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San Antonio Spurs 2023 Offseason - Voodoo Dolls and Ping Pong Balls


Mitch Cumsteen

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32 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Can someone explain this to me? So they draw the picks from 1st to 14th then reveal in opposite order? Is it still ping pong ball style where you have a certain amount of "entries"?

Yes and yes.

According to the NBA, "Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 will be placed in a lottery machine. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams.

"All 14 balls are placed in the lottery machine and they are mixed for 20 seconds, and then the first ball is removed. The remaining balls are mixed in the lottery machine for another 10 seconds, and then the second ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the third ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the fourth ball is drawn. The team that has been assigned that combination will receive the No. 1 pick. The same process is repeated with the same ping-pong balls and lottery machine for the second through fourth picks."

The remaining lottery teams are slotted in order of their draft odds.

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Can someone explain this to me? So they draw the picks from 1st to 14th then reveal in opposite order? Is it still ping pong ball style where you have a certain amount of "entries"?

I believe they draw 1-4. Then if you’re jumped you move back. Basically the spurs won the lottery 3 times with ~14% odds each time before Charlotte finally won the second pick
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2 hours ago, BurntOrange&White said:

Obviously a Rockets scout

3 times in 35 years.

Cleveland had four #1 overalls in 12 fucking seasons. But sure, let's all talk about how fucking rigged it is for the Spurs to land it at a clip of once every dozen fucking years. Once again, stupid motherfuckers with their ideas of a smart thing to say. 

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3 hours ago, Mullet Free said:

 

Puro San Antonio

 

1 hour ago, hornfan785 said:

Fuck it, I'm getting season tickets.

My dad let his go after this season after 20+ seasons. I think he wants a do-over. I told him if he’d kept them, we wouldn’t have gotten Wemby.

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They really are positioned well going forward. Max cap space, lots of young guys on rookie deals, and tons of picks.

Charlotte getting #2 is presumably very good for the spurs. Spurs will get their frp if they make they playoffs in either of the next two years. With a healthy Ball, Scoot or Miller, and if they get Bridges back that’s maybe a 6 or 7 seed in the east. 

Then there’s all the Atlanta picks and swap plus a boatload of seconds from all their other deals. They have another frp from Toronto. A swap way down the road from Boston plus all their own picks. This really couldn’t have broken any better for them. 

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31 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

They really are positioned well going forward. Max cap space, lots of young guys on rookie deals, and tons of picks.

Charlotte getting #2 is presumably very good for the spurs. Spurs will get their frp if they make they playoffs in either of the next two years. With a healthy Ball, Scoot or Miller, and if they get Bridges back that’s maybe a 6 or 7 seed in the east. 

Then there’s all the Atlanta picks and swap plus a boatload of seconds from all their other deals. They have another frp from Toronto. A swap way down the road from Boston plus all their own picks. This really couldn’t have broken any better for them. 

Even without all of that, yeah, this couldn’t have broken any better than to get the single #1 pick with the most-anticipated #1 overall pick since LeBron.

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https://theathletic.com/4526280/2023/05/17/victor-wembanyama-spurs-nba-lottery/

Quote

CHICAGO — We’re going back to Boudro’s. Anybody heard from the Chuckster?

You can’t possibly be surprised that, after getting David Robinson and Tim Duncan, the Spurs wound up with Victor Wembanyama. It’s the Spursiest thing that could possibly have happened Tuesday. After a few post-Duncan/Kawhi Leonard years in the darkness, San Antonio will soon be back on TNT and ESPN on the regular. They already have Jacob Riis’ “Stonecutter” credo translated into French, among numerous other languages, along the walls of AT&T Center, in tribute to Hall of Famer Tony Parker and ultravaluable sixth man Boris Diaw, among other French players who’ve played there. Wembanyama will feel right at home.

“This year, we had to find Georgian,” Spurs CEO R.C. Buford said after the Spurs picked up big man Sandro “Mamu” Mamukelashvili in late March. (The Stonecutter got translated into Polish, as well, this year by the mother of 2022 first-round pick Jeremy Sochan, who’s from Warsaw, Poland.)

So it will be nothing new for Gregg Popovich and company to welcome an international star, even one with the unlimited potential and worldwide hype of Wembanyama. The team’s history and continued willingness in good times and bad to take chances on players from all over the globe puts it in perfect position to inherit the French teenager and incorporate him into a team concept.

“Two things,” Buford said Tuesday after the stars aligned, again, for his franchise. “Our head coach loves a diverse community of experiences. I think you’ve seen our international community with Patty (Mills) and Manu (Ginobili) and Boris and Tiago (Splitter). And those guys never shared basketball; they shared life. And I think Pop loves creating environments where people learn about each other and each other’s experiences, and all grow together because of it. I hope we can continue that environment.

“We like being in (international) gyms. And early, we were in there kind of by ourselves. Not very many. Now I think you can see the league is full of international players.”

The Spurs Way was certainly anchored by their two previous No. 1s, Robinson and Duncan. Little else would have stuck without those two Hall of Famers anchoring the middle for more than two decades.

“With any draft, there’s huge expectations that come with being the top pick,” Spurs general manager Brian Wright said. “You can’t run from that. Victor’s maybe greater than a lot of people we’ve seen. At every step of the way, he’s met those challenges and pushed straight through. So, anticipating nothing different.”

But the sinew of the franchise was always finding players who may not have grown up in the States but came to love basketball just as deeply as any kid growing up hooping on the blacktop in a big U.S. city or on a farm with a hoop in the backyard.

They gave the ball to Parker as a 19-year-old rookie. They fell in love with Ginobili and took him with the 57th pick in 1999. They lived with Diaw’s mercurial nature. They’ve run assorted Belinellis and de Colos and Gasols and Marjanovićs and Poeltls and Obertos in and out of their lineups for decades, adding their stories, growing the institutional memory of the place. As Buford reminded me, Popovich was an assistant coach for Larry Brown in 1989 when Popovich saw Serbian forward Žarko Paspalj at a tournament in Germany and pushed for San Antonio to bring him to the States.

Let’s be honest, though: The Spurs have stunk the last few years. They’ve continued to develop young talents like guard Dejounte Murray, but they moved Murray to Atlanta last summer for three future firsts. Since walking back a solid but non-contending team led by DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge, the Spurs have gone a combined 56-108 the last two seasons. Not a lot of laughs at the River Walk. But their new group still believed in what Popovich, Wright and Buford were offering.

“I just trust the process,” Keldon Johnson said late during the season. “I can’t control what the franchise does, ultimately. I know I can do what they tell me what I need to do. I just focus on that, and let the rest of it take care of itself. And that’s one thing that, when I came to the league, I knew that as long as I do what I’m told, do what I’m good at, if it doesn’t work out, it don’t work out. But it’s not going to be because I didn’t listen or I didn’t trust the process of the team. I really buy into the process of the Spurs. I really enjoyed it. Even when I was in the G League, I enjoyed it. I knew it was part of my process, part of my path to where I am now.”

But now they have Wembanyama, Sochan, Johnson, Devin Vassell and Tre Jones, all 23 and younger. The latter four had to stick together through a tough 2022-23 campaign.

Wright was so nervous Tuesday that he woke up at 5 a.m., couldn’t get back to sleep and didn’t eat all day.

“If I pass out, excuse me,” he said.

He had a secret totem in his coat pocket and a secret handshake with his 9-year-old son. He was in the room where the ping-pong balls were drawn. A number of teams, including San Antonio, had the first three numbers drawn.

This includes the Wizards, who apparently not only had the first three numbers drawn, but six of the remaining 11 numbers. The Wizards would have gotten no worse than the fourth pick, and maybe the top pick, if any of their six numbers had been drawn. But, instead of any of those numbers being taken, the four teams that got the first four picks — San Antonio, Charlotte, Portland and Houston, with only one number available — each leapfrogged Washington. If you are a Wizards fan, bro/sis, I don’t know what to say anymore.

Meanwhile, Wright, frantically looking through the more than 100 possible number combinations, didn’t immediately know the Spurs had won, until the Rockets’ representative leaned over and said, “I think it’s you.”

Wright has run things in San Antonio for six years. He had to oversee the deconstruction of an all-time great franchise. Five titles and, more than that, a program that won year after year after year with class and by celebrating what was different about everyone. It made the group even stronger. It’s no secret that Steve Kerr came to believe in Strength in Numbers while a player on Spurs NBA championship teams and as a member of the front office before going to Golden State.

“It’s a great blueprint,” Wright said. “You have to understand that everybody’s journey is going to be completely different. This pick, what the expectations are, may be completely different than who we’ve had in the past. But I think you try to set things up to put all of your players in place to have success. We’ll take this time to continue to learn what those things are. We’ll be patient. But we’ll try to put everything in place for guys to have sustained success over time.”

So here they come again, the Spurs. Parker once told me that if the franchise was in New York, he and his fellow players would be lionized. Well, New York may be coming to the River Walk now — all the glitz and noise wrapped up in a 7-foot-4 teenager.

I asked Peter J. Holt, the team’s governor who’s continuing to hold onto the family business that his father and mother ran for decades, if he thought, when NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum announced the Blazers had the third pick, it would be OK if the Spurs wound up with two. Two will likely be G League Ignite’s Scoot Henderson, who has future superstar point guard written all over him. Two would suffice, right?

“No,” Holt said, laughing. “No.”

 

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15 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

He was very diplomatic throughout the process but he wanted the Spurs it seems. 
 

I mean look closely at his and his family’s reaction. That’s not just oh hey, we are going to San Antonio… that’s fuck yeah holy shit we’re going to San Antonio  

 

Didn't he play for Tony Parker's academy/team?

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25 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

He was very diplomatic throughout the process but he wanted the Spurs it seems. 
 

I mean look closely at his and his family’s reaction. That’s not just oh hey, we are going to San Antonio… that’s fuck yeah holy shit we’re going to San Antonio  

 

He just loves them big ol women.

charles barkley eating GIF by NBA on TNT

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A league official announced that it was indeed the Spurs. Wright barely reacted. He stayed silent and gazed downward until Allen reached over to shake his hand.

"Brian was way too calm," Graham joked afterward. "I mean, come on!"

Act like you've been there before, bitches. Happens all the time.  Plus, it was rigged, lulz

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/insider/story/_/id/37666205/lowe-happened-secret-nba-lottery-drawing-room

Spoiler

Seconds before the pingpong balls started flying in the real NBA lottery drawing, held in a locked-down room shortly before the televised version, Brian Wright, the San Antonio Spurs general manager, reached his right hand across his chest and tapped his left shirt pocket twice.

That is the end of the secret handshake Wright shares with his 9-year-old son. Something was in that pocket -- some good luck trinket -- but Wright would not reveal what it was after the Spurs won the momentous 2023 lottery and the right to draft French phenom Victor Wembanyama. At their family home, Wright's son was supposed to have a corresponding good luck charm and execute their secret handshake, Wright said.

Hours earlier, R.C. Buford, the Spurs CEO, had arrived at his hotel room in Chicago and was astonished to see a familiar blue leather chair with a card attached. It was the same chair Buford had been sitting in in his office in San Antonio when the Spurs won the Tim Duncan lottery in 1997. He had given the chair to his daughter when she went to college, he told ESPN after the lottery Tuesday. His family secretly sent it to his hotel.

"I had a meditation in my blue leather chair this afternoon," Buford said.

Back in the drawing room, the first ping pong ball came up: No. 14. Fourteen balls, numbered 1-14, zip around a classic air-powered lottery machine before a league attorney stops the machine and sucks one up. That ball becomes the first of four drawn in sequence, eventually making up a four-number combination. There are 1,001 possible four-number combinations using the numbers 1-14. The NBA tosses out one of them -- 11, 12, 13, 14 -- and divides the rest among the 14 lottery teams based on their team record and lottery odds.

The Spurs, Detroit Pistons and Houston Rockets held 140 combinations apiece -- 420 of the 1,000. The New Orleans Pelicans, the lottery team with the best record, owned only five.

The combinations go in numerical order, so that the worst teams -- Houston, Detroit, San Antonio -- have almost all the combinations featuring the numbers 1 and 2. Seeing 14 as the first ball had the whole room in play for Wembanyama for a fleeting 10-second window. Wright panicked. "Oh my god, we are out," he thought to himself, Wright told ESPN in the drawing room minutes after the drawing ended. (ESPN had one of 19 media members present to watch the drawing.) Each lottery team sends one person to the room to represent them. They sit in rows, with the teams with the best odds up front and the long shots in the back.

In that last row, Teresa Resch, the Toronto Raptors vice president of basketball operations, elbowed Bryson Graham, the New Orleans Pelicans assistant general manager, when that 14 came up, both recalled: We have a chance!

Ten seconds after the 14, up popped the next ball: 5. Almost everyone was still in play. Michael Finley, the Dallas Mavericks assistant general manager, knew that any of the teams below the Mavericks in the lottery pecking order -- the Raptors, Pelicans, Chicago Bulls and Oklahoma City Thunder -- leaping into the top-4 could knock the Mavs back from No. 10 to No. 11. That would have meant the Mavericks sending their top-10 protected pick to the New York Knicks -- a potential embarrassment given Dallas' late-season tanking to slide out of the play-in race and into that No. 10 slot. (The NBA fined the Mavericks $750,000 for "conduct detrimental to the league.")

Finley stayed calm, knowing the odds still favored the worst teams. "I wasn't nervous," he said. Finley won a championship with the Spurs in 2007, and joked after that drawing that perhaps he should have brought along his Spurs championship ring for good luck.

(On the flip side, many within the league feared the Mavericks 3% chance of winning the lottery -- and being rewarded for their late-season resting with Wembanyama.)

All around the room, team officials flipped through eight sheets of paper showing which teams owned each combination. The mood was frantic.

Ten seconds later, the third ball: No. 8. Several teams were still alive. Brett Greenberg, the Washington Wizards assistant general manager, knew instantly the Wizards had a chance. All 67 of their combinations had the No. 5 as the lowest digit. There were 11 balls left in the hopper. If the last ball drawn was No. 7, No. 9, No. 10, No. 11, No. 12 or No. 13, the Wizards would get Wembanyama. Eleven balls left; six were winners for Washington.

"Holy s---, we have a chance," Greenberg thought to himself. He hunched over his combination sheets and took a deep breath. Greenberg was well-stocked with lucky charms: his father's lucky coin (a Kona dollar); a replica 1978 Washington Bullets championship ring; and a silver coin inscribed with the Wizards logo and the phrase "game-changer" -- a memento Flip Saunders, the Wizards head coach from 2009-2012, gave to players who made pivotal plays. Greenberg also wore orange socks -- his grandmother's favorite color. (Jon Phelps, the Detroit Pistons senior director of basketball strategy, wore socks with dinosaurs on them -- a gift from his nephew, and the same pair he wore when the Pistons won the 2021 drawing.)

Joel Glass, the Orlando Magic's chief communications officer and drawing room representative, also knew his team had shot: The No. 4 ball would send Wembanyama to Orlando. Glass continued his tradition of bringing the ping pong balls from Orlando's previous lottery wins -- Shaquille O'Neal, the No. 1 pick they turned into Anfernee Hardaway, Dwight Howard and Paolo Banchero last season -- into the drawing room for luck. For the first time, Glass carried them in a small briefcase emblazoned with the Magic logo. It was gently suggested to Glass that needing a suitcase to carry all the franchise's lottery winning balls was perhaps not a great sign.

Glass squinted to see if the last ball showed a single-digit.

Meanwhile, a No. 6 would give the Indiana Pacers the No. 1 pick. "For a short second, it was pure joy," Kevin Pritchard, the Pacers president of basketball operations, told ESPN afterward. A No. 3 ball would have sent Wembanyama to the Portland Trail Blazers.

Then the final ball: No. 2. That disqualified most teams, but Wright wasn't sure if the Spurs owned the winning combination: 14-5-8-2. As Wright scanned those eight pages, Clay Allen, the Houston Rockets general counsel, tapped him: "I think that's you," Wright recalled.

A league official announced that it was indeed the Spurs. Wright barely reacted. He stayed silent and gazed downward until Allen reached over to shake his hand.

"Brian was way too calm," Graham joked afterward. "I mean, come on!"

"I was going to get up and run around the room," Resch said of her plans to celebrate if the Raptors had won. (Resch was the team's drawing room representative when they moved up to No. 4 in the 2021 lottery; she recalled raising her arms and letting out a brief "woop!" Another executive in the room was worried he would scream so loudly if his team won that security would have to subdue him or eject him.)

The drawing was largely anticlimactic after that, with the Charlotte Hornets, Blazers and Rockets claiming picks No. 2-4 in that order. (The NBA actually had to draw seven four-number combinations; the Spurs and Hornets each "won" the No. 4 pick -- the Spurs twice! -- before it finally went to Houston. That is believed to be a record for total drawings in one lottery, league officials said.)

After the drawing, everyone stays in the room for about an hour until the televised reveal is over. No one is allowed to leave. Everyone in the room surrenders their phones, tablets, laptops and smart watches upon entering so that no one can communicate the results to the outside world. The attendees gossip and eat until watching ESPN's lottery broadcast -- the only people alive who know the results already.

Wright sat in his same seat in the front row watching to see the moment the rest of the world would learn the Spurs had won. When that moment came -- when Peter Holt, the Spurs governor, leaped and shouted in joy on the stage, the camera then cutting to an emotional Buford sitting in the ballroom -- Wright tapped his chest twice again.

Buford knows better than most how one player can transform an entire franchise. The Spurs were stuck in the middle for several years after trading Kawhi Leonard in 2018 before making a choice over the last year to go into a full rebuild -- peaking with the June 2022 trade that sent Dejounte Murray to the Atlanta Hawks for three first-round picks.

"We made a decision last summer," Buford told ESPN. "We liked the way this year went for our team. We had good young players getting better. We've seen the impact and transformation that one player can have on a program. We hope we can do everything we can to set another player up for that kind of success."

 

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11 hours ago, Hank_Hill said:

Lol the Rockets thread with the “rigged” comments is fucking gold. Hell yes, I’ve admittedly watched maybe 2 full games since KL left after being glued to most games for most of my memorable life, stoked to bring that back.

I will be honest I have been MIA since dumb ass KL situation went down.  It also hasn't been easy to casually catch their games on TV while living in burbs of Houston.  I haven't even been to a game in years.  The NBA as a whole just hasn't been the same imo.  I heard season tickets going crazy now.  I might hit up the 2 games that they play in Austin this season.

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I’ve already told my son that we will go to the Spurs games in Htown this year. I got home late from the Astros game last night and didn’t even know the lottery was last night. A friend texted me that the Spurs had won and I told my son. He was soooo excited. He can’t wait to see him play and he’s very happy he’s going to be a Spur. Here’s to the next 20 year dynasty!

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10 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


I believe they draw 1-4. Then if you’re jumped you move back. Basically the spurs won the lottery 3 times with ~14% odds each time before Charlotte finally won the second pick

They draw for the first overall pick first, it is a set of four numbers drawn from ping pong balls 1-14.  Every team has a certain list of 1000 number combinations in which they win if drawn. 

Spurs won pick number one, then all fourteen balls are put back in the hopper and they do the same process for picks 2-4.  The spurs number was picked twice again for the fourth overall pick but since they already had number one overall; the process is repeated until an eligible team's number is picked. 

Zach Lowe did a great insider piece on what happened.  The first three numbers for pick the first pick were 14, 5, 8. Houston, San Antonio and Detroit have almost all the number combinations starting with 1 ,2 so 14 being picked first meant almost all the teams still had a shot.  With only 11 numbers left in the hopper for the fourth and final ball, the Wizards owned six of the final 11 possibilities (ORL owned one, Portland owned one, Pacers owned one, Spurs owned one and not clear who the last team with a chance was).  The final number was 2 which the Spurs owned and the rest is history. 

Don't know if the future could be any brighter with the draft picks and cap space this team has.  Go Spurs Go

 

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52 minutes ago, gofuckyourself said:

Absolutely they wanted the Spurs. Diplomacy states they don't say that, overtly, but doubtless.

I mean, the Pistons were in play. And apparently during the actual lottery ball selection, the Wizards had a good chance.

He dodged a Bullet.

ISWYDT

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They need a big body to bang inside. Collins should help, but he's not enough.

Brook Lopez is a free agent. Nicola Vucevic is a free agent. And they do have cap room.

Jakob Poeltl is a also free agent. How hilarious would it be to fleece Toronto for a frp in exchange for a 20 game rental and then re-sign Jakob?

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5 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

They need a big body to bang inside. Collins should help, but he's not enough.

Brook Lopez is a free agent. Nicola Vucevic is a free agent. And they do have cap room.

Jakob Poeltl is a also free agent. How hilarious would it be to fleece Toronto for a frp in exchange for a 20 game rental and then re-sign Jakob?

Poeltl would make a lot more sense than the other two just based on probable cost (Vucevic likely wants 18-25M/yr) and timeline (Lopez is in the wrong half of his 30s for a team still 3 years from contention). I hate him as a focal point of any team, Ayton is a reasonably talented big who's still young enough to develop his game further. And he might be the type of project that the Spurs culture really turns around. I wouldn't hate it if the Spurs used picks and cap space to trade for him. In my fever dream there's a PHX-IND-SA 3-way deal where picks and salary filler go from SA to IND, Turner goes from IND to PHX, and Ayton and cash go from PHX to SA.

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23 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

They need a big body to bang inside. Collins should help, but he's not enough.

Brook Lopez is a free agent. Nicola Vucevic is a free agent. And they do have cap room.

Jakob Poeltl is a also free agent. How hilarious would it be to fleece Toronto for a frp in exchange for a 20 game rental and then re-sign Jakob?

Dylan Disu

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2 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

Absolutely they wanted the Spurs. Diplomacy states they don't say that, overtly, but doubtless.

I mean, the Pistons were in play. And apparently during the actual lottery ball selection, the Wizards had a good chance.

He dodged a Bullet.

ISWYDT

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14 minutes ago, RiverwalkMiner said:

Rocket tears are so salty, perfect for my breakfast tacos this morning. San Antonio Spurs Basketball GIF by NBA

And I almost forgot to add, those prepubescent losers got the #1 pick 4 times in a span of 27 years ('76, '83, '84, and '02). The last 3 were over a span of 20 years and included Ralph Sampson, Akeem Olajuwon and Yao Ming; all HOF'ers. Who the fuck do they think they're kidding? 

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2 hours ago, ZanTheFan said:

Would not hate to see Patty Mills brought back for leadership

Nobody tell kermit I said this

Only half kidding, but I want to run it back with all the talent we let go and surround them with the #1 they needed. Bring back Patty to lead the Spurs way, bring back D White next year. Bring back Poeltl to bang on the inside with Collins. 

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