re: The Official NBA Free Agency/Offseason Thread Update: MITCHELL TO CLE

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Their play for this season appears to be a major tank job while also looking to acquire other teams’ picks.

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I don't know what you guys are talking about. I love the Spurs young talent and they have great pieces to build around. Poeltl and Johnson are solid starters and will fetch a nice return. They really like Primo as a lead guard, he showed flashes last year. They had an awesome draft. They have other pieces to flip and will have like 80M in cap space next summer. It is a 1 year reset, especially if they hit it big in the lottery..

Cap space is irrelevant in the current NBA, unless you are a large market, max level free agents have proven time and time again that they won’t sign with small markets. They’ll just sign a deal with their current team and demand a trade, rather than sign with a small market team with space. It’s a fricked up system but there are a few years before we’ll have any changes.

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Both HOU and OKC have loads more talent and will obvi be ready to compete before them.

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I would take that bet. The Spurs are better at developing players. They have 7-8 guys that should round into solid NBA starters. They don't have positional overlap and seem to have a cohesive plan to build.

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Who in the west will they be better than in 2 seasons. It is hard to say anyone isn’t it.

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Many many teams. Especially the way rosters turn over. I don't see how the Lakers will be good in two years. Same with the Clippers. They are going to reach a point where it all comes crashing down due to payroll. I believe the Warriors make a panic move soon and move a bunch of their youth for a last push, which would kill their future.

I can see the Spurs being a bottom 5 team this year. Then a year by year progression over the next two. Should be contenders in 3 years.

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Contenders? For what? The play in? They don’t have serious talent right now. Unless they get lucky next lottery in a big way I don’t see it.

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1-2 years in the deep lottery plus the young core they already possess should allow them to build into an upper tier team. I have seen that organization turn over talent repeatedly. Its what they do and they have the structure to rebound.

The Spurs are the most successful franchise over the past 25 years and its not particularly close. They are organizationally strong and always have a plan. Pop will be stepping down and a new coach will be taking over soon (Duncan?). There will be a plan for a quick turnaround..

If you put their last decade + of drafts against any other franchise in the nba you would almost guaranteed to choose the other squad.



2021 NBA 1 12 Joshua Primo Alabama
2021 NBA 2 41 Joe Wieskamp Iowa
2020 NBA 1 11 Devin Vassell Florida State
2020 NBA 2 41 Tre Jones Duke
2019 NBA 1 19 Luka Šamani
2019 NBA 1 29 Keldon Johnson
2019 NBA 2 49 Quinndary Weatherspoon Mississippi State
2018 NBA 1 18 Lonnie Walker Miami (FL)
2018 NBA 2 49 Chimezie Metu USC
2017 NBA 1 29 Derrick White Colorado
2017 NBA 2 59 Jaron Blossomgame Clemson
2016 NBA 1 29 Dejounte Murray Washington
2015 NBA 1 26 Nikola Milutinov
2015 NBA 2 55 Cady Lalanne UMass
2014 NBA 1 30 Kyle Anderson UCLA
2014 NBA 2 58 Jordan McRae (?PHI) Tennessee
2014 NBA 2 60 Cory Jefferson (?BRK) Baylor
2013 NBA 1 28 Livio Jean-Charles
2013 NBA 2 58 Deshaun Thomas Ohio State
2012 NBA 2 59 Marcus Denmon Missouri
2011 NBA 1 29 Cory Joseph Texas
2011 NBA 2 59 Ádám Hanga

Very hard to rebuild as a small market without multiple top 5 picks.

SAS certainly is not the elite drafting franchise they were when they found a market advantage in international scouting, but it is very hard to build a team when you are trying to fill out a roster with only picks in the mid teens to 20's.

Considering where they drafted, I'd say they are still above average

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They really don’t draft well, and if they develop so well, why are they losing so much

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They were in the playin the last two years and in the playoffs in 2019. They have never bottomed out.

In the past 4 drafts they got 6-7 good-great prospects. They have four 19 year olds that are going to play major minutes for them this year.

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The winning culture ain’t there anymore.

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I don't know about this. They had a lull and were stuck in that .500 range with some difficult pieces that didn't fit. They keep breeding new coaches and front office staff. They have always had a strong culture. They are focused on the draft and development. That model usually pays off.

They will be bad this year intentionally. But the cupboard is not bare..

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Not much to show for it.

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Because they never bottomed out. Where they have been drafting they should have been the Kings or worse, but they've been on the playoff bubble the entire time.

They've been stuck in NBA purgatory, the Rockets were there for a while if you remember back to before they traded for Harden because their owner wouldn't let them hit the reset button. When you don't bottom out to get top talent it's hard to be anything more than a back end of playoffs team.

How many teams had a stretch of playoff runs for 20 years in the modern era?

While they potentially hit the skids for a long period like the Celtics did between the early 90s and the KG trade, they haven’t had a lot of the issues that got the Celtics to that spot.


Biggest killers for the Celtics were Len Bias dying of an OD, Larry Bird’s back, and Reggie Lewis dropping dead of a heart attack.

Bias’ death cost them a guy who should have been their next franchise player along with the 2nd overall pick spent on him. It didn’t hurt them that season but the accumulated wear on Bird and others cost them down the road.

Bird’s back troubles killing his career were the major issue because Bird was one of the best players ever and was THE star of the team. He doesn’t get appreciated as much as he should because he and Magic helped bring the league back into the spotlight but both were retired by the time Jordan really came into his own by winning titles. Losing him to a back injury turned them from a title contender to a mid tier playoff team.

Reggie Lewis’ death was the dagger to that team for years because they had no real stars anymore and never could pull it together in the draft or free agency even when they did get a guy who became great like Chauncey Billups. They desperately wanted Tim Duncan and got Billups instead then gave up on him way too early.


The Spurs?

Arguably their downfall was not getting more for Kawhi once Kawhi forced his way out.

They have still brought in players and done reasonably well, but Kawhi was their last superstar and they haven’t been able to replace him since then despite overachieving with mid-late firsts like Dejounte Murray.


If the team either wins the lottery this year or drafts well if they don’t go first and get Wematanye, as I refer to him, then they may be able to recover in 2-3 years to playoff level then potentially structure things to compete.

If they blow a pick or the draft class just outright sucks like the 2000 class did, they are probably fricked for quite a while.

If I was an owner, I personally would see being a treadmill team as the worst possible outcome, especially if I was a small market.

Either be very good or suck.