I actually had the most issue with Sochan not shooting than him missing due to the same reason you stated. People are still being overly bullish on Castle now. Face it, we have seen this before, we did this with KJ, we did it with Vassell, we did it with Sochan, hell, we were doing it with Mamu and freaking Minix. I love Castle so I am not going to speak ill of him, but I will wait until we see him improve before acting like he is capable of shooting, the Spurs development team has lost its magic, if we are being honest to ourselves.
First basket we gave up last night was Keldon ball-watching the play he's not even close to and allowing Wiggins to cut at the baseline for a wide open layup.
He's unaware to the point where it's honestly triggering and unwatchable. Noone is asking him to be come an elite defender, but being so unware after all these years is inexcusable.
This exact same thing applies to Devin. He's still leaving his man wide open in the corner to help Wemby contest in the paint. Like what? Why would he think that's a good idea? It's not even his man that's attacking the basket.
If you're a bad defender, you focus on your man not getting easy points, you don't try to help whenever someone attacks the rim.
Again, no arguments from me. He is a horrible defender, but he overall did positive in the game, I think we lose the game without KJ. The thing that gets me on this forum is that there is this insane double standard, Castle freaking ball watches all the time, he is overly aggressive in his defense, wrong rotation, so on and so forth. I get it, he was a rookie and KJ played 6 years, and I am not saying Castle is just as bad as Keldon because he isn't, but at this point KJ is who he is, the Spurs either find a role that he can produce in, or trade him. I have no issues either way, as much as I like seeing KJ bulldozes his way with zero awareness around him (it is fun to watch, you have to admit), it's a business and he should be traded if he has no more use on the team.
Same applies to Sochan. What I m arguing though is that Sochan does have a role on the team (KJ really doesn't, given he is best as a change of pace last resort to score some points off the bench guy and these guys don't make $18M/yr, I can't argue this one).
As for Jeremy, this goes for any player, I personally think it's an embarrassing when a player can't develop a functional jumpshot after years of trying.
Most of us from this forum would have a better looking jumpshot than Jeremy after a year of practice, let alone having NBA coaching to help us.
It's like his brain shuts down every time he starts his shooting motion.
Another thing I hate about him is that he's a low IQ player on offense.
High IQ playmakers process things on the fly and don't need to pre-plan their every drive.
Jeremy is one of those players that need to think about what's the sequence of events when they start their drive.
But he doesn't. How many of those drives into nothing have we seen over the past years? Teams want him to be the player that has the ball and attacks the paint.
Then he gets into awnkward positions, has no post moves to finish over anyone with size and has to kick the ball out in panic, but passing lanes are already clogged and it's usually a disaster.
Spurs brand of basketball was high IQ team play for more than two decades.
Friendship crew is everything but high IQ and at this zpoint I'm not sure it's worth wasting resources of salvaging their Spurs careers when we have plenty of assets to make things work without them.
Draymond Green still doesn't have one, Stephen Adams, Jalen Duren, Dereck Lively, Mark Williams, Gobert, Kessler, Elfrid Payton, Scottie Barnes, Herb Jones. There are plenty of players who still suck at shooting, maybe not as bad as Sochan because I do admit he is exceptionally bad at it, but Green still shoots like he is wearly a backpack.
I hate to break it to you, but this is like 75% of the league who can't make plays on the fly. How many players can make plays on the fly? Those are either exceptionally gifted scorers/creators, or they are all stars. Sochan is a role player, getting him to create plays is stupid to begin with. And again, people just tend to remember Sochan for screwing up, but not others. Last year, Sochan only drove to the basket 3.7 times a game (low, compared to 15.2 for Fox and 9.4 for Castle, but Paul only had 4.1 a game, and Victor 4.6), he had a assist rate of 12.6%, which was the 3rd highest on the team (behind Paul and Wesley and mostly to Wemby I would assume) passing it 42.9% of the time (4th highest on the team). He rarely fouled (6.1% of the time, I believe that is getting a charge), but get this, only turned it over 7.1% of the time (that is lower than Wemby, Wesley, Fox, Champaginie, and Castle). He gets points at 47% (that's pts per drive, so a 2pt would be 200%, behind KJ, Fox, Wemby, Vassell and Castle, which are hardly surprises). The numbers simply don't back up the assertions.
Also the Spurs played smart defence. I don't recall them being known as particualrly high IQ offensively (4-downs isn't high IQ) except 2014. Players like Dejuan Blair, Malik, Stephen Jackson, and even David Robinson were hardly known as high IQ (pains me to say it, but DRob was known to not remember plays).
In a year Bryant will surely be a better player than Jeremy if Jeremy doesn't develop his jumpshot.
Image if it was Jeremy getting fouled in clutch time. Would we have won the game?
Fox/Harper
Castle/Waters
Champ/Bryant
Barnes/Olynyk
Wemby/Kornet
Would you look at that, everyone fits their role and can play multiple positions.
The question presents itself do we even need the friendship crew?
Because our level of play and winning percentage got better when they sat both in 23-24 and 24-25 seasons.
Upgrading them to a legit PF would be the dream scenario
Having Waters and Bryant in there is absolutely ridiculous, and Carter is on his way to being hated real soon with this type of unreasonable expectations tagged on to him. I can't understand why the vast majority of people would just repeat this, overhype a new guy, new guy played like a role player, start hating on the new guy when he became an old guy cycle. I want Bryant to do well, i want him to turn into the next uncleless Kawhi, but it's not reasonable because a vast majority of 14th picks don't become rotation players, let alone stars.
