Man, I don’t know if Chet insulted Rudy’s mom, or if gobert is tired of seen Chet sap rookie of the Year energy away from his favorite basketball son/protege in Vic but mannn has he gone after Chet on both ends tonight.

We have Vic , a ton of future pics, and some interesting other young guys. We don’t deserve much sympathy. We are in a better spot then most teams at this stage in a rebuild.

As a Spurs fan who grew up spoiled, I’m so damn happy for King’s fans this season. Well last season too. Lived in Sacramento for a bit and that city has always supported them even through the endless sucking and that is always awesome to see a fan base ride and die with their guys.

It absolutely is. Pops even said that they’re barely even running plays for him yet. They’re going to wait until they’ve got enough film showing where he struggles and suces naturally without coach interference before they start. Trying to actually structure the roster, and a game plan, around him moving forward. It’s a smart plan considering they have no chance of making the playoffs anyway.

No people would much rather bash one of the greatest coaches of all time and wish for Victor to be catching an extra two to three lobs a game in places like Charlotte or Detroit, who, as we all know, have a storied recent history of developing stars…

Dejounte Murray, Derek White, and keldon Johnson were all drafted at 29. All three of them great between high level rotation player to borderline All-Star, to actual all-star. Devin Versailles drafted outside the top 10 and definitely goes top six in a redraft. Guys like Jones probably go borderline lottery and he was a second round pick.

Spurs consistently punch above their weight when it comes to draft talent and developing on heralded players and now they actually have a heavy heading draft selection to work with.

I mean sure, maybe it would be a better spot for his rookie counting stats. What reasons you have to believe that Charlotte is going to be better at developing him than a team like the Spurs who have a track record of taking guys drafted in the late teens and 20s and turning them into borderline all stars pretty consistently.

Sample size. I will eat a shoe if those numbers are still similar by the end of the year. The three-point shooting will go down and the free throw shooting will go up and even out a bit

I think they will. I think right now they’re really interested in seeing what parts of the game victor most enjoys and feels comfortable with more than worrying about his on court success. I read an article a few days ago kind of breaking down pop’s process on it which was interesting. About how they’ve kind of just instructed the team to get him the ball when he calls for it and let him do what he thinks is best for him and the team. And they’ve been taking notes on the things that they do like, things they don’t like, places where he succeeds, and the parts of the game he struggles in. I think when they have a bit of a better idea of how they wanted to develop him, if he should be in the post, the high post, on the perimeter etc. Etc. They’ll start making more investments both in running set plays for him as well as the roster.

I really hope the Spurs managed to get Nikola topic in the draft. I think he’s one of the better passing prospects of the last decade and would be an incredible fit with the nucleus of Victor, Jeremy, Devin

He’s definitely still had his highlight moments in pretty much every game. The Spurs have just been pretty bad so I don’t think as many non-spurs, fans are really tuning in.

Plus people are starting to get a bit more used to some of the stuff he does (like the fade away jumpers, step back three, or lob catches that his teammates wayyyy over threw) and not as excited about it.

He’s also had a few games where he’s looked like a 19-year-old rookie with tons of talent but very little idea of how to use it, on a team as a whole that’s struggling to understand how to use him so far. He has taken his lumps early which is to be expected.

Which of course in the world of rational take reddit means he isn’t that good, and a lot of people have moved on to loving or hating something else already.

I believe he’s averaging something close to 10 points per game in the fourth quarter so far this season. The kid really just looks like a completely different player towards the end of games. His focus is much sharper, he doesn’t rush things. Offensively, and defensively he’s way more patient.

On one hand the stage is definitely set for him to have a shot. The Spurs wore not only the 30th ranked defense in the league, they spent the vast majority of the year as one of the bottom five defenses in NBA history by pretty much every metric.

With him being the only major addition to the team, if they were to make a massive leap, say around 15-10th in defensive rating and did so while he put up really good shot blocking numbers. The narrative would definitely be there

On the other hand, It can’t be overstated how terrible the spurs were on defense last year. It seems extremely unlikely they will finish near the top 10, even though they definitely will improve, and if Victor is putting up crazy block numbers But the team is still bad to mediocre on the defensive side. There’s no way he wins the award.

I can’t possibly see him Only averaging 1.2 blocks though the rest of your numbers seem pretty in line with what I think could be possible. If he’s getting close to 30 minutes of games though, he’s easily going to clear two blocks. He’s just an absolute freak of nature in that regard

His 3-point numbers last season are a bit misleading. If you just look at catch and shoot opportunities he was around 34% on pretty good volume. While that’s nothing spectacular for a 18/19-year-old playing in a extremely physical league where perimeter play is more difficult. That’s promising

It was the step back and pull up three point numbers that killed him. He shot around 20% on those shots and he took quite a few of them. He was given a lot of leeway to experiment and call his own number last season. I expect the Spurs will rain in some of his liberal decision making when it comes to when to shoot threes. His release looks really good

A lot of people who criticized his three-point shooting didn’t look a lot of the context too. He took a lot of very… Experimental shots in Europe. His spot up numbers were solid. It was his off the dribble and pull up three point. Looks where he struggled. The extra spacing combined with him getting more spot up opportunities is really going to help him this year