Jeremy Sochan is ready for the 'frying pan' that awaits him
Barring any last-minute changes, the Spurs' rookie will become the youngest opening-night starter in franchise history when San Antonio takes the floor on Wednesday.
Jeremy Sochan emerged from the locker room at the Spurs’ training facility on Friday more relaxed than you might expect a rookie to be at this juncture. The team had just gone through a long, informal practice, followed by what was apparently a highly educational film session, but his general demeanor gave off the look of someone who’d been through all of this a million times already.
The 19-year-old forward had just wrapped his first preseason as a professional the night before, and had begun to prepare for what is likely to be a spot in San Antonio’s starting lineup when it opens the regular season at home against Charlotte on Wednesday. If he does get the nod from Gregg Popovich, he’d be the youngest opening-night starter in franchise history, but don’t tell Sochan how rare it is for kids to get that sort of immediate playing time under Pop’s watchful eye.
“It’s not like I don’t belong,” Sochan said, hands in the pockets of his colorful sweatshorts. “Personally, I feel like I’ve been doing well.”
A quick glimpse at his preseason numbers might prompt different reactions from some observers, however. Sochan shot just 31 percent from the field in the Spurs’ five warmup games, including 13 percent from deep and 25 percent from the line. But he doesn’t seem fazed by any of it, and neither does anyone around him for that matter. It’s not only that those numbers will eventually come up as he settles into the NBA, but also that scoring was not the reason teams had an eye on Sochan ahead of the draft in the first place.
None of this is to say his shooting isn’t problematic. It’s been a well-known issue for some time now, and both he and his coaches have stressed he’s got to develop his shot going forward. But what earned him his spot as the ninth-overall pick — and now, in an NBA starting lineup — was the idea he could do just about everything else on the floor. The ball-handling, passing, rebounding and defense are already there; the perimeter shot would be icing on the cake.
Sochan is utilizing his Swiss Army Knife skill set to find his way alongside the young veterans on the team. He moves well with or without the ball, has the ability to grab rebounds and lead a fast break, is getting a feel for attacking off the dribble, scraps constantly around the boards, and has allowed the Spurs to execute their newly implemented one-through-four switching scheme defensively. But at this stage he’s playing almost entirely off feel, and as time goes by, his impact will be more and more noticeable.
“I can be more aggressive when I get opportunities to drive and get opportunities for myself to score, and also then kick out,” Sochan said. “But overall, defensively, the speed of the game, the physicality, I think I’m there already. In my eyes, the only way is up, and I can just grow from this.”
Sochan is a natural fiber of connective tissue that inherently makes life easier for all players around him. His ball-handling and high-speed processing allows the offense to play with pace, he offers a pressure-release valve if things break down for San Antonio’s primary scorers, and defensively he acts as a free safety who affords teammates the opportunity to take more risks on the perimeter. On top of that, Sochan made a number of plays out of the dunker spot during the preseason, an area of the floor the Spurs haven’t been able to use to their advantage often in recent years due to their personnel. That added threat of a cutter along the baseline should do wonders for a team that loves the pick-and-roll and dribble-penetration.
“I think he’s meshed well. The way he plays, he’s all over the court. He’s an all-around player and he helps us out on both ends of the floor,” Devin Vassell said after practice Monday. “So whether it’s moving the ball, crashing the glass or getting stops, it’s been helping us.”
And Sochan knows these are the elements of his game that got him here in the first place. The Spurs drafted him because of his versatility — to fit the mold of the type of player with which they’d like to fill this roster — and he’s already got a good feel for the job description.
“I think that’s the best way to get yourself involved with teams. It’s not only scoring. Of course, I’m the rookie, so I’m not going to come in and start taking the ball out of other players’ hands, like Devin (Vassell) and KJ (Johnson) and stuff,” Sochan said. “So it’s just figuring out ways to stay on the court. Doing little things is going to be important for me.”
For now, it’s important to maintain that awareness, as the little things are all the Spurs need from their first-round pick at this stage of development. The preseason schedule did not expose him to the wonders that are Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and whichever other basketball behemoth you’d like to add to this short list. Rough nights lie ahead for Sochan, just as they do for the rest of these young Spurs. But while he’s got all the time in the world to adjust to the NBA, San Antonio is wasting none of it.
“You’ve got to give him some space and let him make some mistakes and take time to feel comfortable on both ends of the court, but it’s a whole new world for him,” Pop said. “He’s got all the tools to do very well there, so we just want to throw him in the frying pan and see how he does.”
The last time Popovich threw a teenager into the fire this early in his career, Tony Parker not only survived after being named a starter for the fifth game of his rookie season, he eventually thrived. But the circumstances now are quite different than they were in 2001, when San Antonio needed an early spark to ignite what they had hoped at the time would be another title run. Now, there is very little pressure, and there certainly are no real stakes, but the Spurs hope the end game — however many years down the road that might be — is the same nonetheless.
In small-market San Antonio, the best path toward a return to sustained excellence is constructing a roster from the bottom floor. With Sochan joining the likes of Johnson and Vassell in the starting lineup, and fellow teenager Joshua Primo complementing them off the bench, another building block is being added to the foundation of a rebuild the Spurs hope will lead them back to where they once were — a time and place that, for the moment, feels very distant. But all they can do right now is continue to move forward, piece by piece.
“We want to feed him with a garden hose, not a fireman’s hose,” Popovich said recently of Primo — a metaphor he could just as easily have used for any of his young players. San Antonio is not going to rush any of part of this process, but it is no longer going to delay the inevitable. For Sochan, the firsthand NBA experience starts now.