Baphomet wrote:G R E Y wrote:Oh. Hmm... Interesting.
Interesting indeed. I suppose my thoughts on this are contingent on what he means by "as soon as possible". Certainly not next season or even the season after, we don't have the assets just yet. To me, the Murray trade signals that we're embarking on the Sam Presti path of stockpiling draft picks for the next couple of seasons. With that in mind, and the lack of true difference-makers on the FA market this year, our cap space would probably be better served facilitating trades elsewhere, absorbing contracts and acquiring young assets and draft capital in the process. I like the young pieces we have so far with Primo, Devin, Keldon, Sochan, and the other draftees. I think we all anticipate more moves once the carnage in Brooklyn settles down.
Ayton is okay, but I'm not sure if he fits the timeline of this team. His addition would likely keep the Spurs as a fringe play-in team, and picking in the mid-late lottery.
Yeah I think it's within the new post-DJ context now, and that's fine for not going after Ayton. We worked to get the flexibility to go either younger or more win-now.
I thought we'd go the speeding up development route with all the cap space and the 50th Anniversary and to better fit DJ's timeline, but we foresaw two years into the future, got some feedback from DJ, and pivoted quickly.
Side note: I don't love DJ's ATL presser where he said Spurs didn't want to see him 'waste' years rebuilding. It truly was in mutual interest if he didn't want to be here for it. We had no guarantee in two years he'd re-sign, and waiting until then would have meant far more limited return.
With us parting with four go-to scoring vets before last season, DJ truly got an opportunity to showcase his game. If it was inflated and got us a bigger package, great for both sides. But with us winning 34 games and a huge contract for him looming, even if he wanted to stay, I doubt the thought of DJ at $42M/yr in his late 20s was where we wanted to be. That's franchise-level difference maker on a contender money. And if anything we learned that's not what DJ is. He goes to a team where he's not the best player. So the whole 'working too hard' 'wants to win at all costs' thing coupled with the mutually beneficial trade is tacit acknowledgement that he's not that guy. Fine.
But short-term it is a hit to the locker room. Guys spoke of the impact DJ had but also of having something to compete for by the end of the season. Selling guys like Keldon and Devin on a rebuild at first may be kind of deflating so I think we have to be careful about an OKC model where they sat guys to lose.
From post-practice interviews you can glean that we'll be playing an altered, more egalitarian style with truly more ball sharing. I don't think it's a coincidence that we saw the #1 and #2 usage players in DJ and Lonnie move on. With Keldon at #3, the Klutch trifecta sometimes looked off open team mates. It started to stand out.
With DJ the last player connected to playing with the Big 3, it's truly a reset and a pure instilling of The Spurs Way with more experienced players getting more space for their games to blossom, with younger players learning foundations of our system, and without player agendas seeping in.
If we trade some other players for future assets at some point and use our cap space to absorb contracts for more assets this season, it's fine. But we can't do that for like three years. It's harder to attract good talent in FA, it's disheartening to the players, and we can't afford attendance in the the bottom five after being mostly in the top ten for decades.
With the new multi-use practice facility being completed, assets, and cap space, I expect a quicker turn around even with the hard reset and clean young rebuild.
