Another NBA Draft has passed, and this article is about it. The Spurs used one of their two lottery picks and dealt another. The latter decision generated three completely different waves of reactions depending on whether you were scrolling through Twitter, watching live from The Rock in La Cantera Plaza, or huddled inside the Victory Performance Center, just a few feet from the plaza. This article is about that, too. And more.
I was at The Rock on Wednesday to witness the scenes and comments from Spurs general manager Brian Wright at the end of a divisive first round. At 4? Whiteboardsomeone strongly linked to the team’s interest and who covers at least one urgent need of the squad, with room to do more. In position 8, a kind of postponement That left fans unsatisfied at best, exasperated at worst. Wright was his usual self afterward, smiling about the then-still-unofficial trade (the Spurs, in their usual fashion, chose not to comment on the transaction). While his business partners in Minnesota openly reveled) and coolly leaned into other points raised by reporters, such as his belief in Stephon as a basketball player first (the point guard part has yet to be determined) and confidence in taking a long-term view. He talked about deliberately moving forward, “building this brick by brick,” which is appropriate when you’ve just drafted a Castle.
(Draft night is one of my favorites, partly because I still enjoy being a little closer to ground zero, but mostly for the interactions with others in the team’s orbit, catching up with team personnel, candidly reacting to Project Spurs’ Paul Garcia about the night’s events as they unfold, and maybe hearing a story from one of the all-time greats, Mike Monroe. I show up, write a story, and usually talk to J.R. Wilco, the editor-in-chief of this site, about it in the days that follow.)
On Thursday after the second round, Wright spoke about the deal with the Timberwolves:
You have to weigh the calculation of what’s best for the future. We thought the package we received was one that made sense to move away from the eighth pick… We thought it was a fair value for what the pick was worth.
Wright later talked about second-round pick Juan Nunez, identifying players based on certain strengths and projecting how they can complement them within the Spurs’ system. The answer seemed apt considering his overall approach to putting together a contender:
It takes time and effort. You can’t rush to the end and know the exact result, but you can bet on the ingredients that usually lead to improvement.
What the Spurs keep accumulating are ingredients — maybe not the kind that excite fans, but the kind of currency that matters to Wright’s colleagues as he looks to add star power and, I suppose, deal with the harrowing realities of whatever a “second fiscal platform” is. He’s been steadfast in this, even as some are ready to see more appealing basketball pierced by the team’s young superstar right away.
While I get it, I’m not here to spin the situation either: Just as there’s nothing inherently virtuous about being aggressive, circumspection doesn’t immediately equate to genius and foresight. Everything has an opportunity cost, and an argument could be made for one trading at No. 8, not just because of how they might mesh around Victor Wembanyama now, but how they might become a more valuable asset in building contenders than the returner on draft night. With the limited access they have, all fans and analysts can do is buy into the long view, or at least understand Wright’s shorthand. Most good basketball brains seem to have one, and the great ones are capable of pulling it off.
I’ve seen Gregg Popovich ignore some version of It’s just basketball a dozen times while covering the Spurs, a mantra that seems to help put what happens on the court in its proper place in the cosmos while distilling it for simplicity. It’s possible that one way to excel in your field is to not overcomplicate it, allowing someone in Pop’s position to properly compartmentalize the elements of a game as a teacher and alchemist. And while most of my experiences with repetition have been him using it to stop a ball, undesirable questionI suppose it also creates a useful shorthand between the septuagenarian icon and the rising Zoomers in his locker room. It’s a gem he dropped again before the Spurs’ penultimate game of the regular season. Against, well, the NuggetsI don’t remember the details, but I’m pretty sure he was joking (ex Pounder, current beat fanatic in Corporate knowledge and my friend) Matthew Tynan on a question about the different approach between Game 21 and Game 81. Pop pretended to fall asleep. With a smirk and a shrug, it made for a fitting end to a night that, while unimportant to the Spurs’ 2023-24 season, punctuated Wemby’s rookie campaign with one final display of talent, unconditional passion and willpower. Just a night of good basketball with no broader implications.
The irony for the overly committed amateur blogger, as I have been for most of these past 7 years as a credited writer for Pounding the Rock, is that it can’t just be basketball. Otherwise, what else are you doing lounging in a locker room among actual race journalists late into the night, spending your free time data mining and watching video for analysis or projection, losing sleep over a combination of words whose value will self-destruct sometime between game 42 and game 43 and clocking in for your day job at 8 a.m. the next morning, ready to do this all over again? You empty the cup with each post, refill it, and wait for the story you’ve been latching onto to build to the crescendo Wright and Pop are trying to build to. There’s not much room for shrugs and smirks and neglecting to study over second-imposition aprons, and if there is, it may be time for a new hobby.
One of the things about basketball is that it stands alone as an experience and a thought exercise. It’s implied that a group each year with the requisite input — whether from the sweat and brilliance of players or the prescience and insight of executives like Wright — can collectively rise to the top; that regardless of how things work out in the outside world, regardless of the injustices and rigged machinations, all the emotions and journeys in this fishbowl through abject uncertainty can pay off; that people — including us fans, in our own personal and detached but still meaningful ways — can win. That’s why we care, and why it’s hard to walk away, even when the exercise challenges you to look ahead. The year 2031It’s not that Wright and his detractors don’t share the same goal: the path he’s charting is simply proving to be less direct, drawn in Gantt charts and some kind of basketball AutoCAD, and I’m sure writing about that final finish would be great.
That is to say, for now at least, and for the best of personal reasons, this is just basketball, at least in the sense of what I can offer readers in the form of regular, sizable coverage. The long view and all the possibilities Wemby offers are not mine to help recount, but I will enjoy following along with everyone else. I am grateful to JRW for the platform to write and for everyone who read and participated, for the access and singular experience afforded to me by PtR and the Spurs, and for seeing him one last time on draft night. Getting to know the unseen faces that make it all work has been as much a pleasure as interacting with players and coaches. For better and worse (but mostly better), this is a relationship business, and I am always excited to come away from this with a few small relationships of my own.