Texas Chuck wrote:There is a tendency to see an athletic guy with size and no offense getting minutes on a bad team and concluding well he must play because he's a great defender. He played because it cost the Spurs absolutely nothing to play him. I mean they experimented with him at PG because they saw losing games as just fine.
Spurs should be past that now. Now its time to win. And I suspect several of these players whose metrics are all bad but that Spurs fans defend as positive value will see their roles greatly reduced--and that's if they remain on the roster.
Sochan just isn't a positive player. And he's only got the one rookie year left. Which team is dying to get this guy?
I think rational fans of teams understand that when you have a young player who isn’t proven yet, like Sochan, that the player may not work out. The thing is, it’s a low cost gamble to hang on to him. If you hold onto him and he fails, you didn’t lose much, and if he turns the corner then you’re golden. In the case of Sochan, the Spurs have invested time and money into him, and he’s shown flashes. If he doesn’t develop a passable jump shot he’s going to be limited, but that doesn’t seem like a lost cause.
With all that in mind, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to trade him when the other team is treating him like a ‘throw in’. If the other team treats him as having no real value, then why move him? He’s not bringing back any value, and he still might work out. That’s the problem with these trades. It’s not that fans of the team with the young player expect that other teams should place the same value on the guy that they do, it’s that it doesn’t make sense for them to move him if he’s being given no value. Move something that actually has no real value instead.
FYI, I think Sochan has shown a lot of positive signs. He opened the season very well last year, then got hurt. When he came back, his role wasn’t consistent, but he showed flashes. His shooting still isn’t there, but you could definitely see it developing into a passable shot. The optimistic case is he becomes a Draymond/A.Gordon type. That may not happen, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to just punt on it for no real benefit. Also, while I don’t think the Spurs care about this, a lot of front offices don’t like the optics of these moves, so there’s another reason they aren’t likely to move players like this. Once it looks hopeless, like with Wiseman and Kuminga, you absolutely should move them before it’s too late… but Sochan is in his 3rd year now, and has shown a lot more than either of those guys. It’s too early to be punting, especially when the trade in question assigns him no value.
