Another aspect to consider is depth of draft class, NIL caused many players to stay in College rather than declaring for the draft, but those players eventually need to declare for the draft. In the long run things will stabilize, but the reduction of the talent pool we saw last year means that build up of talent will enter the draft in the next couple of years, when Spurs probably won't be picking top 10 (hopefully Atlanta implodes, but we can't count on it). With most teams going for underclassmen, it could be an opportunity for the Spurs to heavily scout the draft deeply, which they haven't done in like 25 years.
These are the likely Spurs picks:
- FRP from Atlanta (say 10-20, most likely 15-20)
- SRPs (right now) from Utah (likely 31-35), Portland and Miami (both 40-45).
This is a good opportunity to use or move up for more developed players, some I've liked in the past couple of years that were available at that SRP range include Ajay Mitchell, Adem Bona, Rasheer Fleming, Noah Penda, Kalkbrenner, Tyrese Proctor, all guys with positional value and a baseline of skills that at least won't take you 3 years to figure out, you can probably have a very good sense whether they'll contribute in a couple of years at most. Alternatively, use those picks for a more established vet, roll them over if the price is right, just don't pick another Juan Nuñez, Sidy Cissoko, etc, which are players with a high development cost (years) and low chance of success (low value archetype, fatal flaws, etc).
