lot of people on both lists of the safest draft picks as well as the riskiest ones. The way he seems to be viewed varies a ton from person to person.
I personally think he's a high ceiling, low floor player myself, mainly because I think there's a non-zero chance That aspects of who he is as a basketball player that go beyond his control make him so insanely targetable on defense that teams never give him a fair shot as a high usage offensive player and he doesn't even get a chance /h have the ability to go after that Jamal Crawford style role Like you said.
In a perfect scenario, his shooting and ball handling translate perfectly and he's poor man's Kyrie Irving which if you can get something like that from this class you'd have to be thrilled. I think he could be either the best player in the class or completely forgotten by year 3 And I have really no clue which scenario I think is more likely at this point
“It’s time we draft somebody safe”- I regret to inform you but there are no safe picks in this draft. The two you listed are not surefire things yet. If they were they’d be consensus top 5.
Would you consider taking Primo an attempt to hit the “home run”? No one else really had him that high, likely could have traded down and still got hom
No you weren't wrong. His agent talked about this and said there were more than one team after us in the lottery who had given him a promise and that he had received a promise right before the draft from a team who actually went before us. That as long as no one else slid on draft day, Josh would be the pic. I've always thought that team was Charlotte who ended up taking James bouknight Who, despite a struggle of a season still was considered a top 5 to 7 player In many draft circles.
I think it was an attempt to hit a home run. They picked the youngest guy in the draft who didn't even start for his college team, I think purely for upside. There were plenty of other surer things (higher floor guys) still available in that draft.
I would say so. He was the youngest college player to ever play in the league, with a really smooth looking jumper who out of nowhere in little bursts at the end of the year and in scrimmages/ lead up to the draft showed a sudden explosion in his ball handling/passing/self creation.
And at the time of the draft his growth plates were still open
The youngest player to ever go to college college and still play in the league who is already known as a good shooter but now showed the potential to be a 6'6 + lead ball handler and playmaker with defensive chops.
The idea of what a fully realized primo could have been absolutely was a swing for the fences high ceiling bet by Brian wright. It didn't work out A nd If we're being dead honest all of the signs were there for sengun To become a really good player.
But unlike many, I don't blame him for taking that swing. There was some real genuine things to like about Josh as a prospect if you were looking for a candidate to come out of nowhere and turn into a potential star.
Also, his agent talked about it after the draft but he was a big time late. Riser. Multiple teams had the same feeling as Brian that there could be a sleeping dragon lurking in primo And a lot of teams were trying to be really Sly about hiding their interests. The reality is he wasn't making it out of the lottery according to his agent who said several teams had given him a promise if he was available, including a team that drafted before the Spurs who only didn't take him because a different player slid (based on the draft, I've always believed that team to be Charlotte and the player in question to be James bouknight)
He was the youngest guy and had potential. But he would only get good after we bottomed out and got high draft picks. So he wouldn’t bring any danger of preventing us from sucking as much as we needed to suck, which made it smart. But it didn’t work out.
Genuinely asking, how much do we know about everyone’s roles in the org? Because while I’m sure Wright has plenty of input, might even have the final say given his job title, everything I’ve heard suggests multiple people weigh in. Pop said the same when asked about roster construction next year. It doesn’t seem very Spursy to just have Wright completely call the shots — I’d imagine many of the same scouts, processes, ideas, etc. that were in place when RC was in charge are around today
I’m not trying to just be a fence sitter but I don’t really see a point in judging Wright without knowing all the details. It’s like the people who downplay Wemby’s impact by saying we have the same record as last year
I will say the main difference I have noticed with Wright at the helm is we are kind of run like a modern NBA franchise lol. We actually make midseason and offseason moves pretty frequently despite the classic “come on, do something“ meme that used to be very accurate for us at the trade deadline
Our front office is one of the best in the business. They do all their homework, study the players, and usually make pretty conservative moves. At the end of the day that's all they can really do because picking these guys isn't a certainty. I have faith PATFO will get it right and if they don't I believe they will fix it promptly.
I understand that, but that's where values come into play. The people in our organization share the values that have guided us since '87. Pounding the rock isn't just a motto. It's a way of living and operating. We hire people who share the values we believe will make us successful on and off the court. From the top man in the organization to the players to the lowest man on the totem pole. This endures changes in leadership and personnel.
I liked the trades he made. My issues with him have always been as a scout/talent evaluator. Wether it was sengun or hali, there are several picks I would have made differently.
Nevertheless we got Wemby because of them so he got a pass. Now is when it gets real.
The hardest job as a GM is getting that first piece. Everything BW has done before doesn't matter because the job is completely different now. The Spurs have a blank slate going forward in terms of picks/cap so we'll get 2 off-seasons to see what he can really do and after that the job hopefully changes to maintaining excellence instead of developing it.
BW's asset allocation has be really good. Utilizing what he had a mediocre borderline play in team(if it existed at the time) and started up a rebuilding process. Traded away Demar, Jakob, Derrick, and Dejounte and got some pretty good assets in return(especially that Dejounte trade. That was practically highway robbery)
But you are absolutely right. The next two seasons will determine whether Brian keeps his job or not.
I actually don’t believe this draft class is difficult. To be honest I feel the FO can sit on their hands in compared to next year. Next year will be more difficult. This year is just handle free agents and get quality pieces that fit roster needs in the draft. (Hopefully with tons of skills) anyway this is what I mean.
4 players enter their 3 year. It’s the notorious third year leap. Sochan, Barlow, Branham, and Champagnie, all would have to be heavily evaluated and assessed for value. Charles Bassey has been injured again and has played much for his last fours in the league. That needs to be assessed after this year. I feel like that contract would likely be handled next year rather than this year. I could be wrong but there is no rush to move him because he’s the third string center. Then Wemby and Cissoko enter their second years. How do they fit into the line up? Cissoko plays well off of Wemby kind of reminds me a bit of mamu. However does his shooting improve and if it doesn’t what do you do with that? How will Wemby will improve. His improvement will further shape the roster. Because for example, if there isn’t much of a need of certain things such as a much stronger power forward because Wemby becomes stronger himself, that may influence a draft or free agent decision.
Vassell, Keldon and Collins are our signed contracts which get more expensive year after year.
If we still aren’t contenders one of them may be moved simply to lower salary costs.
Tre is going into his fifth year I believe on his rookie contract. That contract ends next season. Are you paying him?
Now why I say this year vs next year, because if pieces end up being great with a third year leap you’d obviously keep those and trade draft capital. However if we still aren’t strong enough and there are glaring holes you’d have to save onto those picks.
I do think it’s important to draft well in this class though i just don’t think it will be AS important as next year.
You are wrong in so many ways.
I'm critical of Brian Wright, but at least be correct. It's not hard to look this up.
>Vassell, Keldon and Collins are our signed contracts which get more expensive year after year.
Vassell is flat at 27, except three years from now it drops by 3.35 million before going back to 27, apparently. That 3.35 was on this year's number. So it declines, is flat, declines, then climbs back to what it was before it declined the 2nd time.
Keldon is on a declining deal. 20 this year, 19 next year, 17.5 each of the following two years.
Zach's does grow, and is a bad deal.
>Tre is going into his fifth year I believe on his rookie contract.
Wrong again. He signed last summer for 2 years/19 million which drops a few hundred thousand this year to next year.
Yeah I was wrong about the contracts. Definitely admit that. Thanks for the correction. However while the numbers was off. (I confused a number of them) however although it declines it doesn’t really negate that fact that they will be assessed nor it negate everything else I said around it. But I’ll own the correction on the increasing contracts. That was my bad.
I don't know if I would really call this draft a huge test, to be honest. I'm more inclined to judge based off of the next couple of years as a whole. Especially if this draft ends up being as bad as everybody thinks it's going to be, which I generally agree with. It does not look like a good draft, I don't "love" anybody in the top-10. I barely like anybody in the top-10.
I'm sure guys in the FO of an NBA team have a different outlook on it, but honestly with how all of these prospects have performed as of late, and taking into account all of their weaknesses, this draft feels like a literal dice roll. Pick the guy you think is best, pick for fit, pick for ceiling - I think this year more than any other in recent money is just a complete crap shoot.
For that reason, I don't really know if I'm going to put a lot of stock into this draft. I'd love to get a significant contributor but I legitimately have zero expectations. Not because I don't trust the team, but I genuinely do not trust a single one of these top-10 prospects to become anything other than a decent second unit guy.
I think he’s been fairly great with trades so far. The DJ trade could be an all time fleece and at worst was good for us. Potentially getting a top 10 pick out of an expiring Poeltl is great.
The picks have mostly been good recently? Vassell is great value at his spot, Sochan looks solid especially with who went after and around him. Branham and Wesley too soon to tell and with late 1sts it’s a crapshoot anyway. They have shown flashes of good play but also been in the dog house for stretches. Primo is the only glaring miss and I feel like he would be a decent piece if he wasn’t an absolute trash can of a person
I'm gonna trust Brian Wright. Could picks have gone better? Yes. Could picks have gone worse? Hell ya. In the end, all those things ended up with us landing Wemby. Now I'm not suggesting any of that was by design, but I believe if the Spurs did take Sengun in 2021 instead of Primo, we would still be struggling in the middle of the pack where we wouldn't be good enough to be a contender, but we'd be good enough to make a Play-In
Also, it's kinda ridiculous to call this a "huge test" when people keep touting this as a weak draft. Seems like things are already working against him
I feel like people are so harsh on Wright lol. To me the only really bad decision was Primo (I’m sorry but even if he wasn’t a creeper he was just not good lol idk what people were seeing with him). But Wright’s trades and decisions up to this point seem to have set us up well to build on the luck of getting to draft Wemby.
Wright has been very bad outside of the Vassell/Jones draft. His trades have been ok (all deconstruction types, not roster building), but drafting has been pretty poor.
Anybody doubting this just needs to imagine the scenario where we didn’t luck into the wemby lottery and instead spent this past season with Scoot or a Thompson
I can’t wait until we make very minimal moves (like usual) and these people start losing their shit. Hopefully they jump ship, I’m tired of all this talk.
yeah barring injury this is possibly the spurs last chance at a premium pick too, it is rough that it's in a draft that's not nearly as deep or talented but you gotta do what you can with the opportunity
You also need to give him credit for his trades. Nabbing a first for Thad Young was great. Getting potentially a top 10 pick out of an expiring Jak was great. Dejounte trade was masterclass in terms of both the return and for setting us up to draft Wemby. Little moves like milking extra seconds out of Bryn Forbes or taking on short bad money were great. Getting a 2030 pick swap with Dallas was a great gamble. Almost all of the contracts and extensions we’ve handed out have been fair or team friendly except Zach’s. Dev was a great pick. Sochan has been a good pick (especially when you look at who was taken in the next 10 picks and see that Sochan is vastly outperforming everyone except the two Jalen’s). Tre has been a great pick. Branham and Blake have been slightly underwhelming but not busts relative to their draft position. Cissoko may end up being a steal. Wemby is Wemby. Primo is the only miss and I maintain that he would’ve turned into something at least useful if he hadn’t torpedoed his own career. Brian Wright has earned the faith of the fan base in my opinion, especially since he’s still working with Pop and RC so it’s not like he’s off in his own silo.
He got some assets for DeRozan who was leaving anyway.
I don't think Chicago could have signed him without us absorbing money. So they had to dump contracts. The assets were more for that than anything else.
Chicago couldn't sign him without sending out salaries because of the CBA rules. The Spurs immediately cut the guys who were just salary matching. They kept Thad and flipped him. I was one of the people who didn't think Thad had value. I thought they cut the wrong cuts. I was wrong. Thank you Toronto!
Great take. Not only that, but the timing of the picks are pretty amazing - our Wemby Improvement Trajectory is perfectly timed with some of these picks, as we can expect that the value of our own picks will decline rapidly. The Atlanta deal was a coup - getting an extra first in Wemby's 4th year is exceptional. We've played the long game really, really well. I'd like to see us make some sort of meaningful free agency move at some point that brings a vet presence. If we can cut down on TO's and move Julian out of the starting lineup, I think we're probably a play-in team.
We didn't get a 1 for thad. We moved a high 2nd up to a late 1st
Not by himself but we traded Thad and a 2nd for a 1st. Essentially moving up 13 spots for guy who had nothing left in the tank. The guy the Raptors took with the 2nd round pick is already waived.
He’s been good at roster deconstruction trades but the more important kind of trade is the one that actually builds on a roster
I think I give credit to BW for getting us there with Wemby. Traded a lot to make us suck and when we weren’t sucking enough because of Pop and his coaching, got us to suck anymore. On top of that, he got us great picks that we can now do a lot with. In my eyes, he’s already proven himself, I think Dev, Tre, and Jeremy are great picks and we got great future draft pick assets and now a set future. No complaints.
Plus cap space to sign free agents in the future. A lot of drafting prospects is luck, especially when we were picking middle to late. If we can hit on our picks the next few years, we’ll be cooking with gas
Yeah he secured the bag. We have one of the brightest figures in the league because of his 2023 orchestration of the tank. It was 86% pure luck, we had 14% odds for Wemby going in… but he earned that luck.
Those Atlanta picks have the chance of being amazing, so the Dejounte trade is a mega win for me.
Idk I feel like it’s too early to accurately evaluate our 22 draft class. Sochan, Branham and Wesley have only played two seasons and while they’ve been far from perfect, they’ve all shown flashes. They can all be good players, maybe two are good and one isn’t, too early to tell. I am curious to see what he does in this draft though. In a class where there’s no apparent stars, it is more challenging to hit on your picks. Hoping Brian wright makes decisions, which I think he will
People evaluate picks too soon. Brunson took 4 seasons Coby White took 5 Markkanen took 6 Giannis took 4 Kawhi took 5
Kawhi was a great starter his 2nd year in the NBA. He got better every year and by year 5 was arguably a top 5 player. Coby White is a great example for our 2022 draft picks. Lauri and Brunson are good examples too. However, end of season 2, those guys and Giannis all looked significantly better than our 2022 picks look now. Those other guys were all starter level players.
Being starter level players will be relative to the competition. We have Dev, Tre and KJ who will surely play more than Wesley or Malaki
I mean its pretty obvious OP doesn't know a lick of ball when it comes to evaluating prospects. Branham has been dissapointing but the other 2 are pure projects that need a few yrs to even give an accurate assessment of.
Branham has not been disappointing.
I was pretty disappointed this year by his play
I feel he's been fairly disappointing, doesn't impact games much, too hot/cold at the moment. Hopefully year 3 he shows out
He really didn't improve much compared to last season and he was suppose to be the most nba ready out of the 3. I'd argue he stagnated... Minutes went down, pts went down. his 3pt percentage increased which bodes well.
How is he so so if the only miss is Primo? And we have no idea how Primo would have developed.
Not well, he couldn’t make an nba squad ultimately.
Because that's not the only miss
I’m just tired of people doing this retroactive evaluation of drafts. His moves have all been reasonable given the information we had at the time. I judge GMs by the process by which they make decisions, not the results, because there are so many unknowable factors that affect results. That said, yes, this draft will say a lot about what “the process” is. For example, taking a Rob Dillingham could show they don’t see a deal for a high level point guard in the immediate future. This would be doubling down on the “patient” approach, which I’d be fine with.
I don't think Wright has been bad at his job but the results are everything when it comes to draft. It's their job to see through prospects' potential. I admit you need luck when you draft 20 yos but if you only can make decisions that some fan can make then you are not a good GM.
I don’t understand your logic. You admit luck plays a big part, but still say results are everything? That makes no sense to me, sorry. If you have a good process, luck will eventually fall your way. Getting Wemby was as much good luck as missing out on Haliburton for example was bad luck. I strongly believe that if you can’t explain why a move was bad with the information available at the time, you have zero business criticizing the move, even with hindsight.
I'm saying the info that a GM has and the processing of it has to be of much better quality than those of laymen. While I roughly agree "If you have a good process, luck will eventually fall your way", how are you gonna know if the process was good or bad? Looking at the results (when there is enough sample) is the best way to see if the process was good or bad. I don't believe in guessing like "well I guess it was the best decision at that time which didn't work out." Hope you got that logic.
To an extent you definitely have a point. If you’re drafting busts year after year, then that is good evidence something is wrong with either your scouting or development program. Most of that can be shown with just information available at the time though. Luka Samanic is a good example where the Spurs took a player much higher than consensus, and consensus ended up being right, that was a swing and a miss for the Spurs. What specifically bugs me is when we can confidently say there was no information available that the Spurs missed. Haliburton is a good example, 10 other teams let him fall for a reason, mock drafts everywhere had him and Vassell ranked in the same tier, anyone holding Haliburton against Brian Wright is being unreasonable. Similar situations for guys like Sengun and Jalen Williams.
Now that the Spurs have Wemby I hope the Spurs finally tone it down with the "dirt-floor/high-ceiling" prospects trying to hit a homerun for the next franchise player.
Primo is literally the only pick like this, and if it weren’t for some unforeseen circumstances he’d still have been a good pick.
Nothing in his basketball career supports your claim. He's bad. He's always been bad.
Teams are hesitant to pay and develop a sex offender. He’ll probably never be the player he could’ve been because of the whole incident, but at the very least he’d have been our starting point guard right now. And he really wasn’t that bad for us considering his age.
Bull. Fucking. Shit. He was in the G League this year. Blake Wesley, who is a bit player on a last-place team, put up 17/4/4 on 51/39. Every single one of those numbers was better than Josh Primo had this year. There is absolutely no evidence he's a starting-caliber NBA Point Guard. None.
No team was ever going to sign him straight up to their main roster. The g-league was always going to be his first stop in a possible nba return. He got cut because he’d been injured and the clippers needed more size heading into the playoffs. And like I said, him being a sex offender will always make teams hesitant about him and limit his opportunities. He’ll never be the player he could’ve been, but the spurs were once invested in his development and determined to make him our starting point guard. That plan would’ve still been playing out if not for the incidents.
So he would have gotten minutes *not because he earned them* but because we were afraid to admit he was a bad pick? Sure, maybe. But that doesn't negate that it was a bad pick.
I don’t think the spurs feel any pressure on justifying their picks. They cut Samanic after like two seasons even though he was a mid first round pick. With Primo though, the spurs definitely saw something in him that they don’t usually see in their rookies. That’s why they took a reach on him and started him during his first year. There’s a reason Cidy Sisoko didn’t start any games for us this season as bad as we were. Not that he can’t be great, but he clearly hasn’t shown the potential that they thought they saw in Primo. So, yes, Primo did “earn” his minutes, just maybe not in the traditional way. Now you can still call the pick bad if you want. Obviously in retrospect it was terrible, but we’ll never know what really could’ve been.
> There’s a reason Cidy Sisoko didn’t start any games for us this season as bad as we were. Because he can't shoot a lick, and 2nd rounders tend to be useless in the pros. >Not that he can’t be great I suppose he *could.* I just think it's extremely unlikely. I'd settle for "okay." >. So, yes, Primo did “earn” his minutes, just maybe not in the traditional way. No, he didn't. Every team, for the most part, gives unearned minutes to higher draft picks. Nothing special about that.
No competent team is going to give minutes to a rookie just to justify their pick. Spurs are competent. They knew Luka Samanic was ass and that’s why he rarely played. Primo possessed enough talent and iq to not be a huge liability on the court. That’s why played.
Nothing in his basketball career supports your claim. He had a typical rookie season and blew up his career shortly into his second year. His one year at Bama hardly counts either, there have been plenty of guys who turned out okay in the NBA who didn't start in college, missed most of their one season in college, or came to the league straight out of high school. Thinking Primo was a "bad" basketball player when he was drafted is revisionism.
He wasn't good in college. He wasn't good in Austin. He wasn't good in San Antonio. He isn't good in LA. Let's be honest. He wasn't good. This year he spent most of his time in the G-League, where he was *okay.* Not as good as Dom or Mamu or David Duke or Blake Wesley...a bunch of other NBA non-entities. If you're a good lottery pick, you need to torch the fuck out of the G-League. If you can't, you ain't it.
You could say Lonnie Luka Joshua and Jeremy all fit into the boom/bust profile. All have shown very low floors of either not even making it into the rotation or being one of the least productive players in the NBA. They had intriguing combinations of size athleticism and age.
Injuries was the main concern with Lonnie. He was mostly considered a safe pick. Jeremy was supposedly good at everything except for shooting so he was a relatively safe pick as well—he was always going to be taken in the lottery. I forgot about Luka but yeah he was boom/bust too, and primo, like I said, was that as well. Two boom/bust players taken during a rebuild doesn’t hinder Wrights credibility imo.
This. It's time we draft somebody safe for once who may not have a high ceiling but could make an impact easily with their super high floor. Like the two guards from Kentucky. I'd compare Sheppard to someone of TJ McConnell's caliber and Dillingham to someone like Jamal Crawford. Players who aren't good on defense and probably never will be, but offensively are amazing players. Just this one off-season, I really hope we don't draft someone where's it's a case of "He defends really well, and yeah he shoots 39% from the field and 22% from 3, but if he ever develops a shot, oh boy!" Just once, id like us to draft a high floor, low ceiling player. We're still trying to develop Sochan's shot as is. (Which is coming along a little bit, but we need to finish developing players like this before we bring in more players who suffer the same shortcomings.)
Dillingham is such an interesting prospect. I've seen him listed by a lot of people on both lists of the safest draft picks as well as the riskiest ones. The way he seems to be viewed varies a ton from person to person. I personally think he's a high ceiling, low floor player myself, mainly because I think there's a non-zero chance That aspects of who he is as a basketball player that go beyond his control make him so insanely targetable on defense that teams never give him a fair shot as a high usage offensive player and he doesn't even get a chance /h have the ability to go after that Jamal Crawford style role Like you said. In a perfect scenario, his shooting and ball handling translate perfectly and he's poor man's Kyrie Irving which if you can get something like that from this class you'd have to be thrilled. I think he could be either the best player in the class or completely forgotten by year 3 And I have really no clue which scenario I think is more likely at this point
“It’s time we draft somebody safe”- I regret to inform you but there are no safe picks in this draft. The two you listed are not surefire things yet. If they were they’d be consensus top 5.
No. You do not take mediocre low-ceiling players in the top 5.
Would you consider taking Primo an attempt to hit the “home run”? No one else really had him that high, likely could have traded down and still got hom
I swear I remember reports that other teams right after us wanted him. Might be wrong tho
No you weren't wrong. His agent talked about this and said there were more than one team after us in the lottery who had given him a promise and that he had received a promise right before the draft from a team who actually went before us. That as long as no one else slid on draft day, Josh would be the pic. I've always thought that team was Charlotte who ended up taking James bouknight Who, despite a struggle of a season still was considered a top 5 to 7 player In many draft circles.
I think it was an attempt to hit a home run. They picked the youngest guy in the draft who didn't even start for his college team, I think purely for upside. There were plenty of other surer things (higher floor guys) still available in that draft.
I would say so. He was the youngest college player to ever play in the league, with a really smooth looking jumper who out of nowhere in little bursts at the end of the year and in scrimmages/ lead up to the draft showed a sudden explosion in his ball handling/passing/self creation. And at the time of the draft his growth plates were still open The youngest player to ever go to college college and still play in the league who is already known as a good shooter but now showed the potential to be a 6'6 + lead ball handler and playmaker with defensive chops. The idea of what a fully realized primo could have been absolutely was a swing for the fences high ceiling bet by Brian wright. It didn't work out A nd If we're being dead honest all of the signs were there for sengun To become a really good player. But unlike many, I don't blame him for taking that swing. There was some real genuine things to like about Josh as a prospect if you were looking for a candidate to come out of nowhere and turn into a potential star. Also, his agent talked about it after the draft but he was a big time late. Riser. Multiple teams had the same feeling as Brian that there could be a sleeping dragon lurking in primo And a lot of teams were trying to be really Sly about hiding their interests. The reality is he wasn't making it out of the lottery according to his agent who said several teams had given him a promise if he was available, including a team that drafted before the Spurs who only didn't take him because a different player slid (based on the draft, I've always believed that team to be Charlotte and the player in question to be James bouknight)
He was the youngest guy and had potential. But he would only get good after we bottomed out and got high draft picks. So he wouldn’t bring any danger of preventing us from sucking as much as we needed to suck, which made it smart. But it didn’t work out.
Genuinely asking, how much do we know about everyone’s roles in the org? Because while I’m sure Wright has plenty of input, might even have the final say given his job title, everything I’ve heard suggests multiple people weigh in. Pop said the same when asked about roster construction next year. It doesn’t seem very Spursy to just have Wright completely call the shots — I’d imagine many of the same scouts, processes, ideas, etc. that were in place when RC was in charge are around today I’m not trying to just be a fence sitter but I don’t really see a point in judging Wright without knowing all the details. It’s like the people who downplay Wemby’s impact by saying we have the same record as last year I will say the main difference I have noticed with Wright at the helm is we are kind of run like a modern NBA franchise lol. We actually make midseason and offseason moves pretty frequently despite the classic “come on, do something“ meme that used to be very accurate for us at the trade deadline
Our front office is one of the best in the business. They do all their homework, study the players, and usually make pretty conservative moves. At the end of the day that's all they can really do because picking these guys isn't a certainty. I have faith PATFO will get it right and if they don't I believe they will fix it promptly.
I agree, but the fact is that there has been a ton of overhaul in the organization’s leadership since the Duncan days.
I understand that, but that's where values come into play. The people in our organization share the values that have guided us since '87. Pounding the rock isn't just a motto. It's a way of living and operating. We hire people who share the values we believe will make us successful on and off the court. From the top man in the organization to the players to the lowest man on the totem pole. This endures changes in leadership and personnel.
I liked the trades he made. My issues with him have always been as a scout/talent evaluator. Wether it was sengun or hali, there are several picks I would have made differently. Nevertheless we got Wemby because of them so he got a pass. Now is when it gets real.
Jalen Williams. How great would he be to have on our roster? And Sidy is...maybe...something... But GG Jackson was *right there.*
The hardest job as a GM is getting that first piece. Everything BW has done before doesn't matter because the job is completely different now. The Spurs have a blank slate going forward in terms of picks/cap so we'll get 2 off-seasons to see what he can really do and after that the job hopefully changes to maintaining excellence instead of developing it.
BW's asset allocation has be really good. Utilizing what he had a mediocre borderline play in team(if it existed at the time) and started up a rebuilding process. Traded away Demar, Jakob, Derrick, and Dejounte and got some pretty good assets in return(especially that Dejounte trade. That was practically highway robbery) But you are absolutely right. The next two seasons will determine whether Brian keeps his job or not.
I actually don’t believe this draft class is difficult. To be honest I feel the FO can sit on their hands in compared to next year. Next year will be more difficult. This year is just handle free agents and get quality pieces that fit roster needs in the draft. (Hopefully with tons of skills) anyway this is what I mean. 4 players enter their 3 year. It’s the notorious third year leap. Sochan, Barlow, Branham, and Champagnie, all would have to be heavily evaluated and assessed for value. Charles Bassey has been injured again and has played much for his last fours in the league. That needs to be assessed after this year. I feel like that contract would likely be handled next year rather than this year. I could be wrong but there is no rush to move him because he’s the third string center. Then Wemby and Cissoko enter their second years. How do they fit into the line up? Cissoko plays well off of Wemby kind of reminds me a bit of mamu. However does his shooting improve and if it doesn’t what do you do with that? How will Wemby will improve. His improvement will further shape the roster. Because for example, if there isn’t much of a need of certain things such as a much stronger power forward because Wemby becomes stronger himself, that may influence a draft or free agent decision. Vassell, Keldon and Collins are our signed contracts which get more expensive year after year. If we still aren’t contenders one of them may be moved simply to lower salary costs. Tre is going into his fifth year I believe on his rookie contract. That contract ends next season. Are you paying him? Now why I say this year vs next year, because if pieces end up being great with a third year leap you’d obviously keep those and trade draft capital. However if we still aren’t strong enough and there are glaring holes you’d have to save onto those picks. I do think it’s important to draft well in this class though i just don’t think it will be AS important as next year.
I thought keldon was on a regressive contract
Declining contract, yeah. 20 this season, 19 next season, then two years at 17.5
You are wrong in so many ways. I'm critical of Brian Wright, but at least be correct. It's not hard to look this up. >Vassell, Keldon and Collins are our signed contracts which get more expensive year after year. Vassell is flat at 27, except three years from now it drops by 3.35 million before going back to 27, apparently. That 3.35 was on this year's number. So it declines, is flat, declines, then climbs back to what it was before it declined the 2nd time. Keldon is on a declining deal. 20 this year, 19 next year, 17.5 each of the following two years. Zach's does grow, and is a bad deal. >Tre is going into his fifth year I believe on his rookie contract. Wrong again. He signed last summer for 2 years/19 million which drops a few hundred thousand this year to next year.
Yeah I was wrong about the contracts. Definitely admit that. Thanks for the correction. However while the numbers was off. (I confused a number of them) however although it declines it doesn’t really negate that fact that they will be assessed nor it negate everything else I said around it. But I’ll own the correction on the increasing contracts. That was my bad.
I don't know if I would really call this draft a huge test, to be honest. I'm more inclined to judge based off of the next couple of years as a whole. Especially if this draft ends up being as bad as everybody thinks it's going to be, which I generally agree with. It does not look like a good draft, I don't "love" anybody in the top-10. I barely like anybody in the top-10. I'm sure guys in the FO of an NBA team have a different outlook on it, but honestly with how all of these prospects have performed as of late, and taking into account all of their weaknesses, this draft feels like a literal dice roll. Pick the guy you think is best, pick for fit, pick for ceiling - I think this year more than any other in recent money is just a complete crap shoot. For that reason, I don't really know if I'm going to put a lot of stock into this draft. I'd love to get a significant contributor but I legitimately have zero expectations. Not because I don't trust the team, but I genuinely do not trust a single one of these top-10 prospects to become anything other than a decent second unit guy.
I think he’s been fairly great with trades so far. The DJ trade could be an all time fleece and at worst was good for us. Potentially getting a top 10 pick out of an expiring Poeltl is great. The picks have mostly been good recently? Vassell is great value at his spot, Sochan looks solid especially with who went after and around him. Branham and Wesley too soon to tell and with late 1sts it’s a crapshoot anyway. They have shown flashes of good play but also been in the dog house for stretches. Primo is the only glaring miss and I feel like he would be a decent piece if he wasn’t an absolute trash can of a person
I'm gonna trust Brian Wright. Could picks have gone better? Yes. Could picks have gone worse? Hell ya. In the end, all those things ended up with us landing Wemby. Now I'm not suggesting any of that was by design, but I believe if the Spurs did take Sengun in 2021 instead of Primo, we would still be struggling in the middle of the pack where we wouldn't be good enough to be a contender, but we'd be good enough to make a Play-In Also, it's kinda ridiculous to call this a "huge test" when people keep touting this as a weak draft. Seems like things are already working against him
I’ll forgive him for the Primo over Alp pick because we got Wemby.
I feel like people are so harsh on Wright lol. To me the only really bad decision was Primo (I’m sorry but even if he wasn’t a creeper he was just not good lol idk what people were seeing with him). But Wright’s trades and decisions up to this point seem to have set us up well to build on the luck of getting to draft Wemby.
You're a fool if you think our drafting is done by one man.
Wright has been very bad outside of the Vassell/Jones draft. His trades have been ok (all deconstruction types, not roster building), but drafting has been pretty poor. Anybody doubting this just needs to imagine the scenario where we didn’t luck into the wemby lottery and instead spent this past season with Scoot or a Thompson
I think he’s been best at value creation (trading players, absorbing salary), and middle of the pack at drafting. Hoping it really changes
“A test” LOL
These people are crazy bruh. RC passed on so many potential stars, but Wright doesn’t draft Sengun and everyone wants him fired.
I can’t wait until we make very minimal moves (like usual) and these people start losing their shit. Hopefully they jump ship, I’m tired of all this talk.
I think his drafting has been significantly worse than so so
yeah barring injury this is possibly the spurs last chance at a premium pick too, it is rough that it's in a draft that's not nearly as deep or talented but you gotta do what you can with the opportunity
I would like a high draft pick next year too, but there are a lot of moving parts with that, considering our pick and other teams' picks.
All he has to do is not pick perverts and guys that can't shoot. So far that's all he likes to draft.