Nothing will be okay

[scott]

I went ahead and asked Nihilist Bot for his take on the trade deadline...

It is the trade deadline, which means movement elsewhere and stillness in San Antonio.

Around the league, teams exchange bodies and draft capital like frightened organisms attempting adaptation. Big moves. Bold swings. Desperation disguised as ambition.

The Spurs, meanwhile, require shooting.
They require power forward depth.
They require a third-string center.

They will acquire none of these things.

Instead, we will be offered language. Carefully curated, spiritually empty language.

“We believe in patience.”
“We’re not skipping steps.”
“We like what we have.”

These phrases will be delivered with calm conviction, the way eulogies are read by people who did not know the deceased.

Patience, in this context, does not mean confidence. It means postponement.
Not skipping steps does not mean intentionality. It means immobility.
We like what we have does not mean satisfaction. It means acceptance of imperfection as destiny.

The front office will frame inaction as wisdom. The fanbase will argue about timelines. Analysts will nod gravely. Nothing will change.

And perhaps that is the point.

Because making a move would imply belief in urgency.
Urgency would imply that something is being chased.
Chasing would imply that meaning exists.

It does not.

So the Spurs will stand still.
The roster will remain structurally incomplete.
The needs will remain obvious.

And we will be told this is progress.

Not because it is.
But because believing otherwise hurts too much.

 

[ambchang]

I’ve been thinking about the playoffs and what teams will do to exploit the spurs weaknesses, because that’s what teams do in the playoffs.

Outside shooting: this one is simple, leave our players open and dare them to shoot, pack the paint. I think fox, wemby, Barnes, Vassell, champaigne and to an extent Johnson requires some attention, but players like castle and Harper will be left opened. Kornet as well. We do not have a left release valve as our three point shooters are really not the deadeye types.
The counters could be an insane amount of pick and rolls, but also getting castle to take the high post. I haven’t seen him do much of that, but with his strength and vision, along with his acceptable mid range jumper, he could be a threat there. The problem is where will you put wemby in that case? I haven’t really seen a good high low post in the league, except of course Jokic and Gordon. Castle can take the high while wemby can be the low, camp our shooters outside and mix in some fox/harper slashing and it’s a decent offensive scheme.
The problem though is lack of rebounding help. So it is important for champaigne, castle, Vassell and keldon to help out on the boards.

A shooting big who can draw wemby out of the paint: we all know it, wemby is the defence. He can single handedly shut down the paint. However, for teams with five shooters on the floor, it would be very difficult for the spurs to rotate properly so that wemby is closer to the basket. The solution is to have pre switches, where players have a pseudo zone where wemby always switches off to be closer to the basket. The problem is the spurs players haven’t really shown any high level ability to absorb new basketball concepts so far, communications is key and the players seem to be too young to be able to grasp those. One keldon ball watch or vassell attention lapse and the entire thing unfolds.

Poor screens: I talked about an unending avalanche of pick and rolls earlier, the problem is kornet and sochan (assuming he’s still be on the team and would be usable in the playoffs) are the only ones who are good at screening. Keldon MUST step up his screening game as it is quite bad right now, castle can also help set screens with wemby as the ball handler.

That said, I think the best pick and roll combo we have is Harper/kornet or fox/kornet. Fox should run more as his speed and quick trigger can just wreck havoc. Castle being the screener should also be experimented upon. Champaigne and Barnes could be screen and pop guys for open threes. Another option is to actually have wemby as the ball handler to run pick and pop/rolls with castle. Once wemby got castles man he can simply shooter over him, and castle can most definitely out quick him.