As I detailed a few weeks back, I’m re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Or something like that.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows (with links for completed posts):
So without further ado, let’s wrap things up with the San Antonio Spurs.
Victor Wembanyama, no limit
As everybody and their mother has said countless times, we have never seen a player like this before. It was apparent from the first time he stepped on the court — and well before that, if you were a prospect-watcher.
The league has been hunting like crazy for players who can both protect the rim on one end and space defenders away from it on the other. Wemby already became the best rim-protector in the league over the second half of his rookie season. Yes, better than even Rudy Gobert. He was spooking the ever-living shit out of players who ventured anywhere close to the paint, and for good reason. (Go watch the video in that link. It’s hilarious.)
There is just no precedent for a guy who is 7-foot-4 with an 8-foot wingspan and who moves the way he does. He is going to absolutely shatter block records to the point that they are unrecognizable. His 10% block rate last year has been exceeded only four times in NBA history — all by Manute Bol. Post All-Star, he spiked to 10.8%, which would be the highest of all time. He already joined Ben Wallace, Marcus Camby, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only players to average at least 3.5 blocks and a steal per game, and only Robinson and Olajuwon as guys who exceeded 4 blocks and 1.5 steals per 36 minutes.
And again, it’s not like he’s just racking up stats. Dudes are PETRIFIED of going anywhere near him in the lane. If anything, the steal and block numbers might actually underrate his defensive impact because they don’t capture the sheer volume of attempts he prevents from ever happening in the first place nor the number of drives he redirects just by standing in the vicinity of the paint.
His outside shot was offline for much of last season, but we know he can rip the nets. He did it in Europe and he's a good free-throw shooter. He subsisted largely on self-created attempts from beyond the arc, hoisting some of the most difficult shots in the league. He had the fourth-lowest expected effective field-goal percentage on threes among the 270 players who took 100 or more, per Second Spectrum, and a self-creation rate on those attempts on par with guards like Collin Sexton, Tyler Herro, and Malik Monk. If allowed to take more catch-and-shoot attempts this season, his percentage should spike.
But he should also become more effective as a solo creator. His combination of size and ball skills is, again, nigh unheard of, and his shot is essentially impossible to block. His post-up efficiency spiked from 0.839 points per possession on plays where either he or a teammate one pass away shot, drew a foul, or turned the ball over before the All-Star break to 1.048 per possession after it. The same thing happened on isolations (0.807 to 1.093), on pick and rolls where he was the ball-handler (0.798 to 0.974), and on drives to the basket (0.816 to 0.990). There is no reason to suspect that he won’t get even better in those areas — especially if he doesn’t have to access them as his only way to create shots.
Speaking of which…
CP3, schooling
Here are a few relevant points from the post I wrote this summer about Chris Paul’s potential effect on Wemby this season.
First, on shot quality:
He generates efficient looks for centers at a rate that is matched by almost nobody else in the league, while Wemby last season had guards who generated some of the lowest-quality looks in the NBA for him.
Second Spectrum tracks a stat called quantified shot quality (qSQ), which is essentially the expected effective field goal percentage of a shot attempt, based on shot location, defender location, and several other factors. Last season, Wembanyama ranked 145th out of 192 qualified players in qSQ on potentially-assisted shots (i.e. those created by a teammate). He ranked 25th out of the 30 centers on the same list.
Compare those figures with CP3’s teammates: In 2023-24, Paul’s passes to Warriors centers generated the fourth-best qSQ (aka the fourth-highest-quality shot attempts) among the 112 players who set up at least 50 shots for a center. And over the last five years combined, his passes ranked FIRST out of the 75 players who generated at least 100 shots for centers. In other words, as previously stated, there is essentially nobody better than Chris Paul at getting the best out of centers.
Next, on pick and rolls:
And finally, on post-ups:
During his rookie season, 29.7% of Wemby’s post-ups originated with a touch in the paint, according to Second Spectrum. That was a bit above the league average. But over the last five years, an incredible FORTY POINT FOUR PERCENT of Chris Paul’s teammates’ post-ups originated in the paint, when Paul was on the court. Simply put, he is elite at getting his big men the best position possible to score on the block.
And obviously, paint post-ups much more valuable than those that start outside the key. Again, according to Second Spectrum, post-ups that started in the paint generated 1.114 points per possession last season, while those that started outside the paint were at 1.004 per possession. Getting the ball as close to the basket as possible matters a whole heck of a lot, and Paul will make that task easier for Wemby. He always, always, always does, even in this advanced stage of his career.
There are going to be so many more easy looks available to Wemby than there were last year, which is honestly pretty terrifying. Beyond that, there is just so much for him to soak up from CP in terms of his knowledge and approach. Just about everyone who has been Paul’s teammate has come away from the experience a better, more mature player than they were before. Again, this is just a terrifying prospect for the rest of the league.
Youth, served
Contrary to the impression with which the previous two sections might leave you, Wemby is actually not the only player on this team. Not the only one worth paying attention to, either. The Spurs might not yet be ready to truly compete (they can maybe make a run at a play-in spot), but there are some pieces here that carry varying levels of intrigue.
Devin Vassell went to Florida State and is therefore terrible, but he’s actually good at basketball. I'm intrigued specifically by the development he's made as a playmaker over the years, with his assist rate jumping from 7.1% to 9.7% to 17.3% and finally to 19.1% a year ago. He probably won't be back on the court until November, but this is the type of wing player you want working with Wembanyama. He can carry secondary usage, act as a secondary playmaker, hound opposing ball-handlers on the opposite end of the floor, and just generally muck shit up.
I understood the theory behind sending Keldon Johnson to the bench last season, but I'm not sure how much I like how it worked in practice. Johnson himself didn’t really get that much more opportunity when coming off the pine, and the lineup with Johnson on the floor with the rest of the starters (Wembanyama, Vassell, Tre Jones, and Jeremy Sochan) in place of Justin Champagnie actually out-performed the one that had Johnson out of the game. Johnson sat out the preseason game along with the rest of the presumed starters (Wemby, CP3, Vassell, Sochan) against Houston on Thursday, while Champagnie and Harrison Barnes played in it, so perhaps Johnson is getting back with the first unit this year.
The Sochan-as-point-guard experiment is probably over, but entrusting him with so much playmaking duty should nonetheless help him as his career moves along. We need to see if he’ll ever be able to shoot but he makes a ton of sense as a mobile, versatile defender alongside Wembanyama and that makes me think we’ll see quite a bit of that pairing over the next couple years before the Spurs have to decide whether to keep Sochan around long term.
And then there’s No. 4 overall pick Stephon Castle, who is just a fascinating player and prospect. He's one of those guys who just makes stuff happen when he's on the floor, and can do pretty much anything you ask him to. (Josh Hart was among his closest comparables in the bSPARQ Athletic Similarity Scores, which I found incredibly appropriate.) He can play either spot on the wing. He can function as your backup point guard or a secondary ball-handler. He has fantastic size and should be able to defend any position on the perimeter. He landed in as good a spot as any for a player who needs to hammer out his jumper to truly maximize his ceiling as a player, and to minimize his relative weaknesses as a self-creator.
Wemby with three good to great passers in the same line up? And a solid bench? Dare we dream play-in? Top six even?