El Conclusión: Wemby-mania, Dev's leap, and Tre's surge
Plus, two players bounce back from benchings, and we actually got another Mamu game.
Welcome back to La El Conclusión: a weekly recap in which a somewhat-educated basketball writer grades the performances of highly educated professional basketball players. It’s perfectly irresponsible.
“El Conclusión” is a play off one of Manu Ginóbili’s nicknames, “El Contusión.” The correct article would be ‘La,’ but we just wanted to keep with the spirit of the name!
Also, we grade on curves for these players, as not everyone is created equal. Just FYI.
Victor Wembanyama
22.3 pts, 12.0 reb, 4.7 ast, 1.7 stl, 4.7 blk | 48.9 FG%, 47.1 3P% | + 5.7 in 31.2 mpg
Among the accomplishments and benchmarks Vic is achieving on a seemingly nightly basis — in the last two weeks alone, he’s become the first player to ever average a 5x5 during a two-game stretch, and he became the first player to ever record at least 25 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, five blocks and five 3-pointers made in a single game on Thursday — one of the more promising developments for both the Spurs and their fans is the increase in minutes we’ve seen lately.
Wembanyama has played the entirety of the fourth quarter in each of his last two games, and we obviously saw how critical he was down the stretch of San Antonio’s win over Oklahoma City. But I do wonder, as his minutes continue to increase, if they’ll the coaching staff will look to balance out the rotations a bit more — seven- or eight-minute stretches rather than five- or six-minute stints. Because I don’t believe they want to play him all 12 minutes of the final period. Well, I mean, of course they want to play him as much as humanly possible, but we’re just being realistic here…
Grade: A- (Again, perhaps a criminally high standard at this point, but we’re talking about the whole week. Had a rough go from a shooting perspective in Minnesota and averaged nearly four turnovers per game over the last three. His game was MUCH tighter against the Thunder, but the giveaways are still an issue he needs to control on a more consistent basis.)
Devin Vassell
25.3 pts, 6.0 reb, 6.7 ast, 1.3 stl, 1.7 blk | 54.4 FG%, 40.9 3P% | -2.3 in 37.1 mpg
This is the kind of box-score stuffing many of the most ardent Vassell supporters expected to see more frequently coming into the season. He’s scoring at all three levels, ironing out the two-man relationship with Wemby, and using the gravity he possesses to find teammates for scoring opportunities. And he had to do some heavy lifting, too, as several of his key teammates did not help the way they normally do during the final two games of the Rodeo Road Trip.
I’ve seen and heard the sentiment that there isn’t much to learn the rest of the way, that we already know what these guys are at this point. There’s at least some truth to that, but 20+ games remaining is a big enough sample size for young players who have spent the majority of the season adjusting to playing off this generationally unique centerpiece to prove more. If Vassell can hang above the 20/5/5 range on good efficiency, it would be a very promising sign.
Oh and one more thing: Dev is starting to look like the defender we saw before he started to get banged up. The steals, the recovery blocks, the “gimme that shit” yells as he pins shots against the backboard — it’s all making a comeback.
Grade: A (Hell of a week, but much like Victor, the turnover count was just too high. Also like Victor, you’d expect him to have some given his usage rate, but 3.3 turnovers per game is a bit much. He’s also GOT to get to the line more often. Nobody is expecting him to be prime James Harden with the foul-drawing, but he’s got to figure out a way to get to the line more than 2.7 times a night over a three-game stretch. It would be so beneficial for everyone involved.)
Jeremy Sochan
7.3 pts, 4.7 reb, 1.3 ast, 2 stl | 38.1 FG%, 37.5 3P% | -4.0 in 25.7 mpg
Sochan was bizarrely uninvolved against the Jazz last Sunday, and his poor play and lack of energy forced Gregg Popovich to bench him in the second half of Tuesday’s game against the ‘Wolves. But he responded Thursday against the Thunder with opportunistic scoring, rebounding, 3-point shooting, and great individual defense on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in San Antonio’s best win of the season.
Grade: B- (That performance against OKC was the perfect bounce-back, and exactly the kind of thing you want to see from a 20-year-old who had just been thrown in timeout for minute. When Sochan is that active, playing that intelligently on defense against one of the league’s craftiest players, and confidently stepping into his shot, it elevates this young team to a different level.
Keldon Johnson
10.0 pts, 2.7 reb, 2.7 ast | 37.0 FG%, 38.9 3P% | -0.3 in 23.1 mpg
While the exact reasoning for Keldon’s benching against the Jazz wasn’t specified, any time you hear the San Antonio coaching staff talk about “repetitive mistakes,” it’s generally in reference to the defensive side of the ball. And when you consider he was pulled immediately following an egregious error on that side of the ball, it’s pretty easy to arrive at that conclusion anyway.
Popovich said on Thursday he was pleased with the way Johnson responded to the discipline handed down, and while he’ll never be a great defender, he can be a valuable asset against bigger scoring threats. Take for example Jalen Williams, who was scoring on basically anyone who defended him not named Keldon. In 22.7 partial possessions of matchup data, Williams scored just once on only three attempts when being defended by Johnson, and it was efforts like these that stood out:
Not only does he get over the screen, filter Williams toward Wemby and disrupt the dribble, but he bodies up Holmgren on his drive after the switch and buys enough time for Victor to recover and help. And all this allows the defense to execute its rotations on the back end. This is the kind of stuff they want to see more often.
Grade: C+ (Though there have been positive signs post-benching, it wasn’t a great week for Johnson offensively. Even if you look back at his 20-point game in Minnesota, you’ll notice 15 of them came in the fourth quarter when the game was already out of hand and not even a furious comeback got them close enough to make the threat real. But bench roles can be tricky when you’d become so accustomed to a starting job, and it often seems like Keldon is still trying to find his rhythm from game to game.)
Tre Jones
14.3 pts, 5.7 reb, 7.7 ast, 3.0 TOs | 80 FG%, 70 3P% | +4.0 in 30.7 mpg
Jones is on an absolute heater from the floor right now. You can see the stats from the week above, but on the season he’s now shooting 68.5 percent at the rim (excellent), 45.1 percent on runners (good), and 32 percent from the 3-point line (good for Tre!). That’s on top of his 4.0 assist-to-turnover ratio.
He’s obviously not going to sustain the numbers he put up this week, but he’s shown all year his finishing has improved and he’s got that floater in the short mid-range working really well. Now let’s see if he can keep that 3-point percentage in the 30s for the rest of the season.
Grade: A (Damn close to an A+, but that six-turnover game against the Timberwolves was impossible to ignore. Super uncharacteristic, but still can’t look past it.)
Malaki Branham
10.7 pts, 2.0 reb, 1.7 ast | 50.0 FG%, 40.0 3P% | -7.0 in 22.8 mpg
It didn’t take long for teams to start chasing Branham off the 3-point line again, and now he’s having to readjust to scoring opportunities off the dribble. But overall, he’s put together a nice string of play dating all the way back to the Dallas game just before the All-Star break, something that should be sustainable considering we saw consistency from him during big chunks of last year.
The big test is going to be how he deals with physicality on both sides of the ball. We already know defense can be a problem (even though he has responded pretty well to Pop’s challenge earlier this season), but we saw against the Thunder it can be an issue offensively as well. When Malaki has space, he can hurt you; but when defenders get up into him the way OKC did, he can struggle against the pressure. Being stronger with the ball is the next step in his development.
Grade: B- (Fell off a bit this week but it’s all relative considering the scorcher he was on previously. Considering his shot diet it’s unlikely Branham will ever be a guy who shoots like 48 percent from the floor overall, but you’d like to see him get closer to the 50-percent mark on 2s more consistently. Just for reference, he shot 54 percent from inside the arc last season. His job as to score off the bench, so it’s important he does so efficiently considering he’s not really a guy who gets to the line.)
Zach Collins
11.7 pts, 4.7 reb, 3.7 ast | 48.3 FG%, 66.7 3P% | -10.3 in 16.8 mpg
Little by little we’re seeing more evidence of a Collins redemption storyline. First, the 3 started falling again on very controlled volume, and then he put together one of his best two-way performances of the season against the Thunder.
He didn’t play a ton of minutes with Wembanyama eating up the entire fourth quarter, but he gave up just two made shots on eight attempts as the primary defender in the area, and both of them were on 3-point closeouts. Perhaps even more important than that, he didn’t commit a single shooting foul.
Grade: B (Ironically, as his 3-pointer has made a return, his inside game saw a bit of a dip over the last week. It didn’t help that he had to deal with Walker Kessler, Rudy Gobert and Chet Holmgren during this stretch, three of the best rim-protectors in the league, but that had been his strength this season. Once he puts both areas of his game together at once we’ve got something to talk about again. He was also a bit turnover-happy last week, but outside of the OKC game it felt like everyone was. If Collins is right, he has a chance to do some real damage against second units.)
Julian Champagnie
5.0 pts, 3.7 reb, 2.0 ast, 1.0 stl, 1.0 blk | 33.3 FG%, 20.0 3P% | +5.3 in 19.0 mpg
I’ve loved Champ’s activity and physicality on both sides of the ball, and he remains San Antonio’s most underrated defender — he just cannot get past the streakiness in his shooting. He remains a threat when he’s chasing space and cutting off other players, because defenses have to respect him. But until the cold spells from the perimeter become a thing of the past, that starting group is going to lack that ‘icing on the cake’ guy for the rest of the year.
Grade: C+ (I feel like a middle-of-the-road grade is appropriate given his defensive impact, and as you can see the Spurs were better than their opponent when he was on the floor over the last week. Watch, this week he’s gonna shoot like 45 percent from the 3-point line. It’s how his rollercoaster ride operates.)
Cedi Osman
5.3 pts, 1.0 reb, 1.3 ast | 42.9 FG%, 44.4 3P% | -10.0 in 17.2 mpg
Quiet week for Cedi, and it feels like he’s been trending down a bit over the last few weeks. He’s not getting to the rim as much, not activating as often in transition, and his 3-point attempts have dropped off. Although one thing that continues to be funny: It seems like he hits the first 3 he takes in damn near every game he plays. Then from there all bets are off. I’m not even gonna go look it up, I’m just going to say he does.
Grade: C- (Despite the +/- numbers, which are not good but generally just a byproduct of the team’s overall bench quality relative to its opponents’ reserve groups, he still doesn’t do things that hurt the team even when he’s not playing well. But you want to see him more involved the way he had been the first half of the season, when he would at least rack up rebound or assist numbers when he wasn’t scoring.)
Sandro Mamukelashvili
8.0 pts, 1.0 reb, 1.0 ast, 2.0 stl | 80.0 FG% | +8.0 in 13.9 mpg
You’ve gotta love Mamu. He rarely plays, but any time he’s called upon to reinvigorate a stale offense he almost always responds. That comeback bid against Utah had as much to do with him jumpstarting the proceedings by pushing the pace and running the two-man game with Collins as it did anyone else, and he deserves the recognition. Considering how many games the Spurs have played this season where they found themselves going stagnant, you wonder sometimes why Pop hasn’t pulled this card a bit more often. He’s a defensive liability, and I know they want to give reps to the youngest of their youngsters, but still…
Grade: A (I can’t give him the top grade because you can’t ignore the defensive errors, but for one night we got vintage Mamu — or at least as vintage as a Mamu performance can be.
Blake Wesley
0.7 pts, 1.3 reb, 2.0 ast | 0.0 FG%, 0.0 3P% | -7.0 in 11.7 mpg
Blake has hit some kind of wall here recently. He hasn’t been a threat to score, he hasn’t been quite as disruptive defensively, and he really just looks like a placeholder for like 12 minutes a night. We know the aggressiveness is there, he just needs to tap back into it.
Grade: D+ (It’s all part of the learning process, but at least he’s still playing sound defense, looking for teammates, starting to figure out the pick-and-roll a little bit, and most importantly, he’s taking care of the ball. It could be worse for a guy who didn’t make a field goal all week.)
