Thoughts on draft night in Spurs-land, and a personal farewell

For now at least, so long and thanks for all the clicks.

Another NBA Draft has passed, and this post is sort of about that. The Spurs used one of their two lottery picks and dealt another, the latter move creating three entirely different waves of reactions depending on if you were scrolling Twitter, watching live from The Rock at La Cantera’s plaza, or huddled inside the nearby Victory Performance Center a few feet from the plaza, and this post is sort of about that, too. And more.

I was at The Rock on Wednesday to take in the scenes and Spurs GM Brian Wright’s comments at the end of a divisive first round. At 4? Chalk, someone strongly linked to team interest and who fills at least one pressing roster need, with room to do more. At 8, a sort of deferment that left fans unfulfilled at best, exasperated at worst. Wright was his usual self afterward, smiling around the then-still unofficial trade (the Spurs, in their typical fashion, chose to not comment on the transaction while their trade partners in Minnesota reveled openly) and coolly leaning into other points set up by reporters, such as their belief in Stephon the basketball player first (the point guard part TBD), and the confidence in taking the long view. He talked about continuing to move deliberately, “build this thing brick by brick”, which is fitting when you’ve just drafted a Castle.

(Draft night is a favorite of mine, partially because I still get a kick out of being a little closer to ground zero but mostly because of the interactions with others in the team’s orbit, catching up with team personnel, reacting candidly with Project Spurs’ Paul Garcia about the night’s developments as they unfold, and maybe taking in a story from one of the GOATs, Mike Monroe. I’ll show up, punch out a story, and typically geek out with J.R. Wilco, this site’s editor-in-chief, about it in the days that follow.)

On Thursday following Round 2, Wright did speak on the Timberwolves deal:

You have to weigh the calculus on what’s best ultimately for the future. We felt like the package we got was one that made sense to move off the 8th pick for… We felt like it was fair value for what the pick was worth.

Wright spoke later about 2nd round selection Juan Núñez, of identifying players by certain strengths and projecting how they can round those out within the Spurs system. The answer felt apt considering his general approach to assembling a contender:

You have to put the time in. You have to put the work in. You can’t just fast forward to the end and know the exact outcome, but you can bet on the ingredients that usually lead to improvement.

What the Spurs continue to stack are ingredients, maybe not the kind that fans get going over, but the kind of currency that matters to Wright’s counterparts as he looks to add starpower and, I assume, deal with the harrowing realities of whatever a “second tax apron” is. He’s been steadfast in this, even when some are ready to see more compelling basketball speared by the team’s young superstar right away.

Although I get it, I’m also not here to provide spin: 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 you could make a case for one in trading 8, not just for how they might get embedded around Victor Wembanyama now but how they could develop into a more valuable contender-building asset than the return on draft night. With what limited access they have, all fans and analysts can do is buy into the long view — or at least understand Wright’s shorthand of it. Most good hoop brains seem to have one, and the great ones are able to see it through.

I’ve seen Gregg Popovich shrug out some version of It’s Just Basketball a dozen times while covering the Spurs, a mantra that seems to help place what happens on the court in its rightful spot in the cosmos while extricating it for simplicity’s sake. It’s possible that a 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 both teacher and alchemist. And while most of my experiences with the reprise have been him using it to parry an undesirable question, I assume it also creates a handy shorthand between septuagenarian icon and the up-and-coming Zoomers in his locker room. It’s a nugget he dropped again before the Spurs’ penultimate game of the regular season against, well, the Nuggets. I can’t recall the specifics but I’m pretty sure he was ribbing (former Pounder, current beat fiend at Corporate Knowledge and my pal) Matthew Tynan on a question about the differing approach between game 21 and game 81. Pop pretended to fall asleep. With a smirk and a shrug, it became a fitting table-setter for a night that, while meaningless to the Spurs’ 2023-24 season, punctuated Wemby’s rookie campaign with one final display of talent, unconditional passion, and eff-you willpower. Just a night of good basketball unmoored from any wider implications.

The irony for the overly invested amateur blogger, as I’ve been for most of these past 7 years as a credentialed writer for Pounding the Rock, is that it can’t be Just Basketball. Otherwise what else are you doing idling in a locker room among actual career journalists late into the night, spending your downtime mining data and watching video for analysis or projection, losing sleep over a combination of words whose value will self-destruct somewhere between game 42 and game 43 and clock in for your day job at 8am the next morning, ready to do this all over again. You empty the cup with each post, fill it back up, and hope the story you’ve latched onto builds to the crescendo Wright and Pop are trying to play out. There’s not much room for shrugs and smirks and neglecting to study up on second tax aprons and, if there is, it might be time for a new hobby.

One thing about basketball is that it’s self-contained as an experience and thought exercise. There’s an implication that one group every year with the necessary inputs, be by it sweat and brilliance of the players or prescience and perception from suits like Wright, can collectively ascend to the top; that however things may work in the outside world, whatever the injustices and rigged machinations, all the emotions and journeys in this fishbowl through abject uncertainty might pay off; that people, including us the fans in our own personal and detached but still meaningful way, can win. That’s why we care, and why it’s hard to walk away, even when the exercise challenges you to cast your eye to the year 2031. It’s not that Wright and his detractors don’t share the same goal — the path he’s charting is just proving to be less direct, plotted out in gantt charts and some sort of basketball AutoCAD, and I’m sure writing about that final arrival would be a blast.

Which is to say, for now at least, and for all the best personal reasons, this thing is just basketball, at least in the sense of what I can bring readers in the way of appreciably invested and regular coverage. The long view, and all the possibilities enabled by Wemby, aren’t mine to help recount, but I’ll enjoy following along with everyone else. I’m thankful to JRW for the platform to write and for anyone who read and engaged, for the access and singular experience provided by PtR and the Spurs, and for taking it in 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 good and bad (but mostly good) this is a business about relationships, and I’m forever stoked to come out of this with a few small ones of my own.