CIN-C-STAR wrote:G R E Y wrote:WTF is going on?! This **** blows. Chip was actually one of the bench assistants so that's another role to fill, and it's a HUGE one:
So much this. Hopefully this was not dropped as a last minute thing and we've been preparing. Not sure how but... man this is ... oof...
I'm kinda concerned about the Spurs tbh.
I don't follow all the off-court stuff too closely tbh so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but didn''t they get new owners in recent years (Holt's kids or something, and then they sold an equity stake in the team?).
And now we have all these new unis and endorsement deals that give the team equity and we trade our best player before they are up for an extension while sitting on a bunch of cap space.... I actually loved the trade for them, and none of the other stuff is weird in a vacuum, but now with this vague announcement about Chip leaving when his contract is up I'm getting owner vibes from the new group that are, "we want this Spurs thing to make us money now and every year, not just be an asset with amazing growth."
It's not uncommon for the kids of these 1 percenters to be accustomed to a certain lifestyle they want to maintain while their parents who made the money grew up under different circumstances and might better see the big picture better for something like the Spurs.
I'm not panicking by any means, but if they tank for more than this year by hanging onto max cap space, and/or continue to lose valuable off-the-court assets like Chip, I will definitely start to lose interest.
I'm in it for the basketball, not to see how wealthy some family can get off basketball.
I've been thinking a lot about this and I'm bad at brevity so please bear with me.
It's a fair concern and I think we as well as many Spurs fans were rocked by this news. But I've had a think about it and feel a little differently now.
First thing is that we'd won two titles by the time Chip came along. Next is that while we won three with him on board, other teams without a Chip-calibre shooting coach (I'm sure he's more than that, but it's the main thing he's known for being best at) in between and after. So I'm not downplaying Chip's impact, just contextualizing it.
The context is the direction of the team. One is stability of ownership. The Holts have majority with a more stable group around them. The ownership has actually been strengthened by combining smaller ownership percentages and selling them collectively to fewer but richer owners. The AT&T naming rights were up and as AT&T is leaving the SA market, I believe, so that would have happened regardless of ownership exchange.
There are other signs that make me think ok we're staying is the stated commitment by Holt to the committee that had to approve 'home' games away from AT&T Center. And of course we're building a half billion practice facility/sports complex on the upper west side.
To be honest, far in the back of my mind I do wonder about an eventual move or at least a contingency plan for a move out of SA. It would shock me if it happened because the city itself is making improvements so by the time the lease is up at AT&T Center in ten years I expect other areas of SA to be in better shape.
But what makes me think there could be contingency plans is that one of the owners is Michael Dell who is from Austin, and the new jersey sponsorship company is from Austin as well. The practice facility is actually part of a larger research, community, multi-purpose facility so I thought well they could always say look we built this place to last, it's more than just a practice facility and if the team moves the city still has all these other uses for it.
But I'm not great with change, especially sudden, and this all feels like a lot in a relatively short time, so I'm acknowledging seeing worst case scenarios as preparation for worst case scenarios lol not reality.
Back to Chip. The team surely knew that his contract was up whenever it is that it expires. Pop's current deal ended after this season and Chip's may have more or less coincided with it. Pop's clearly coming back for at least next season (so glad that Brett Brown is along for the ride!). Chip came along when we were a dominant team already and was there for the height of the rest of it, and after being on the Olympic Gold Medal team, he may have thought that he would not be on board for the rebuild. I doubt it's money as it's my understanding that Chip's been very well compensated.
The thing we don't know is whether this is something PATFO knew was coming and were prepared for or whether this came suddenly. We'll likely never know, but Chip's tenure has earned him the choice, at 61, to make this transition.
The other thing is that with Chip being here so long, surely a lot of his knowledge has been passed on to other staffers so while we eventually lose his eye and feel we also have a lot of his skills and how-to fix it knowledge.
As for the team, the more I look at how we've been drafting, the more I see PATFO being totally comfortable with moving on from DJ. We took Weatherspoon, then Devin and Tre, then Primo and Joe, and now two more guards in this draft. Lots of bigger, long armed, two-way combo guards (except for Tre), and with giving DJ full rein of the team, we won one more game with ten extra chances to do it.
People will rightly point out that well it's a young team, players had to get acclimated to bigger roles while learning our system and all of that is true, but it also indicates the level of the talent where DJ is at. So while he set individual records with most triple doubles, and had a great 21/9/8 or so for the season and was named to the AS team (even if as a replacement), he was the best player on a rebuilding team but really not the player you build around.
This was curious as well:
I don't recall the signalling of wanting DD off the team, but he sure gave lots of signals this off-season: the IG post about how he worked too hard (as opposed to who? lol) and was tired of losing and only wanted to win -- this after YEAR ONE into the rebuild; he was posting lots of practice photos, but unlike his team mates, none were in Spurs gear; he actually **** practiced in Atlanta; he and Trae talked during the AS game; he said during his ATL presser how he and Trae had been talking together for about three weeks prior to the trade; he said he and Pop were talking about a week prior to the trade; he dodged the question about whether he asked for a trade.
There's a way of communicating to get a message across without it being demanding but just acknowledging the reality of interests and whether or not they happen to coincide, and in this case they didn't.
Info also came out that Klutch and DJ were not going to re-sign this summer or next summer. That makes sense for them because the CBA only allows for a 120% increase of the current contract and DJ's on a team-friendly one which was at the time good for both sides as it was more of us paying him for potential which he exceeded.
But we hardly had any assurances that DJ would re-sign with us as UFA, and given his win-now signalling we struck a terrific deal. It would not have been this asset haul in a potential S&T situation. It's not that we can't pay a top level talent the max; it's that we have identified who we want to max out or not.
You know what's curious? We not only obliged DJ, but given how quickly PATFO did the trade, it sort of feels like we wanted to or saw the time coming to move on, and given our drafting of so many guards, we were at least preparing for it.
With DJ being eligible for a $212.3M/5 for his next contract, that's an average of $42M/yr. Like that's franchise-level talent that alters a team's fortunes type of money. Imagine building around DJ who would be around 28 at the start of his next contract when going to Atlanta he's not even the best player on that team.
We rightly identified that, having given DJ full opportunity, he's just not the guy to build around. With this group we were play-in level. Even with internal improvements, the ceiling was limited. Say we kept DJ for another year and signed Ayton - would we be contenders? Unless your C is Giannis or Jokic, we have a better C than Jakob but one with a questionable motor.
I've pivoted away from replacing Jakob with Ayton but that was before out decicive turn to a full rebuild.
Whether we were asked for a trade or not, I don't care. We were prepared for going forward with DJ to whichever future point or not (clearly with all the guards we've drafted) and while it's a nice development story, I won't miss the weird passive-aggressive veiled messaging in social media posts and huge usage among the Klutch trio (DJ, Lonnie, and Keldon were 1, 2, 3 in team usage, and looked off open team mates often enough that it started to stand out) with lukewarm team results.
I see fans on social media all emotional about seeing DJ with Trae and I honestly feel I've never gotten over a trade faster.
DJ finally got the full stage and used it to showcase himself; we used his showcasing his game for premium assets. For our starting front court we essentially got up to six first round picks on little to no protections, along with JRich, a current and future asset, and Romeo, a good D project on a short rookie contract.
We're obviously not the premium FA market. But neither are OKC or Denver or Memphis or Milwaukee or Utah or Cleveland off the top of my head. Like them, and like us before, we have to go full rebuild mode to get top talent.
Whether we did it now or a couple of years from now, I doubt we'd want to be in a situation of having to pay DJ that much money. Not only would it be handcuffing the team to a huge financial commitment but would keep us at the middle tier at best. Plus our timelines didn't match. Sort of feels like with all the guards we have been drafting we compelled him to reach the conclusion on his own and voila no bad blood while we got best assets possible.
That's just a hunch. I didn't see us pivoting into this rebuild mode just before the 50th anniversary season. I thought we would hold on to DJ for another year because of it.
But here we are, and honestly it's fine. We strip down, with great assets (and more to come), develop, to reach higher levels.
I've previously stated we don't tank, and Pop has asserted that asking players to lose intentionally is against the spirit of competitiveness. But here we are. I still maintain that there's a difference between the necessary cycle of a full rebuild and asking players to not try or sitting them out for intentional losing.
We're never not going to try, but we have a young enough team with a steep enough learning curve that games won will be a bonus to and offshoot of development.
So the TL;DR version:
- we have solidified the ownership group
- I believe we have strengthened ties to SA (when I'm not in worst-case-scenario spiral thinking)
- we rightly identified where we are and what level we could have realistically reached with the then best player and knew we had to get better talent
- go full youth development mode while giving ourselves a better chance at top talent
We've worked hard to lay the foundations on and off the court for it. And here we go!
