2022 San Antonio Spurs Offseason Thread -- We're Young, Scrappy, and Hungry

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

 

[LTtxfan 49326]

1 minute ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I don't disagree but I think Liddell is a steal at 25 if he's there. Hardy from g league too. There's still legit talent that they don't have the luxury of overlooking. I

 

Yeah, Spurs need to churn some roster with this talent available -- hope scouts have done their jobs

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

I forgot about Wesley. Very raw but super athletic. Like the pick a lot. 

Assuming they keep him, there is zero chance that Lonnie comes back now. 

[D3zii 3708]

I have to ask was up with all these guards!?!?? 
 

I might be in the outer loop but I don’t really just live our big men situation

[C-Man 27241]

Apparently, fast as fuck. Poor shooting percentage probably due to poor shot selection as much as anything.

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nba-draft-2022-notre-dames-blake-wesley-could-be-biggest-sleeper-of-the-class-with-elite-speed-potential/amp/

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

Just now, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I forgot about Wesley. Very raw but super athletic. Like the pick a lot. 

Assuming they keep him, there is zero chance that Lonnie comes back now. 

Huge project...... he's one of the fastest guys in the draft but his shot is sort of jacked and has terrible shot selection (even for being 19 years old).  He sort of reminds me of Lonnie.  Super bouncy and athletic.  Needs to put it together mentally and sharpen up some technique.

 

[C-Man 27241]

Scott Drew makes my skin crawl

[Braff Zacklin 13640]

Ah, yes, Blake Wesley, the grandson of this guy, who happens to draw a lot of water in the town of Jasper, Miss.:

[LTtxfan 49326]

7 minutes ago, Patrick Bateman said:

 

Spurs selected him #25

We still don’t have a clear idea of where exactly Blake Wesley will be picked in the NBA draft. The former Notre Dame guard has been projected everywhere from a late lottery pick to the early 20s. One ESPN+ story, which is available only for subscribers, has Wesley going 20th as the second of three first-round picks by the San Antonio Spurs. The explanation for it is as follows:

“With three picks in the first round, the Spurs can afford to take a swing on the player with the biggest upside possible, as adding star power to the roster is a major priority for the team. Wesley is one of the most physically gifted guards in this draft, capable of getting into the paint at will with his strong frame and explosive first step. He made strides as the season moved on both defensively and with his ability to create for teammates, and if he can continue to evolve as a shooter, he has the potential to be a real mismatch with the ball in his hands.”

There’s no question that Wesley would benefit from having the legendary Gregg Popovich as his first NBA coach. Even if the Spurs are a team in transition, he would have potential for a lot of playing time. They don’t have a long-term solution at shooting guard, so the starting spot could be Wesley’s for the taking. Hopefully for the Spurs’ sake, he’ll still be available.

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

Gotta agree unless they are going to make a run at a big FA in a sign and trade.  I know Keldon has been talked about in trade talks a lot.

 

[ztejas 43526]

Yeah well it isn't disappointing as a fan. I mean I think I've been saying for months that he needs to walk. I know the Spurs culture lends itself towards getting overly attached to players but I want the best possible 5 on the floor at all times. 

And I'm fine if we ship Keldon, too. I have no attachment to passable NBA players. 

Edited June 24, 2022 by ztejas

[Kermit 3158]

6 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Yeah well it isn't disappointing as a fan. I mean I think I've been saying for months that he needs to walk. I know the Spurs culture lends itself towards getting overly attached to players but I want the best possible 5 on the floor at all times. 

And I'm fine if we ship Keldon, too. I have no attachment to passable NBA players. 

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

Wonder if we'll use our 2nd or trade it for future assets?  Still some interesting guys.  I'm going to guess this draft probably spells the end for Lonnie unless he really makes it known he wants to come back by taking a cheap contract and then they probably move Richardson.

I think this spells the end to Diop.  

Probably make a decision between Jock and Zach Collins and waive the other.

Trey Jones stick?  He should, he earned it, but only so many spots.

We still haven't gotten to UFA so a long way to go, but who would we want to sign in UFA?  I could see maybe trade for someone.

[ztejas 43526]

JRich is on a nice deal for a year - like 11 or 12 I think. If we trade him to sign Lonnie for some bullshit 3/21 I'm going to demand Pop retires immediately. 

I think the FO and Pop likes both Jock and Zach. I could see moving Poeltl potentially. 

Tre Jones is a beautiful backup PG. Definitely want to keep him. 

I don't think we need to sign anyone big in FA. I think we need to make the right moves when it comes to who's on the 15 and let these guys keep building around each other.

This team should win 40 games this season. I think the O/U last season was 29ish and I liked the over and we finished at 34. 

Sochan is going to fuck. He's going to be playing 20+ by the end of next season. That was a huge pick. Let's hope DJ has another leap in him. 

GSG

[LTtxfan 49326]

Lonnie Walker      turns A24 in December

NBA draft  2018 / Rd: 1 / Pick: 18th overall

Quote

In 11 games since the all-star break, Lonnie Walker is averaging 17.1 PPG on 45.9 FG%, with 2.5 3P/game on 40.0 3P%.   

He will hope to carry that momentum into restricted free agency. His real-time contract value is $16.87M. pic.twitter.com/ImOAT0bUJh

— profitx (@profitxai) March 21, 2022

Profitx expanded on this projection asking if the Spurs would match a deal slightly over $16.87 million at $17 million per year.

Assume a team offered Walker an offer sheet of 4-years, $68M ($17M average annual value).

Would the Spurs match that?

— profitx (@profitxai) March 21, 2022

Since the All-Star break, Walker has spiked in production for the Spurs with averages of 16.2 points per game along with 2.3 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 45% shooting, and 38% shooting from the three-point line.

 

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by LTtxfan

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

Best case for Lonnie is sign and trade and they get something back in return. And in all fairness, he played much better after White got traded. And he's still growing as a player. You hate to give up on him because he's still young, but the writing is on the wall. 

There's still some real talent left on the board. Liddell I would have considered even at 20. Maybe they have a pre-arranged two way with someone like Minott from Memphis. 

[Coach pop a bitch 5488]

I don't watch college ball all that much but watching his YouTube highlights I see some Diaw in his offensive game. the pump fake 3 and drive reminded me of Diaw in the '14 championship run.

[ztejas 43526]

2 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

Maybe they have a pre-arranged two way

Indian style? 

[LTtxfan 49326]

There is still gonna be some talent at #38.

Decent depth in this draft...

[C-Man 27241]

Best case for Lonnie is sign and trade and they get something back in return. And in all fairness, he played much better after White got traded. And he's still growing as a player. You hate to give up on him because he's still young, but the writing is on the wall. 
There's still some real talent left on the board. Liddell I would have considered even at 20. Maybe they have a pre-arranged two way with someone like Minott from Memphis. 

Hollinger must love Minott. He thought the Knicks should’ve taken him at #10 and then mentioned he would’ve taken him instead of a handful of other players picked by teams the rest of the round.

[C-Man 27241]

Hollinger must love Minott. He thought the Knicks should’ve taken him at #10 and then mentioned he would’ve taken him instead of a handful of other players picked by teams the rest of the round.

The Athletic breakdowns of our picks:

9. San Antonio Spurs

Jeremy Sochan | 6-foot-9, wing | 19 years old, freshman | Baylor

Vecenie’s ranking: 6.

If Sochan can shoot, the ceiling is through the roof. Due to his disruptiveness, size and quickness, he has a real chance to be an All-Defense-caliber player. He can handle and be versatile on offense, and it feels like he’s just scratching the surface of what his long-term potential is on that end. The NBA covets guys who are 6-foot-9 with this kind of defensive upside, and the 2022 playoffs showed how important versatile defenders are in today’s league. If you buy into Sochan’s potential to shoot at all, there are some potential star outcomes here that could make him a worthwhile investment.

Hollinger’s team fit: I really like this pick for the Spurs. Jalen Duren was the other name you heard a lot here, but a switchable combo forward like Sochan who flashes perimeter skills is worth a lot more than almost any non-All-Star center. San Antonio also has picks coming at 20 and 25, and there are still trade rumors about a Dejounte Murray blockbuster, so we may hear a lot more from the Spurs.

Hollinger would have picked … Sochan.


20. San Antonio Spurs (from Toronto Raptors)

Malaki Branham | 6-foot-5, wing | 19 years old, freshman | Ohio State

Vecenie’s ranking: 21.

How important is shot creation and shot making to you? That’s what it comes down to when you decide where to rank Branham on your board. Right now, that’s what his game is. For some evaluators, it’s the most important skill set for a player when drafting them, because there is nothing more valuable you can bring to a team than consistently creating your own shot in isolation and converting it effectively. Having said that, the bottom can drop out of these types of guys quickly if they don’t bring anything else to the table. With Branham, he has a good enough frame to where you want to buy into his defensive improvement long term, even if he has ways to go instinctually. But it’s going to be a bit of a roller coaster early in his career in terms of playing time unless he improves drastically in terms of his lower half strength and overall defensive fundamentals.

Hollinger’s team fit: Branham can shoot and showed flashes of high-level shot creation in his one season at Ohio State, but joins a team with an already crowded assemblage of shoot-first guards. That blockage might ease if the Dejounte Murray trade rumors come to fruition, but if they were going to go that way, I’m a bit surprised the Spurs didn’t roll with the bigger upside of Notre Dame’s Blake Wesley.

Hollinger would have picked … Wesley.



25. San Antonio Spurs (from Boston Celtics)

Blake Wesley | 6-foot-4, guard | 19 years old, freshman | Notre Dame

Vecenie’s ranking: 25.

You’re drafting Wesley for what he could be, not what he is right now. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to come into the NBA next season and be a positive player, simply because of his shooting and efficiency or decision-making. But his ability to create a shot from nothing, his potential in isolation and his defense present such an intriguing combination of skills. On top of that, the flashy passing ability he showcases portends some real upside on the ball if teams must respect his shot at all three levels. This is essentially a boom-or-bust swing. If it works, Wesley has a chance to work out in a big way and become a legitimate starting guard in the NBA. There is also a real chance Wesley ends up not being much of anything if the shooting never comes around. There are signs he could shoot, but it’s going to take some work, and the touch indicators aren’t incredible. He’ll be relatively polarizing for NBA teams because of that, like many prospects in this class.

Hollinger’s team fit: I really like the value here for San Antonio – I had Wesley 11th on my board – although it makes me scratch my head even harder on the Branham selection at 20 since they overlap positionally. Nonetheless, this is a strong upside play for a rebuilding team.

Hollinger would have picked … Wesley

[ztejas 43526]

2 minutes ago, C-Man said:

Vecenie’s ranking: 6.

Bilas really liked Agbaji though. 

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

26 minutes ago, ztejas said:

JRich is on a nice deal for a year - like 11 or 12 I think. If we trade him to sign Lonnie for some bullshit 3/21 I'm going to demand Pop retires immediately. 

I think the FO and Pop likes both Jock and Zach. I could see moving Poeltl potentially. 

Tre Jones is a beautiful backup PG. Definitely want to keep him. 

I don't think we need to sign anyone big in FA. I think we need to make the right moves when it comes to who's on the 15 and let these guys keep building around each other.

This team should win 40 games this season. I think the O/U last season was 29ish and I liked the over and we finished at 34. 

Sochan is going to fuck. He's going to be playing 20+ by the end of next season. That was a huge pick. Let's hope DJ has another leap in him. 

GSG

Neither JRich nor a guy like Mike McD fit our time line.  Those are guys we should shopping like hell all offseason or during the season to extract draft capital.  They're just guys.  Jakob's ladder may fit that bill as well although you'd probably want to check with his agent to see what he's looking for.  At the end of the day, all of our big men are sort of guys you really only want 1, maybe 2 of, on the active roster and we have 3.  

We're still a good 2 years away.  Tanking again isn't the worst idea in the world while guys like Vassell, Primo, and these 3 guys get minutes and develop, here or in the G-league.  Keldon too although because of his D issues, he may be a guy you cash in on.  Fee like Wesley and Branham spend most of the year in the G league.  Spurs need Primo to prove he can hang in the league and develop off the bench.  

Meanwhile, Liddell is still on the board at 37.  If he's there at 38, take him or maybe the Hardy kid. 

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Patrick Bateman

[Kermit 3158]

I keep watching this Jaden Ivey interview, waiting for his mom’s titty to pop out. 

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

Seems light..... but that's what happens when you're facing a roster crunch and teams know it.

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Patrick Bateman

[LTtxfan 49326]

1 hour ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

Assuming Liddell is gone...I'd take Kessler with 25. But no matter what happens next (assuming they don't trade either of their picks so far) the Spurs had a great night. 

Liddell was available at #38, and Spurs selected a short quick guard from Tennessee.

Who was part of trade to memphis...

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by LTtxfan

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

8 minutes ago, Kermit said:

I keep watching this Jaden Ivey interview, waiting for his mom’s titty to pop out. 

Me too but it was very disconcerting while he's sitting next to her bawling his eyes out. 

[LTtxfan 49326]

@Mitch Cumsteen  Liddell was available at #38. Any idea why he is falling so much ??

Edit... Picked #41

Edited June 24, 2022 by LTtxfan

[Kermit 3158]

5 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

Me too but it was very disconcerting while he's sitting next to her bawling his eyes out. 

Horniness and Tears: the Kermit Story.

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

4 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

@Mitch Cumsteen  Liddell was available at #38. Any idea why he is falling so much ??

Edit... Picked #41

It's baffling. My guess is that they don't think he can move his feet quickly enough to stay in front of smaller / quicker players. To me, he's more athletic PJ Tucker. Good shooter. Good passer. High bbiq. Weak side shot blocker. I don't get it. 

[C-Man 27241]

We traded the Tennessee kid to Memphis, which explains why he was wearing a Grizzlies’ hat at his party.

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

15 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

It's baffling. My guess is that they don't think he can move his feet quickly enough to stay in front of smaller / quicker players. To me, he's more athletic PJ Tucker. Good shooter. Good passer. High bbiq. Weak side shot blocker. I don't get it. 

Tweener.  Not nearly the dribble drive skills as Tucker coming out.  Longer, awkward shot.  I think he can be a solid bench guy in the league.  But I think teams were scared he doesn't have a real position.  Not quite quick enough to stick with the real shot creators and not quite strong enough to play inside.  That's just a guess....

 

[LTtxfan 49326]

Hoped Spurs would find a little more inside help in this draft.  Spurs #20 and #25 picks seemed a little redundant...  

Spurs need to bring in a free agent or two to really help fill some of their roster holes.

Probably gonna have to let Lonnie go...

Edited June 24, 2022 by LTtxfan

[ztejas 43526]

1 hour ago, Patrick Bateman said:

Neither JRich nor a guy like Mike McD fit our time line.  Those are guys we should shopping like hell all offseason or during the season to extract draft capital.  They're just guys.  Jakob's ladder may fit that bill as well although you'd probably want to check with his agent to see what he's looking for.  At the end of the day, all of our big men are sort of guys you really only want 1, maybe 2 of, on the active roster and we have 3.  

We're still a good 2 years away.  Tanking again isn't the worst idea in the world while guys like Vassell, Primo, and these 3 guys get minutes and develop, here or in the G-league.  Keldon too although because of his D issues, he may be a guy you cash in on.  Fee like Wesley and Branham spend most of the year in the G league.  Spurs need Primo to prove he can hang in the league and develop off the bench.  

Meanwhile, Liddell is still on the board at 37.  If he's there at 38, take him or maybe the Hardy kid. 

 

We aren't tanking next year. We barely tanked this past season. The aim for next year should be to try and get into the playoffs and make some noise to get everyone some experience. J Rich is a nice piece for that. If he has some good trade value before the deadline then sure, ship him. 

For any Spurs fan paying attention, last year's playoffs should prove that you don't need an all-star studded cast to contend in the current NBA. There is no reason to believe that we can't be a team like the '22 Boston Celtics 2 years from now without signing a big time FA. The Spurs aren't some three-year rebuild project they're a "how can we arrange this to have a shot in a couple years" type project.

Anyone wanting a tear the studs down type rebuild is going to have to wait until Pop retires. That's just reality. Whether we should be tanking or blowing it up or not you're going to have to try and hope that this team is as good as possible as soon as possible. Personally I think we can get there. 

Edited June 24, 2022 by ztejas

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

9 hours ago, ztejas said:

We aren't tanking next year. We barely tanked this past season. The aim for next year should be to try and get into the playoffs and make some noise to get everyone some experience. J Rich is a nice piece for that. If he has some good trade value before the deadline then sure, ship him. 

For any Spurs fan paying attention, last year's playoffs should prove that you don't need an all-star studded cast to contend in the current NBA. There is no reason to believe that we can't be a team like the '22 Boston Celtics 2 years from now without signing a big time FA. The Spurs aren't some three-year rebuild project they're a "how can we arrange this to have a shot in a couple years" type project.

Anyone wanting a tear the studs down type rebuild is going to have to wait until Pop retires. That's just reality. Whether we should be tanking or blowing it up or not you're going to have to try and hope that this team is as good as possible as soon as possible. Personally I think we can get there. 

I agree with you that they aren't tanking but I still don't think they are a playoff team next year. The west is too deep. I think they are going to have a hard time getting to 38 wins again. Keldon and Vassell would both need big leaps, and either Primo or one of the rookies would really need to break out. Who are they going to knock out of the playoffs?

Granted we still have free agency but everybody ahead of them in the standings last year but Utah (depending on what they do with Mitchell this summer) and maybe Phoenix (Ayton pending) should be better or the same via guys coming off injury, trade or the draft. Plus the Lakers and Blazers, both of which finished behind them, should be better too. Again, who are the spurs knocking out? 

And I get what you're saying about Boston, but Tatum is a borderline superstar - especially compared to anything the spurs have on their roster - and they were very fortunate last year with injuries to their opponents in the playoffs. I don't know how replicable their playoff run is. 

The single best thing that could happen to the spurs next year is that Dejounte suffers a season ending, non-career impacting injury (like a broken finger or some shit) and that they win the lottery. You throw Wagbanyana into the mix with the other young up and coming talent, and that's a team that competes for titles for the next 10 years. 

But for now, this is what your 15 man roster looks like: 

1 Murray

2 Primo

3 T Jones

4 Richardson

5 Branham

6 Wesley

7 McDermott 

8 Vassell 

9 K Johnson 

10 Z Collins 

11 Sochon 

12 Poeltl 

And then the last three spots are team options / potential free agents. 

13 Landale (I think he sticks, they need his size and he has unique skill set. Plus need obligatory aussie on roster) 

14 Wieskamp

15 Bates-Diop  

16 Walker (he's gotta be gone, right?) 

17 Langford 

It's a deep roster with plenty of promising young talent but... 

[Kermit 3158]

I’m fucking pissed that we didn’t trade up for Niele Ivey.

[ztejas 43526]

2 hours ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I agree with you that they aren't tanking but I still don't think they are a playoff team next year. The west is too deep. I think they are going to have a hard time getting to 38 wins again. Keldon and Vassell would both need big leaps, and either Primo or one of the rookies would really need to break out. Who are they going to knock out of the playoffs?

Granted we still have free agency but everybody ahead of them in the standings last year but Utah (depending on what they do with Mitchell this summer) and maybe Phoenix (Ayton pending) should be better or the same via guys coming off injury, trade or the draft. Plus the Lakers and Blazers, both of which finished behind them, should be better too. Again, who are the spurs knocking out? 

And I get what you're saying about Boston, but Tatum is a borderline superstar - especially compared to anything the spurs have on their roster - and they were very fortunate last year with injuries to their opponents in the playoffs. I don't know how replicable their playoff run is. 

The single best thing that could happen to the spurs next year is that Dejounte suffers a season ending, non-career impacting injury (like a broken finger or some shit) and that they win the lottery. You throw Wagbanyana into the mix with the other young up and coming talent, and that's a team that competes for titles for the next 10 years. 

But for now, this is what your 15 man roster looks like: 

1 Murray

2 Primo

3 T Jones

4 Richardson

5 Branham

6 Wesley

7 McDermott 

8 Vassell 

9 K Johnson 

10 Z Collins 

11 Sochon 

12 Poeltl 

And then the last three spots are team options / potential free agents. 

13 Landale (I think he sticks, they need his size and he has unique skill set. Plus need obligatory aussie on roster) 

14 Wieskamp

15 Bates-Diop  

16 Walker (he's gotta be gone, right?) 

17 Langford 

It's a deep roster with plenty of promising young talent but... 

All I'm saying is trying to sneak in should be the aim - they should be wanting to get back to the play-in. There's definitely going to be several teams vying for those last couple spots. 

I think to win a play in game or two it takes another leap from DJ and some improvement around him - maybe with Sochan contributing as a rookie. We'd probably need 10-12 a game from Primo on like 45/35ish splits. Maybe a good FA signing adds to that. Last year we were 23-36 pre-ASB and 11-12 post-ASB with a net rating of just about 0.0 (on the season) which gives you an expected W/L of 41-41. Now, obviously when you can't close close games because you are lacking... um... closers... you aren't going to hit your "expected" win total but it wouldn't take playing that much better to get to 40 wins next season. 

Sure we don't have a Tatum on the roster but I wouldn't trade DJ for Jaylen Brown. I think these guys have a chance to be pretty damn good 2 years from now - likely not championship good but until Pop hangs it up I just don't think we're going to see a full rebuild. I mean even if DJ went down like you say Pop would probably fundamental these guys to 28 or 30 wins somehow. 

Excited to see Sochan in summer league. 

[BurdineBandit 815]

Maybe I didn't watch as many games as I should've to be able to catch Keldon's shortcomings, but his 3pt% improvement seems like reason enough to keep him to me. If Dejounte is never going to develop a reliable 3 pointer, Keldon is still useful to the makeup of this team. And obviously a year younger than Lonnie, whose FG% and 3PT% have regressed over the last 3 years.

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

Think most of us felt this was coming.  It’s really what the signing was for.  Could he pop in the 2nd year.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Patrick Bateman

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

Spurs, Walker at crossroads

Darren Abate /Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO - With the draft behind them, the Spurs turn to their next important decision: Deciding guard Lonnie Walker’s future.

The club has until Wednesday to tender Walker and four other players (Devontae Cacok, D.J. Stewart, Robert Woodard II and Joe Wieskamp) qualifying offers that would make them restricted free agents. In Walker’s case, it would be $6.3 million.

The NBA hasn’t set a start date for free agency yet, but it is expected to begin June 30.

If Walker is restricted, the Spurs would have 48 hours to match any offer sheets he would receive once the moratorium period ends July 6. One option is for all three parties to agree to a sign-and-trade similar to what the Spurs did last summer with DeMar DeRozan.

Walker finished last season, his fourth since the Spurs drafted him 18th overall in 2018, averaging a career-best 12.1 points over 70 games.

He found some long sought after consistency in the final 19 games in a sixth man role, averaging 15.7 points. During one six-game stretch in that period, he averaged 22.5 points.

Those numbers came after the Spurs let the NBA deadline to extend rookie scale contracts for members of the 2018 draft class come and go last October without a deal for Walker.

“He has done a phenomenal job in his development over the years and we saw the consistency he brought, especially in the second half of the season when he really hit his stride,” Spurs general manager Brian Wright said. “At the appropriate time, we will sit with (his representatives) and him and try to find out what’s next for him and the franchise.”

The Spurs drafting guards Malaki Branham (20th overall) and Wesley Blake (25th overall) Thursday sparked speculation those selections could signal the Spurs are leaning toward parting ways with Walker.

“I’m hopeful to be back,” he said in April. “At this point, it’s up to my agents.”

Letting the Miami-ex walk would free up more than $13 million in cap space, allowing the Spurs to take an aggressive approach in free agency. 

Second-round pick s promptly dealt

The Spurs traded the rights to Kennedy Chandler to Memphis for a future-second round pick and cash after selecting the 6-foot Tennessee guard in the second round with the 38th overall pick.

With three picks in the first round, the Spurs entertained plenty of trade conversations, Wright said.

“We were on the phone a lot,” he said. “There were times we thought about moving up and moving back. And that’s the job, right? You explore every opportunity to get better, whether it’s now or in the future.”

Spurs guarantee big man’s pact

The Spurs have guaranteed center/forward Zach Collins’ $7.35 million contract, his agent, Mark Bartelstein, said.

Friday was the deadline for the Spurs to decide whether to guarantee Collins’ pact. He returned to the court last season after two years recovering from injuries.

“He is going to have an amazing summer and will take his game to another level next season,” Bartelstein said.

In 28 games last season after returning to action Feb. 4, Collins averaged 7.8 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.2 assists and connected on 34.1 percent of his 3-point tries.

4 undrafted rookies agree to contracts

The Spurs reportedly have reached agreements with several undrafted players, including on a two-way deal with 6-foot-9 Overtime Elite forward Dominick Barlow.

Other players added include 6-7 LSU forward Darius Days, 6-4 Houston guard Kyler Edwards, and 6-7 St. Joseph’s guard Jordan Hall.

Barlow, 19, averaged 14.8 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game last season with Overtime Elite, a fledgling pro developmental league for players 16 to 20.

The signings become official after the new league year starts next week.

 

[Radical Larry 28657]

[ztejas 43526]

21 hours ago, BurdineBandit said:

Maybe I didn't watch as many games as I should've to be able to catch Keldon's shortcomings, but his 3pt% improvement seems like reason enough to keep him to me. If Dejounte is never going to develop a reliable 3 pointer, Keldon is still useful to the makeup of this team. And obviously a year younger than Lonnie, whose FG% and 3PT% have regressed over the last 3 years.

My main knocks on Keldon are his consistency and his contributions outside of scoring. He needs to be more reliable game to game (or even during games sometimes) with his shooting and if he could stand to stuff the stat sheet a bit more he could be a nice player. Last season he put up 6 boards, 2 assists and 1 stock in 32 mpg. That's below average and teetering on bad production for someone playing an undersized 4 in the NBA. 

His best attributes are that he puts up a fairly efficient 17 ppg and he almost never turns the ball over, which are valuable things for a team that needs scoring and has issues with shotmaking at times. 

He has the chance to be a good player - but I'm not sure he's going to be worth 5/186 after this season which would be his rookie max extension. Granted you have to pay someone and he's still just 22. Him having a breakout season would be really positive for this franchise.

16 hours ago, Patrick Bateman said:

Think most of us felt this was coming.  It’s really what the signing was for.  Could he pop in the 2nd year.

Yeah - and I think he can. A full off-season to work on his game and really get his legs under him is what he needs. He had some nice moments when he played last year.

Lol at using a quote from his agent. Oh, you're high on him, Bartelstein? Well then I'm convinced.

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

Doesn't have to involve Murray.  Doubt the Hawks want to give up the 3 firsts....

 

[ztejas 43526]

Didn't Mitch make the point that anytime rumors like this come up it never winds up happening? 

We may do something. History says it won't be trading for Collins. 

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

Good read about Sochon, his international background, basketball ethos, etc. from the Athletic. NSIAP.

He's a perfect Spur. I bet he got Pop harder than Viagra does during his interview. 

Spoiler

Draft prospect Jeremy Sochan isn’t typical. He may be perfect for modern NBA
Mike Vorkunov
Jun 21, 2022
40

Save Article
Follow our live coverage of NBA Draft 2022.

Let’s start with the hair. That’s where everyone else does.

For Jeremy Sochan, it comes in many different hues. In a bleached blonde, in blue and sometimes in pink.

When he interviewed with the Celtics last month at the NBA Draft Combine, a Boston executive led the session by asking him why he hadn’t dyed it green.

The hair has become an identifying trait for him. Sochan was conspicuous during his one year at Baylor, a vibrant force on the court who could not be ignored. There is no shortage of irony to this. Sochan is a chameleon in some ways. His look is loud, but his game allows him to fit in seamlessly wherever he goes. He is a 6-foot-9 jack of all trades who can shape-shift on defense. That’s part of his appeal in the upcoming draft, where his blend of savvy and defensive versatility are likely to make him a lottery pick, and perhaps a high one at that.

But it is his story, too. The hair leads to inferences that don’t apply. John Jakus, a Baylor assistant coach, said he got questions about whether the hair was some kind of Dennis Rodman-like flair from Sochan; he assures those asking that they’re overthinking it.

“A lot of people might get wrapped up in the hair, but if you get to know him, there’s this larger expression of art and culture and fashion that’s important to him,” Jakus said. “Long-term, as he gets deeper into his career and the money comes, people will discover it’s much deeper than the hair color.”

It is just a piece of his identity, one he has already put thought and care into. One that bridges cultures and countries, that mixes European grit with American flexibility. Sochan is unique, with a personality as different as his game.

He was born to an American father and a Polish mother, who met at a Division II school in Oklahoma, and grew up in the United Kingdom. He lived in Milton Keynes, a mid-sized city northwest of London, until he was 15, with his mom, Aneta, and stepfather, Wiktor Lipiecki, and spent his summers in Poland. As a teenager, he played high-school ball at an academy in Southampton, a prep school in Indiana, and then when the pandemic started, he decamped for a basketball program in Germany associated with Ratiopharm Ulm.

Sochan is a fit for the modern NBA, in which teams value adaptability and players are now multi-hyphenates. He emulates his game after Draymond Green, and favors Salvador Dalí and surrealism.

He has come up with a handy answer whenever he’s questioned about his background. It is just one of many lessons his mother has doled out. If someone asks where he’s from, he cites the response she taught him: “I’m a citizen of the world.”

“He’s the kind of guy who can live in Tibet for six months,” Jakus said. “And then turn around and live in Croatia on a lake with his family for six months.”

When Sochan traded all that in to go to Waco, he sprouted into a full-fledged NBA prospect.

At Baylor, he was a do-it-all and defensively dexterous. Jakus pointed to Sochan’s moonlighting at center as the reason Baylor beat eventual champion Kansas in February, and then complimented his passing skills.

Bill Peterson, another Baylor assistant, cited a slew of NBA comps that run the gamut, from Green to Aaron Gordon. “Maybe even a young Boris Diaw,” Peterson added.

Sochan’s family, Jakus said, was insistent he wasn’t a center. Sochan doesn’t even list a spot for himself.

“I don’t put one position in my name,” he said. “Because I feel like I can do everything that a point guard can do and everything that a center can do on offense, but also on defense.”

Sochan grew up with his mother, Aneta (left), and stepfather (right) in the United Kingdom and spent his summers in Poland. (Courtesy of Wiktor Lipiecki)
Sochan’s game is an outgrowth of his first coach, Aneta. She was a pass-first point guard who left Poland for a junior college in Missouri before she landed at Panhandle State. She met Sochan’s father, also a basketball player, there, but he flittered out of his son’s life by the time he was seven, Sochan said, and died in 2017. Aneta moved to the UK when Sochan was a toddler and connected with Wiktor.

They didn’t push Sochan into basketball but created space for him to search it out. They let him go to sleep early so he could wake up in the middle of the night to watch NBA playoff games. He was a soccer goalkeeper but landed on the court.

Aneta started coaching Sochan when he was about 11. She let him have fun, but she was strict, and she kept boundaries. During practice, he was only allowed to call her “Coach.” If he called her “Mom,” he was penalized with push-ups and forced to run. Still, he remembers this fondly.

Sochan’s coaches at Baylor point to Aneta as his largest influence; Sochan plays like her most of all. He embraces that, too, and it’s why even at his height, he also has a point guard’s mentality.

Aneta said she tried to pass on a few key points to her son: the feel for the game, the passion for it and the love of teamwork.

“Although we’ve seen potential in him, he never was put on, like, a pedestal, but he was always a part of the team,” she said. “I think you can see this. Sometimes I reflect on it and I would say, ‘Oh, gosh, I wish I could put him more where he could be selfish.’ But I think that’s what he says and he recognized as well. So that awareness, I play as a point guard, so I always kind of empower him to see the vision, the intelligence, IQ.”

“There’s one thing that you’re missing,” Wiktor chimed in when she was done. And Aneta knew what was coming.

“The joy in shutting people down,” he emphasized.

A love of defense might just be the family’s ethos. Aneta was taught it by her coaches and wanted to pass it down. She wouldn’t let Sochan stay up late to watch many NBA games, but Wiktor would sometimes, and he mentioned the mid-2000s Pistons and Ben Wallace as among his favorite teams.

Aneta ingrained in Sochan that defense comes first. He hears her voice to this day. He uses it to ease into every other part of the game.

It has become his calling card. His jumper needs work — he was a 30 percent 3-point shooter in college and shot 59 percent from the free throw line — and there are concerns about how he could impact spacing. But his defense is so transcendent that it erases most doubts about him.

Sochan is a volume defender. He guards any position and can go from hounding the ball at the point of attack to causing trouble in the paint. Baylor would throw him in at center to jumble opposing offenses, and he allowed just 0.67 points per possession when caught in isolation, which is in the 72nd percentile, according to Synergy. Sochan has the ballhandling skills to lead the break after turnovers and the distribution skills to make the right decisions in transition.

He models his game after players of a similar sort. He finds pieces in Green, Gordon, Mikal Bridges, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo to pick from and integrate into his own.

Green, perhaps most of all, seems to be a kindred spirit. Sochan values his willingness to fill a role as an energizer and a defender. And as a nuisance. Being a pest can be a virtue.

“I want to annoy you,” Sochan said. “I want to get under your skin. Be that type of guy. He’s vocal, very vocal.”

It’s a fine line, Sochan admitted, but it’s a way to draw an advantage. He likes to needle opponents. He enjoys trash-talking a little and getting into their airspace. He likes to seek out the toughest assignments and challenge himself.

He bristles when he thinks his own team isn’t playing how it should. This past season, he grew frustrated at his teammates during a practice when the ball stopped moving and they stopped passing. He walked over to Peterson and told him they were not playing right, exhorting him to keep making one more pass.

At Baylor, they preach the 95 percent rule — that no matter how long someone is on the court, he’ll only have the ball 5 percent of the time. Coaches track what players do without the ball; they monitor it and break it down into 15 categories, from taking charges to setting screens. Sochan was among the best on the team.

“The more we talked about it, the more Jeremy grew into it,” Peterson said. “That comes from his foundation. That came from his mother, what she put in his belief system when he was young. So here’s mom talking to him as a young kid about being a point guard and moving the ball and doing the little things to win.”

Sochan knows that when he gets to the NBA, at least initially, he won’t come in with a huge offensive role, no matter how high he’s drafted. He has prepared himself for that.

At 18, he’s one of the youngest players in the draft, but he already has a grasp on introspection.

He is adept at the skills that could make that transition smoother — the desire to defend and to pass, the ability to play inside the 3-point line and to slide up and down a lineup. When he talks about NBA teams with his former coaches, he doesn’t just hang on the stars; he name-drops Bobby Portis and Grayson Allen with the Bucks and Bruce Brown with the Nets. He has already had to assimilate into a veteran team; last year he became the youngest player ever on the Polish national team at just 17.

“I think self-awareness is important,” he said. “And just being realistic. I’m going to be a rookie, I’m going to go to the team (that) has some established players already in that organization and coaches. You really have to mold into that organization in a right way, in a positive way. And that’s just being a sponge. And I think as time goes, people will know and understand that I can be that guy. I can be that main guy. So it’s just a matter of time.”

What Sochan is now is not indicative of what he can become. Jakus, the Baylor assistant, warns against categorizing Sochan into any one archetype.

He believes a team with creativity could open up Sochan and unlock his potential. Baylor did not have time to do that in the one year he spent there; that is the limitation of college basketball with one-and-dones. Jakus thinks Sochan can grow into a Diaw-type, who can create offense from the elbow, or follow Pascal Siakam’s trajectory from New Mexico State.

“That’s what the NBA is becoming: a bunch of people that you don’t need to pigeonhole anymore,” he said. “As long as you can switch and guard one through five, you’ll figure out the offense. Jeremy’s an elite switcher, a fantastic defensive player. He provides vertical contests, rim protection, but he also has an ability to guard a point guard. Because of his defensive versatility, as long as the shot comes along offensively, it’s going to be fun for him to discover. It’ll come down to who he plays with, you know?”

This spring, after the Baylor season ended, Sochan went back to England. One day, he and a few friends bought tickets to Barcelona and rented an AirBnb. In Spain, he visited the Sagrada Familia and an art museum. He tried paella.

He has been interested in art since he took a course while attending an international school in Germany. He tried his hand at a few pieces — “I wasn’t great.” — but it stuck. His schedule, littered with trips to tournaments and different countries, allowed him to explore and to seek out new experiences.

That permeates every aspect of his life. He sometimes acts on a whim and other choices are pre-determined. He shaved his head for the first time last season while on the team plane on a trip to Kansas State. He sensed his team had hit a rough stretch and needed an emotional boost. When a teammate dared him to lose the hair, he did. When he dyed it blue and yellow in March, he did so as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine.

His coaches and parents prod to ask about his fashion sense, though no one can quite define it. But his creativity shows itself most often in his tattoos. He wanted them at 15, but Aneta made him wait. He got his first two years later on a vacation in Croatia. He got the sun tattooed on his left thigh; Wiktor got a matching one on his arm.

Sochan uses the tattoos to relay messages to others and to himself. They are the outlet for self-expression he had been seeking. It is his way of tying together the different strands of him in one place.

“That relates to my fashion, my kind of style; even like my basketball,” he said. “I think it all connects with everything.”

And another one  from CBS sports:

Spoiler

The wonderful world of Jeremy Sochan: Inside the well-traveled draft pick's unique path to the Spurs
The most interesting rookie in the class landed in San Antonio with the No. 9 pick
            James Herbert
    
 By James Herbert 
Jun 26, 2022 at 10:12 am ET
•
12 min read
Jeremy Sochan NBA Draft
Getty Images
NEW YORK -- On the plane to D.C., where on Monday he had a pre-draft workout with the Washington Wizards, the 6-foot-9, 19-year-old Jeremy Sochan got the standard questions. First, yes, he is a basketball player. Fancy that. Second, well, that's complicated. 

"Good question," Sochan told his fellow passenger. "Where am I from?" 

While he was born in Guymon, Oklahoma and was a Thunder fan as a kid, he didn't attend an NBA game in person until his favorite team visited Manchester in the 2013 preseason. Sochan left the States for France when he was 2, moved to Southampton, England about a year later and grew up primarily in Milton Keynes, where his mother, Aneta, and stepfather, Wiktor Lipiecki, and younger brother still live. 

Aneta is from Warsaw, which meant the family regularly spent summer holidays in Poland. His talent has since taken him to La Porte, Indiana; Waco, Texas; Ulm, Germany and the Polish national team. 

In a Times Square hotel lobby on Wednesday morning, Sochan laughs as I run down my own history of continent-hopping. "Oh, wow, yo," he says when I get to the part about moving from Toronto to Melbourne and back again. At the end, he says, "So, you're a citizen of the world, too."

There is a look that people give you when they learn that you have lived somewhere far away. "People don't really expect it," Sochan says. He is thoroughly used to the faces that Americans make when they hear his voice for the first time. 

"Everyone starts thinking, 'OK, what kind of accent is it?'" Sochan says."'Cause it's mostly English, but -- I don't know if it's American or the Polish -- it's a little bit different than just a proper English accent." 

Sochan likes that it's difficult to place. 

"I feel like it's who I am as well, as a person," he says. "'I'm myself. And I have this type of energy and vibe that you can't really pin me down or put me in a box. I feel like I think out the box." 

There is a "very big connection," Sochan says, between his out-of-the-box background and, well, everything else. "I think all that travel has just made me have a broader perspective on life and on basketball." He didn't just study Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; he studied Sergio Llull, who has starred for Real Madrid and the Spanish national team for the last 15 years. He has learned from radically different coaches in radically different places. 

"I feel like every place I've been has shaped me," he says. 

About 35 hours before he'd find out where he's going next, Sochan is chipper, which cannot be said for every prospect who passes through the lobby on the way to whatever prescheduled obligation is on the schedule. 

"It's all very exciting," he says. "And it's been just a lot of fun, experiencing all this media." His last couple of weeks have been "very busy, just flying from place to place," but it's "interesting to see how every team does stuff differently -- not every team is the same." 

At the draft combine in Chicago, Sochan got to meet Manu Ginobili, who was part of the Spurs' contingent. He missed a workout with the Pacers because his flight was diverted to St. Louis, but didn't mind it. "Being not really from America, experiencing these new places is very cool for me." 

Basketball is "in my blood," Sochan says. His parents met at Panhandle State, where Aneta was a point guard and his late father, Ryan Williams, was a forward. But while the sport was always close to Sochan, the NBA was definitively not. 

He remembers being 10 years old at that exhibition game, stoked to watch Durant, his favorite player, go up against the Sixers, who were so early in The Process that no one was calling it that yet. Durant sat on the bench for the entire fourth quarter, and Russell Westbrook was an ocean away, but "I didn't even care about who was playing," he says. "It was just really being in an NBA atmosphere, which was so cool to me. That's when I was really dreaming of doing something like this." 

In England, at least back then, this particular dream wasn't taken particularly seriously. "People doubt you," Sochan says. "Like, 'basketball's not that big in England.'" This only added to his motivation. There were, however, logistical challenges. 

"Gyms were expensive," he says. Like, £60-for-an-hour expensive if you wanted to play on a full court. "We didn't have money to spend like that. So you'd have to text a bunch of people: 'OK, we're going in, we want to play some 5-on-5' or something. So you'd have to bring everyone there, get all the coins and then give it to the staff at the leisure centre."

Want more analysis of the 2022 NBA Draft? Listen below and subscribe to the Eye on College Basketball podcast.

Aneta, who was also his first coach, addressed the court-time problem by taking the team to the magnificent, green hills of Campbell Park, in the heart of Milton Keynes, every Wednesday. If you can't have 5-on-5, you can at least have cardio.

During the NBA playoffs, Sochan would ask permission to go to bed early, so he could wake up a few hours later and watch games in the middle of the night. At 15, he moved back to Southampton, where for a year he played for the Solent Kestrels in under-19 competition, a couple of hours away from home.  

"It felt like a long way away," Sochan says. "But then I crossed the little pond and I was in America, in Indiana, in the middle of nowhere. So that was pretty interesting."

On Wednesday afternoon, Sochan is dancing on a basketball court in an office building. Most of the players who will be drafted the next night are at the National Basketball Players Association's headquarters for a clinic, none more visibly into it than he is. He chats with the kids, Ds them up and distributes high fives generously. 

Afterward, Sochan says that it was only a couple of years ago that he really knew the NBA was attainable. He was in Germany, playing with pros, some of whom had NBA experience. This was after he'd committed to Baylor, and after he'd gone across the pond to play at La Lumiere, a powerhouse team that featured fellow draftee Jaden Ivey, only to have his American high school experience cut short by the pandemic. 

In Germany and in the States, Sochan felt like a fish out of water initially, but "I get adjusted," he says. "I feel like I'm pretty good at adapting." He has learned, through Aneta, through coaches and teammates the world over, to not get ahead of himself, to focus on trying to improve and on the people around him. 

"Just know your capabilities, your abilities, and then one day, whether it's tomorrow, today, in 20 days, people will start finding out, starting to get to know you," he says. 

When he arrived on Baylor's campus, "no one really thought I was going to be in college for only a year," he says. He never told himself, "I gotta be this guy." He didn't want to get in his own way.

"The way I see it, basketball is more mental than physical," he says. He believes that, "once you really open up your mental," your physical limits shrink by half. "My mum always told me that." 

Sochan says he needs to finish reading "Be Water, My Friend," a book about the philosophies of Bruce Lee, by Lee's daughter, Shannon. But it sounds like he has internalized the message. "It's about literally being like water, being formless," he says. "Water can be powerful but can also be weak, like, vulnerable." He sees the value of shapeshifting everywhere, "in the stuff you do in daily life."

On the court, he's comfortable all over the court. He can handle the ball, set screens and defend everybody. When someone asks him what position he plays, it feels the same as when someone asks where he comes from. 

Draft day is long. After the draftee meeting and lunch, Sochan had an hour or two to get ready to go to Brooklyn. He arrived at the red carpet in a lavender suit, which would earn him compliments all evening. He chose it because lavender is one of his favorite colors, and because it stands out. 

At 6:58 p.m., Sochan signs a ball and hands it to a young fan wearing a Celtics jersey. At 7:11, he poses for photos on the Barclays Center stage with his mother, stepfather and brother. The family then took their seats in the green room -- not a room, just some tables and chairs where the court normally is -- and waited. Commissioner Adam Silver announced the first pick at 8:10, and, at 8:55, the Woj Bomb dropped: The Spurs are "landing on" Sochan with the No. 9 pick.  

There were no hugs until Silver said his name at 8:58, but Aneta kept looking at her son and smiling.

After Sochan has put on his Spurs hat, shaken the commissioner's hand and made the first couple of stops on his media circuit, Baylor coach Scott Drew says he's looking forward to going to dinner with Sochan and his family. Drew doesn't sound pleased that Sochan is staying in Texas. He sounds elated. 

"His game is an old man's game," Drew says. "What I mean is he's so fundamentally sound. Normally, 18-year-olds aren't that fundamentally sound. And that's why the Spurs and [Gregg] Popovich obviously love him. I mean, he knows how to play, how to move the ball. He knows how to make other teammates great around him. And he's a great teammate. How many guys are the ninth pick in the draft and yet they were the sixth man on a college team?"

There is no time to answer the rhetorical question because the plaudits are coming faster and faster. "No-ego guy," Drew says. "Whatever he can do to help the team. And then, defensively, guard 1 through 5 right away, Day 1. Picks up schemes really quickly. And he's had a really interesting path." 

Drew calls Sochan "tremendously coachable and mature," but says he "gives you that youthful energy. He comes into a room and he doesn't act too cool to have fun. You even hear him in the interview; he just gives you enthusiasm and light. In a locker room, as a coach, you love to have guys like that, that bring energy and excitement. You want to go to practice every day with guys that make you want to be in practice. He's one of them."

On the bleached blond hair and striking suit, Drew says that Sochan is "always going to be on the cutting edge" when it comes to fashion. "Nothing surprises me. Personally, I loved when he wore green in the hair. That was my favorite." 

Half an hour after the hugs and the hat and the handshake, Sochan is grinning ear to ear on the phone. 

"Hello, Coach!" he says. "How we doing?" 

The call with Pop lasts only a minute. "Thank you so much, thank you so much," Sochan says. Moments later, he says, "Thank you! I tried, I tried. I try my best to look good."

There is laughter, and then Sochan tells his new coach that he and his family can't wait go to San Antonio: "It was meant to be." Before handing the phone back to a Spurs staffer, he says, "Thank you, Coach. It means a lot. Have a good night. Yessir."

Sochan is quickly whisked away for more media. He tells a reporter from San Antonio that he's going to the perfect place to work on his shooting mechanics, he answers a few questions in Polish and he pledges to bring energy and be a sponge. Asked about dyeing his hair to match the Spurs' "fiesta" colors, he says he might poll the fans. 

After emerging from the Panini trading card room, he tells me it is "crazy" that he can now say Popovich is his coach. "He's a legend," he says, and "he's coached so many legends, so I feel like I'm going to learn so much."

He knows, too, how excited his former coaches are for him. Five of them are at Barclays: Aneta, Drew, Baylor assistant coach John Jakus, plus Jack O'Keeffe and Matt Guymon, the two he credits the most for his development in England. 

"I feel like I appreciate them all and they all coach me differently," he says. "So I can't wait to see how Coach Popovich coaches me."

Sochan says he doesn't know what number he will wear in San Antonio yet. A staffer showed him a list of the ones that aren't taken or retired, and he says he is considering "a few options."

He does not have a favorite player from the Spurs' dynasty years. "I just adore all of them," he says. "I really respect what they've done." He knows he'll see Ginobili and Tim Duncan in San Antonio, which he describes as "wild." He has not yet had a moment to stop and reflect.   

Meanwhile in San Antonio, general manager Brian Wright tells reporters that Sochan is "worldly" in a way that reminds him of Boris Diaw. He is not the first person to make this comparison recently. Wright also says that Sochan is "all the things that we identified that we wanted to add to this team," and that the culture fit was important. 

The previous day, a few minutes after horsing around with the kids at the clinic, Sochan said that he's always trying "to make someone else's day happy and fun." For him, this has always come naturally.

"I just feel like we're all connected in some way," he said. 

In every pre-draft interview with an NBA team, someone asked him to tell his whole story from the beginning. Sochan did not find this tiresome; if anything, it was clarifying. "I think it's really cool to have a unique background and really be yourself in there," he said in the hotel lobby. Besides, he thrives in those situations. "I mean, I don't mind interviews. I feel like I'm comfortable and confident to be in those types of environments and talk to people." 

On that flight to D.C., he ended up chatting with person next to him for "the whole plane ride," he said. It turned out she was visiting her niece at Baylor, and, like Sochan, she's well-traveled. 

"It was just a good talk, and we talked about different things. About travel. It was pretty cool."

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Mitch Cumsteen

[Kermit 3158]

2 hours ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

Good read about Sochon, his international background, basketball ethos, etc. from the Athletic. NSIAP.

He's a perfect Spur. I bet he got Pop harder than Viagra does during his interview. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Draft prospect Jeremy Sochan isn’t typical. He may be perfect for modern NBA
Mike Vorkunov
Jun 21, 2022
40

Save Article
Follow our live coverage of NBA Draft 2022.

Let’s start with the hair. That’s where everyone else does.

For Jeremy Sochan, it comes in many different hues. In a bleached blonde, in blue and sometimes in pink.

When he interviewed with the Celtics last month at the NBA Draft Combine, a Boston executive led the session by asking him why he hadn’t dyed it green.

The hair has become an identifying trait for him. Sochan was conspicuous during his one year at Baylor, a vibrant force on the court who could not be ignored. There is no shortage of irony to this. Sochan is a chameleon in some ways. His look is loud, but his game allows him to fit in seamlessly wherever he goes. He is a 6-foot-9 jack of all trades who can shape-shift on defense. That’s part of his appeal in the upcoming draft, where his blend of savvy and defensive versatility are likely to make him a lottery pick, and perhaps a high one at that.

But it is his story, too. The hair leads to inferences that don’t apply. John Jakus, a Baylor assistant coach, said he got questions about whether the hair was some kind of Dennis Rodman-like flair from Sochan; he assures those asking that they’re overthinking it.

“A lot of people might get wrapped up in the hair, but if you get to know him, there’s this larger expression of art and culture and fashion that’s important to him,” Jakus said. “Long-term, as he gets deeper into his career and the money comes, people will discover it’s much deeper than the hair color.”

It is just a piece of his identity, one he has already put thought and care into. One that bridges cultures and countries, that mixes European grit with American flexibility. Sochan is unique, with a personality as different as his game.

He was born to an American father and a Polish mother, who met at a Division II school in Oklahoma, and grew up in the United Kingdom. He lived in Milton Keynes, a mid-sized city northwest of London, until he was 15, with his mom, Aneta, and stepfather, Wiktor Lipiecki, and spent his summers in Poland. As a teenager, he played high-school ball at an academy in Southampton, a prep school in Indiana, and then when the pandemic started, he decamped for a basketball program in Germany associated with Ratiopharm Ulm.

Sochan is a fit for the modern NBA, in which teams value adaptability and players are now multi-hyphenates. He emulates his game after Draymond Green, and favors Salvador Dalí and surrealism.

He has come up with a handy answer whenever he’s questioned about his background. It is just one of many lessons his mother has doled out. If someone asks where he’s from, he cites the response she taught him: “I’m a citizen of the world.”

“He’s the kind of guy who can live in Tibet for six months,” Jakus said. “And then turn around and live in Croatia on a lake with his family for six months.”

When Sochan traded all that in to go to Waco, he sprouted into a full-fledged NBA prospect.

At Baylor, he was a do-it-all and defensively dexterous. Jakus pointed to Sochan’s moonlighting at center as the reason Baylor beat eventual champion Kansas in February, and then complimented his passing skills.

Bill Peterson, another Baylor assistant, cited a slew of NBA comps that run the gamut, from Green to Aaron Gordon. “Maybe even a young Boris Diaw,” Peterson added.

Sochan’s family, Jakus said, was insistent he wasn’t a center. Sochan doesn’t even list a spot for himself.

“I don’t put one position in my name,” he said. “Because I feel like I can do everything that a point guard can do and everything that a center can do on offense, but also on defense.”

Sochan grew up with his mother, Aneta (left), and stepfather (right) in the United Kingdom and spent his summers in Poland. (Courtesy of Wiktor Lipiecki)
Sochan’s game is an outgrowth of his first coach, Aneta. She was a pass-first point guard who left Poland for a junior college in Missouri before she landed at Panhandle State. She met Sochan’s father, also a basketball player, there, but he flittered out of his son’s life by the time he was seven, Sochan said, and died in 2017. Aneta moved to the UK when Sochan was a toddler and connected with Wiktor.

They didn’t push Sochan into basketball but created space for him to search it out. They let him go to sleep early so he could wake up in the middle of the night to watch NBA playoff games. He was a soccer goalkeeper but landed on the court.

Aneta started coaching Sochan when he was about 11. She let him have fun, but she was strict, and she kept boundaries. During practice, he was only allowed to call her “Coach.” If he called her “Mom,” he was penalized with push-ups and forced to run. Still, he remembers this fondly.

Sochan’s coaches at Baylor point to Aneta as his largest influence; Sochan plays like her most of all. He embraces that, too, and it’s why even at his height, he also has a point guard’s mentality.

Aneta said she tried to pass on a few key points to her son: the feel for the game, the passion for it and the love of teamwork.

“Although we’ve seen potential in him, he never was put on, like, a pedestal, but he was always a part of the team,” she said. “I think you can see this. Sometimes I reflect on it and I would say, ‘Oh, gosh, I wish I could put him more where he could be selfish.’ But I think that’s what he says and he recognized as well. So that awareness, I play as a point guard, so I always kind of empower him to see the vision, the intelligence, IQ.”

“There’s one thing that you’re missing,” Wiktor chimed in when she was done. And Aneta knew what was coming.

“The joy in shutting people down,” he emphasized.

A love of defense might just be the family’s ethos. Aneta was taught it by her coaches and wanted to pass it down. She wouldn’t let Sochan stay up late to watch many NBA games, but Wiktor would sometimes, and he mentioned the mid-2000s Pistons and Ben Wallace as among his favorite teams.

Aneta ingrained in Sochan that defense comes first. He hears her voice to this day. He uses it to ease into every other part of the game.

It has become his calling card. His jumper needs work — he was a 30 percent 3-point shooter in college and shot 59 percent from the free throw line — and there are concerns about how he could impact spacing. But his defense is so transcendent that it erases most doubts about him.

Sochan is a volume defender. He guards any position and can go from hounding the ball at the point of attack to causing trouble in the paint. Baylor would throw him in at center to jumble opposing offenses, and he allowed just 0.67 points per possession when caught in isolation, which is in the 72nd percentile, according to Synergy. Sochan has the ballhandling skills to lead the break after turnovers and the distribution skills to make the right decisions in transition.

He models his game after players of a similar sort. He finds pieces in Green, Gordon, Mikal Bridges, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo to pick from and integrate into his own.

Green, perhaps most of all, seems to be a kindred spirit. Sochan values his willingness to fill a role as an energizer and a defender. And as a nuisance. Being a pest can be a virtue.

“I want to annoy you,” Sochan said. “I want to get under your skin. Be that type of guy. He’s vocal, very vocal.”

It’s a fine line, Sochan admitted, but it’s a way to draw an advantage. He likes to needle opponents. He enjoys trash-talking a little and getting into their airspace. He likes to seek out the toughest assignments and challenge himself.

He bristles when he thinks his own team isn’t playing how it should. This past season, he grew frustrated at his teammates during a practice when the ball stopped moving and they stopped passing. He walked over to Peterson and told him they were not playing right, exhorting him to keep making one more pass.

At Baylor, they preach the 95 percent rule — that no matter how long someone is on the court, he’ll only have the ball 5 percent of the time. Coaches track what players do without the ball; they monitor it and break it down into 15 categories, from taking charges to setting screens. Sochan was among the best on the team.

“The more we talked about it, the more Jeremy grew into it,” Peterson said. “That comes from his foundation. That came from his mother, what she put in his belief system when he was young. So here’s mom talking to him as a young kid about being a point guard and moving the ball and doing the little things to win.”

Sochan knows that when he gets to the NBA, at least initially, he won’t come in with a huge offensive role, no matter how high he’s drafted. He has prepared himself for that.

At 18, he’s one of the youngest players in the draft, but he already has a grasp on introspection.

He is adept at the skills that could make that transition smoother — the desire to defend and to pass, the ability to play inside the 3-point line and to slide up and down a lineup. When he talks about NBA teams with his former coaches, he doesn’t just hang on the stars; he name-drops Bobby Portis and Grayson Allen with the Bucks and Bruce Brown with the Nets. He has already had to assimilate into a veteran team; last year he became the youngest player ever on the Polish national team at just 17.

“I think self-awareness is important,” he said. “And just being realistic. I’m going to be a rookie, I’m going to go to the team (that) has some established players already in that organization and coaches. You really have to mold into that organization in a right way, in a positive way. And that’s just being a sponge. And I think as time goes, people will know and understand that I can be that guy. I can be that main guy. So it’s just a matter of time.”

What Sochan is now is not indicative of what he can become. Jakus, the Baylor assistant, warns against categorizing Sochan into any one archetype.

He believes a team with creativity could open up Sochan and unlock his potential. Baylor did not have time to do that in the one year he spent there; that is the limitation of college basketball with one-and-dones. Jakus thinks Sochan can grow into a Diaw-type, who can create offense from the elbow, or follow Pascal Siakam’s trajectory from New Mexico State.

“That’s what the NBA is becoming: a bunch of people that you don’t need to pigeonhole anymore,” he said. “As long as you can switch and guard one through five, you’ll figure out the offense. Jeremy’s an elite switcher, a fantastic defensive player. He provides vertical contests, rim protection, but he also has an ability to guard a point guard. Because of his defensive versatility, as long as the shot comes along offensively, it’s going to be fun for him to discover. It’ll come down to who he plays with, you know?”

This spring, after the Baylor season ended, Sochan went back to England. One day, he and a few friends bought tickets to Barcelona and rented an AirBnb. In Spain, he visited the Sagrada Familia and an art museum. He tried paella.

He has been interested in art since he took a course while attending an international school in Germany. He tried his hand at a few pieces — “I wasn’t great.” — but it stuck. His schedule, littered with trips to tournaments and different countries, allowed him to explore and to seek out new experiences.

That permeates every aspect of his life. He sometimes acts on a whim and other choices are pre-determined. He shaved his head for the first time last season while on the team plane on a trip to Kansas State. He sensed his team had hit a rough stretch and needed an emotional boost. When a teammate dared him to lose the hair, he did. When he dyed it blue and yellow in March, he did so as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine.

His coaches and parents prod to ask about his fashion sense, though no one can quite define it. But his creativity shows itself most often in his tattoos. He wanted them at 15, but Aneta made him wait. He got his first two years later on a vacation in Croatia. He got the sun tattooed on his left thigh; Wiktor got a matching one on his arm.

Sochan uses the tattoos to relay messages to others and to himself. They are the outlet for self-expression he had been seeking. It is his way of tying together the different strands of him in one place.

“That relates to my fashion, my kind of style; even like my basketball,” he said. “I think it all connects with everything.”

And another one  from CBS sports:

  Reveal hidden contents

The wonderful world of Jeremy Sochan: Inside the well-traveled draft pick's unique path to the Spurs
The most interesting rookie in the class landed in San Antonio with the No. 9 pick
            James Herbert
    
 By James Herbert 
Jun 26, 2022 at 10:12 am ET
•
12 min read
Jeremy Sochan NBA Draft
Getty Images
NEW YORK -- On the plane to D.C., where on Monday he had a pre-draft workout with the Washington Wizards, the 6-foot-9, 19-year-old Jeremy Sochan got the standard questions. First, yes, he is a basketball player. Fancy that. Second, well, that's complicated. 

"Good question," Sochan told his fellow passenger. "Where am I from?" 

While he was born in Guymon, Oklahoma and was a Thunder fan as a kid, he didn't attend an NBA game in person until his favorite team visited Manchester in the 2013 preseason. Sochan left the States for France when he was 2, moved to Southampton, England about a year later and grew up primarily in Milton Keynes, where his mother, Aneta, and stepfather, Wiktor Lipiecki, and younger brother still live. 

Aneta is from Warsaw, which meant the family regularly spent summer holidays in Poland. His talent has since taken him to La Porte, Indiana; Waco, Texas; Ulm, Germany and the Polish national team. 

In a Times Square hotel lobby on Wednesday morning, Sochan laughs as I run down my own history of continent-hopping. "Oh, wow, yo," he says when I get to the part about moving from Toronto to Melbourne and back again. At the end, he says, "So, you're a citizen of the world, too."

There is a look that people give you when they learn that you have lived somewhere far away. "People don't really expect it," Sochan says. He is thoroughly used to the faces that Americans make when they hear his voice for the first time. 

"Everyone starts thinking, 'OK, what kind of accent is it?'" Sochan says."'Cause it's mostly English, but -- I don't know if it's American or the Polish -- it's a little bit different than just a proper English accent." 

Sochan likes that it's difficult to place. 

"I feel like it's who I am as well, as a person," he says. "'I'm myself. And I have this type of energy and vibe that you can't really pin me down or put me in a box. I feel like I think out the box." 

There is a "very big connection," Sochan says, between his out-of-the-box background and, well, everything else. "I think all that travel has just made me have a broader perspective on life and on basketball." He didn't just study Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; he studied Sergio Llull, who has starred for Real Madrid and the Spanish national team for the last 15 years. He has learned from radically different coaches in radically different places. 

"I feel like every place I've been has shaped me," he says. 

About 35 hours before he'd find out where he's going next, Sochan is chipper, which cannot be said for every prospect who passes through the lobby on the way to whatever prescheduled obligation is on the schedule. 

"It's all very exciting," he says. "And it's been just a lot of fun, experiencing all this media." His last couple of weeks have been "very busy, just flying from place to place," but it's "interesting to see how every team does stuff differently -- not every team is the same." 

At the draft combine in Chicago, Sochan got to meet Manu Ginobili, who was part of the Spurs' contingent. He missed a workout with the Pacers because his flight was diverted to St. Louis, but didn't mind it. "Being not really from America, experiencing these new places is very cool for me." 

Basketball is "in my blood," Sochan says. His parents met at Panhandle State, where Aneta was a point guard and his late father, Ryan Williams, was a forward. But while the sport was always close to Sochan, the NBA was definitively not. 

He remembers being 10 years old at that exhibition game, stoked to watch Durant, his favorite player, go up against the Sixers, who were so early in The Process that no one was calling it that yet. Durant sat on the bench for the entire fourth quarter, and Russell Westbrook was an ocean away, but "I didn't even care about who was playing," he says. "It was just really being in an NBA atmosphere, which was so cool to me. That's when I was really dreaming of doing something like this." 

In England, at least back then, this particular dream wasn't taken particularly seriously. "People doubt you," Sochan says. "Like, 'basketball's not that big in England.'" This only added to his motivation. There were, however, logistical challenges. 

"Gyms were expensive," he says. Like, £60-for-an-hour expensive if you wanted to play on a full court. "We didn't have money to spend like that. So you'd have to text a bunch of people: 'OK, we're going in, we want to play some 5-on-5' or something. So you'd have to bring everyone there, get all the coins and then give it to the staff at the leisure centre."

Want more analysis of the 2022 NBA Draft? Listen below and subscribe to the Eye on College Basketball podcast.

Aneta, who was also his first coach, addressed the court-time problem by taking the team to the magnificent, green hills of Campbell Park, in the heart of Milton Keynes, every Wednesday. If you can't have 5-on-5, you can at least have cardio.

During the NBA playoffs, Sochan would ask permission to go to bed early, so he could wake up a few hours later and watch games in the middle of the night. At 15, he moved back to Southampton, where for a year he played for the Solent Kestrels in under-19 competition, a couple of hours away from home.  

"It felt like a long way away," Sochan says. "But then I crossed the little pond and I was in America, in Indiana, in the middle of nowhere. So that was pretty interesting."

On Wednesday afternoon, Sochan is dancing on a basketball court in an office building. Most of the players who will be drafted the next night are at the National Basketball Players Association's headquarters for a clinic, none more visibly into it than he is. He chats with the kids, Ds them up and distributes high fives generously. 

Afterward, Sochan says that it was only a couple of years ago that he really knew the NBA was attainable. He was in Germany, playing with pros, some of whom had NBA experience. This was after he'd committed to Baylor, and after he'd gone across the pond to play at La Lumiere, a powerhouse team that featured fellow draftee Jaden Ivey, only to have his American high school experience cut short by the pandemic. 

In Germany and in the States, Sochan felt like a fish out of water initially, but "I get adjusted," he says. "I feel like I'm pretty good at adapting." He has learned, through Aneta, through coaches and teammates the world over, to not get ahead of himself, to focus on trying to improve and on the people around him. 

"Just know your capabilities, your abilities, and then one day, whether it's tomorrow, today, in 20 days, people will start finding out, starting to get to know you," he says. 

When he arrived on Baylor's campus, "no one really thought I was going to be in college for only a year," he says. He never told himself, "I gotta be this guy." He didn't want to get in his own way.

"The way I see it, basketball is more mental than physical," he says. He believes that, "once you really open up your mental," your physical limits shrink by half. "My mum always told me that." 

Sochan says he needs to finish reading "Be Water, My Friend," a book about the philosophies of Bruce Lee, by Lee's daughter, Shannon. But it sounds like he has internalized the message. "It's about literally being like water, being formless," he says. "Water can be powerful but can also be weak, like, vulnerable." He sees the value of shapeshifting everywhere, "in the stuff you do in daily life."

On the court, he's comfortable all over the court. He can handle the ball, set screens and defend everybody. When someone asks him what position he plays, it feels the same as when someone asks where he comes from. 

Draft day is long. After the draftee meeting and lunch, Sochan had an hour or two to get ready to go to Brooklyn. He arrived at the red carpet in a lavender suit, which would earn him compliments all evening. He chose it because lavender is one of his favorite colors, and because it stands out. 

At 6:58 p.m., Sochan signs a ball and hands it to a young fan wearing a Celtics jersey. At 7:11, he poses for photos on the Barclays Center stage with his mother, stepfather and brother. The family then took their seats in the green room -- not a room, just some tables and chairs where the court normally is -- and waited. Commissioner Adam Silver announced the first pick at 8:10, and, at 8:55, the Woj Bomb dropped: The Spurs are "landing on" Sochan with the No. 9 pick.  

There were no hugs until Silver said his name at 8:58, but Aneta kept looking at her son and smiling.

After Sochan has put on his Spurs hat, shaken the commissioner's hand and made the first couple of stops on his media circuit, Baylor coach Scott Drew says he's looking forward to going to dinner with Sochan and his family. Drew doesn't sound pleased that Sochan is staying in Texas. He sounds elated. 

"His game is an old man's game," Drew says. "What I mean is he's so fundamentally sound. Normally, 18-year-olds aren't that fundamentally sound. And that's why the Spurs and [Gregg] Popovich obviously love him. I mean, he knows how to play, how to move the ball. He knows how to make other teammates great around him. And he's a great teammate. How many guys are the ninth pick in the draft and yet they were the sixth man on a college team?"

There is no time to answer the rhetorical question because the plaudits are coming faster and faster. "No-ego guy," Drew says. "Whatever he can do to help the team. And then, defensively, guard 1 through 5 right away, Day 1. Picks up schemes really quickly. And he's had a really interesting path." 

Drew calls Sochan "tremendously coachable and mature," but says he "gives you that youthful energy. He comes into a room and he doesn't act too cool to have fun. You even hear him in the interview; he just gives you enthusiasm and light. In a locker room, as a coach, you love to have guys like that, that bring energy and excitement. You want to go to practice every day with guys that make you want to be in practice. He's one of them."

On the bleached blond hair and striking suit, Drew says that Sochan is "always going to be on the cutting edge" when it comes to fashion. "Nothing surprises me. Personally, I loved when he wore green in the hair. That was my favorite." 

Half an hour after the hugs and the hat and the handshake, Sochan is grinning ear to ear on the phone. 

"Hello, Coach!" he says. "How we doing?" 

The call with Pop lasts only a minute. "Thank you so much, thank you so much," Sochan says. Moments later, he says, "Thank you! I tried, I tried. I try my best to look good."

There is laughter, and then Sochan tells his new coach that he and his family can't wait go to San Antonio: "It was meant to be." Before handing the phone back to a Spurs staffer, he says, "Thank you, Coach. It means a lot. Have a good night. Yessir."

Sochan is quickly whisked away for more media. He tells a reporter from San Antonio that he's going to the perfect place to work on his shooting mechanics, he answers a few questions in Polish and he pledges to bring energy and be a sponge. Asked about dyeing his hair to match the Spurs' "fiesta" colors, he says he might poll the fans. 

After emerging from the Panini trading card room, he tells me it is "crazy" that he can now say Popovich is his coach. "He's a legend," he says, and "he's coached so many legends, so I feel like I'm going to learn so much."

He knows, too, how excited his former coaches are for him. Five of them are at Barclays: Aneta, Drew, Baylor assistant coach John Jakus, plus Jack O'Keeffe and Matt Guymon, the two he credits the most for his development in England. 

"I feel like I appreciate them all and they all coach me differently," he says. "So I can't wait to see how Coach Popovich coaches me."

Sochan says he doesn't know what number he will wear in San Antonio yet. A staffer showed him a list of the ones that aren't taken or retired, and he says he is considering "a few options."

He does not have a favorite player from the Spurs' dynasty years. "I just adore all of them," he says. "I really respect what they've done." He knows he'll see Ginobili and Tim Duncan in San Antonio, which he describes as "wild." He has not yet had a moment to stop and reflect.   

Meanwhile in San Antonio, general manager Brian Wright tells reporters that Sochan is "worldly" in a way that reminds him of Boris Diaw. He is not the first person to make this comparison recently. Wright also says that Sochan is "all the things that we identified that we wanted to add to this team," and that the culture fit was important. 

The previous day, a few minutes after horsing around with the kids at the clinic, Sochan said that he's always trying "to make someone else's day happy and fun." For him, this has always come naturally.

"I just feel like we're all connected in some way," he said. 

In every pre-draft interview with an NBA team, someone asked him to tell his whole story from the beginning. Sochan did not find this tiresome; if anything, it was clarifying. "I think it's really cool to have a unique background and really be yourself in there," he said in the hotel lobby. Besides, he thrives in those situations. "I mean, I don't mind interviews. I feel like I'm comfortable and confident to be in those types of environments and talk to people." 

On that flight to D.C., he ended up chatting with person next to him for "the whole plane ride," he said. It turned out she was visiting her niece at Baylor, and, like Sochan, she's well-traveled. 

"It was just a good talk, and we talked about different things. About travel. It was pretty cool."

 

[jeevsie 3737]

More Murray trade rumors? Text from the son. 
 

edit - just saw the tweet in the trades thread. Gallinari and 1sts. 1st reaction is not happy. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by jeevsie

[Amos Moses 795]

WTF with that trade?  Now they want to start a proper tank job?  SMH

[Mitch Cumsteen 18550]

I'm really not upset with this, at all, depending what the package looks like.

Love DJ, but the Hawks aren't winning shit with or without him as long as Trae Young is the center of their universe. Those picks are going to be really valuable. And let's face it, DJ is going to command damn close to the max when his deal is up. And there's nothing worse than maxing a non-MVP caliber player on an also ran team. So, let's sell high and tank for Victor. I'm all for this.

[Patrick Bateman 3918]

2 hours ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I'm really not upset with this, at all, depending what the package looks like.

Love DJ, but the Hawks aren't winning shit with or without him as long as Trae Young is the center of their universe. Those picks are going to be really valuable. And let's face it, DJ is going to command damn close to the max when his deal is up. And there's nothing worse than maxing a non-MVP caliber player on an also ran team. So, let's sell high and tank for Victor. I'm all for this.

Their last couple of picks have been 16 and 20.  Doubt they get any worse the next couple of years.  Not sure how valuable those picks will be.  Maybe Charlottes but it has protections.  They'd need some injury help by Atlanta.

I don't mind trading Murray but for a mid to back end first rounders..... idk.  That's a big risk.