Spurs vs Rockets Rebuild/Future

Kinda reminds me of the Jazz after Malone and Stockton, when Sloan was basically loitering as a legend not ready to step down

They seemed to have their next PF/PG star duo in place with Boozer and Deron, but that disappeared overnight

Once Duncan / Parker / Manu was over, it seemed like Kawhi / Aldridge would keep the dynasty going, but then they also disappeared overnight

Spurs need to find their Quinn Snyder

 

Spurs future sucks…they need immense draft luck

Rockets could be ass for a long time, but Spurs just scream below average-mediocre for years to come

 

They took international talent seriously in a time and place when few teams did - that's why they were able to find value deep in the draft like that. It's not much different than the analytics guy in Houston who bet the farm on Harden when few teams saw the value of what a 16/4/3 benchwarmer could do....now every teams has an entire payroll of people who pay attention to per minute stats and advanced metrics when evaluating players. Houston and San Antonio both saw the benefits of being early innovators in a more or less traditional sports industry.

 

You bring up a good comparison and I think that's where maybe the Anti-Green group could be right in the long run. The pattern for teams like the Jazz and Spurs was that, intentional or not, they were seeking out replacements for their outgoing HOFers.

"We lost Karl and John...why don't we try to bring in their heir apparents?" Sure Boozer and Deron were nice players but they were still derivatives when compared to what Malone and Stockton were.

Same with San Antonio. They ran their offense through Duncan most of his career and when it was time for Duncan to move on they decidedly to go with another scoring PF in Aldridge but, again, was a derivative in comparison to Duncan. Sure Kawhi leaving definitely impacted that team but I'm sure if Aldridge would have played better his first year in San Antonio (maybe Duncan levels?) Leonard might have had second or third thoughts on bolting.

Back to the Anti-Green group...maybe Tilman/Stone picked Jalen because they were so used to experiencing success with a scoring guard that they thought "why don't we try to bring in his successor?" and not see the potential in Mobley or Barnes or even throwing everything at Detroit for Cunningham. Who knows?

 

I honestly don't know what San Antonio is doing. They definitely have a real aptitude for growing less heralded players and generally most players go on to be better players after San Antonio molds them but fundamentally they are working with players with limited ceilings. Kyle Anderson is a pretty good player in Memphis and I'm not sure if his career would have taken off had he not started a Spur but a guy nicknamed "Slow mo" is always going to have a lower ceiling in a league where top tier athleticism, speed, and height always make more of a difference than we would like(see Westbrook, Russel).

It just seems like they need to combine their most valuable skill with more high end talent rather than wasting time/resources on players who will only be solid starters at best. They need ceiling raisers on a team that is really good at developing floor raisers. The Spurs develop young players and put them in situations where they can capitalize on what they do well rather than trying to develop them into something they are not (see the Houston/Kevin Porter Jr as a facilitating PG experiment) but at some point they have to prioritize acquiring the guys who can be the best in the league at one or two things rather than a bunch of decent NBA players.

 

That's a very good point also--the gap among scouting teams across the league isn't as wide as it was back in the late 90s and early 2000s as it is now.

I think the Spurs also have another problem is that their analog offense is still desperately trying to succeed in a digital, 3-point heavy league. The past few seasons they've been close to or dead last in the league in both 3 point attempts and makes. That might have been okay when you have one of the mid-range Gods in Kawhi or an elite post player in Duncan or a teardrop maestro in Parker but, at the end of the day, 3 is still greater than 2 when you don't have an elite mid-range/inside player to throw it to. Shooting 3s don't just generate more points than 2s but it also creates more spacing for the rest of your offense to operate. I think Pops being this stubborn about zigging while everyone else is zagging is also hurting their rebuilding process. Young players nowadays go through AAU and college chucking 3s all day long. Now you get drafted to the Spurs and you're forced to play in an offense that don't encourage 3 point shooting? That takes a lot of work to adjust to.

 

The Spurs at least have a player in his prime that can return a few high draft picks in Murray. They’ve got some young talent on the team as well. They draft pretty well in the mid rounds and develop talent about as well as any team in the nba. They are known for continuity of winning and remain one of the best run organizations in the nba. As the OP stated, they didn’t enter a full rebuild after trading Leonard like we did after trading Harden.

with as many question marks as Houston has this is like comparing apples and oranges right now. I definitely have more faith in the Spurs org to get a rebuild right given their track record, albeit it looks like they are going to take a slow approach.

 

Their culture, front office and coaching staff are top notch, no doubt. That being said, the NBA is still a players league and if they don't get their hands on an elite/franchise player they'll be the in same boat as the other bottom dwellers like the Magic, Kings, etc. If they do get their hands on a top 5 pick, though, I don't have a doubt in my mind that they'll get back on track into contention quickly.

 

I don't see it either but I do see a possibility of Stone, Tilman or both being enamored with Green and his potential to be an elite scorer like Harden that won them over. Whatever it may be I think I would still rather be in Houston's position in terms of rebuilding than San Antonio's. Sure they have a better ownership group, better front office, and better coaching but free agents will never line up to play in San Antonio.

 

FWIW I do not think there is a 1 on 1 comparison to another team.

I do not even know this team well enough.

We hear all the things about Stone, Silas, Fertitta but to compare it to another team, I am not 100% comfortable doing that now, perhaps in the future.

This team seems to be a brittle construct but would still have enough picks to turn it around.

I do not see it winning a championship soon though with this kind of ownership, that is all I can say.

 

I think Detroit, Orlando, OKC and possibly the Pacers real soon are moving toward the direction of hard tanking.

Ideal team would be the Grizzlies.

I am still not sure what Stone is up to, seems one day he is tanking, one day he tries to prove that he can win a couple of games.

 

Yeah - good call out. My take on that is that Pops is such a good coach that he augments his offense to suit the personnel he has. I don't think he is intentionally zigging - he's just handed a bunch of disparate parts from his GM and he builds his team around what maximizes the talents of the team he has. If your high usage players are Rudy Gay and DeMar DeRozan, then your team will have a steady diet of mid range shots because those are the areas those players provide the most value regardless of whether those are less efficient shots contextually.

I think the Spurs do a pretty good job of catering to the strengths of their team and also developing the strengths of their players without asking them to do things too far out of what they can't - that's part of the what makes San Antonio different from most teams. I've never seen the Spurs take the "we need a playmaker - let's take the closest we have to that on our roster and retask them to develop into this role" approach that Houston is doing with KPJ for example. But yeah - if San Antonio is just trying to find value in the margins of the late draft or in non glamorous FA acquisitions, then it means the value they are getting is often not in line with what the rest of the league is valuing - like 3 and D players for instance.

It's kind of the same problem Houston had in the Morey era with finding statistical value in places where the rest of the league had undervalued like the effectiveness of shorter bigs. That's why we had a string of undersized PF/Cs here in the Houston who always performed better than taller players in similar roles but that only gets you so far because the top tier big man talent we would face in playoff situations would always destroy us regardless of what a great value the Chuck Hayes brought to the world because highly skilled players will always lose to equally skilled but physically superior players. Without ever seeing them play - a 7ft Chuck Hayes would beat 6'6" Chuck Hayes every time in a best of 4 series.

I think the strategy in San Antonio is sound to a point, but you have to supplement the "find value in the margins" strategy with finding a way to acquire real ceiling raisers along with it and that has been the problem in San Antonio - they have no pipeline currently for ceiling raisers - no draft opportunity, no shot at big splash FA acquisitions. They need to acquire at least one or two such players and THEN work on adding value around those players and a system that suits otherwise they will continue to be a solid team that can beat anyone in a single game, but few top end teams in a best of 7 series.

 

I've watched a loooot of Spurs this year because I have both Murray and Poeltl on my fantasy team. Murray is much much better than anyone on the Rockets right now and will probably be an all star. They have a lot of very solid role players that would be huge on the Rockets notably White, Poeltl, and Johnson. They have a top class organization with maybe the greatest coach of all time who's most likely grooming his successor as he goes.

Still, given all that, I think the Rockets will be a contender first. Sure, they'll be in the playoffs first. They'll be decent first. But a team like that has a very limited ceiling and refusing to tank keeps it that way. I firmly believe that the player that will lead the Rockets to their next finals isn't on the team yet. Neither is the Spurs'. The difference is that our approach is more likely to find that guy first.

 

Honestly I didn't even know they passed him up, I'm sure everyone regrets passing Sengun up with the exception of Cleveland thou.....

 

I feel the same about you, I disagree with you in every single thread.....

 

Just got to say ...
What a considerate, insightful conversation this has been for several pages now
Just hoopers bouncing ideas off each other as intended
No flagrant insults or agenda-pushing
Thank you Clutchfans

... Oops, too late