Offseason preview, Part 1: A quick vacation, then it's back to work for these roster locks
A fully secured job is a rarity for players whose team is in this stage of a rebuilding process, but these guys certainly have one. For now.
Offseason vacation doesn’t last long in the NBA. Playing professional basketball is a year-round occupation, especially when you’re in the early stages of development like most of these Spurs. There isn’t much time to rest when a job is this demanding.
But they’ll all take a break, at least for a couple of weeks.
For Gregg Popovich it’ll be the usual, “travel, restaurants, walking through cities like New York,” before getting back into the normal summertime basketball flow, which includes the draft lottery and a trip to Summer League.
“Oh yeah, they have good restaurants in Vegas,” he made sure to add when asked if he’d be in attendance.
Keldon Johnson, on the other hand, will just be looking for a little peace and quiet. The Spurs’ leading scorer had to handle a substantial workload during a difficult year — something Popovich said he did “magnificently” — and now it’s time for the country-boy-turned-hooper (or vice-versa) to unwind.
“Probably spend time with my family, my dogs, my animals on my farm, then get back on the grind in a couple of weeks,” he said. “I’d probably be a farmer [if not an NBA player]. I’d probably have my ranch, I’d probably get another ranch, a lot of animals, and I’d just take care of them.
“I feel like animals are gonna love you every day, regardless of what you do that day. Humans? Not so much. I’ve got horses, cows, goats and I’m working on a chicken coop now.”
And that grind of which Johnson spoke is right around the corner, in a closed gym, away from the cameras, microphones and media availabilities. Sure, he’ll have to interact with humans again, but they’ll mostly all be on his side.
It’s during this part of the year when players have the most time to put in the individual work, and when San Antonio returns to the practice facility in the coming weeks, it won’t just be to dribble and shoot. Every player will enter a training program designed specifically for them, with focuses on everything from rehab and development, to improving strength, foot speed and leaping ability — the stuff the NBA calendar affords very little time to address.
Fortunately for the Spurs, nearly everyone is at a manageable level of health. And Charles Bassey, who suffered a non-displaced patella fracture to his left knee, did not require surgery and is on the mend. The majority of the roster is ready to roll in the months ahead, which was the ultimate goal.
For all the handwringing over the lineups San Antonio was throwing on the court during the final weeks of the season, this was the best possible outcome for the team. Not only did it secure the best odds for the top pick in June’s NBA Draft — something every single social-media account on the planet meticulously tracked with each injury report that was released — but it made it to mid-April with everyone’s bones and soft tissue mostly intact.
Few things are more valuable than game action and the experience it offers young players. But individual offseason programs are vital to development, and the Spurs did everything they could to provide the right balance. Make no mistake, the tank started the minute San Antonio traded Dejounte Murray last summer and didn’t make any subsequent moves to upgrade, but by the end of a losing season it was all about maintaining the health of its roster. Any further damage done to key players who were already less than 100 percent would’ve been killer.
“There are legitimate medical reasons why some guys aren’t playing very much at the end of the year. Other teams make their own decisions,” Popovich said. “I would love for Jeremy (Sochan) to be playing in these games, I would love for Devin (Vassell) to be playing in these games. But at this point, where they are at with their injuries, it just doesn’t make sense to go out and get it hurt and to exacerbate what they already have and then to not have them for training all summer long for next year.”
And it isn’t just the players who benefit from good health heading into the offseason. A clean slate gives the front office a much easier runway to navigate.
It wasn’t just a season of development for the Spurs. With all the injuries and countless different lineup combinations, it was also one that lent itself to widespread experimentation. On the whole, 23 different players suited up in silver and black this year, the most for any single season in franchise history with the exception of the COVID-stricken 2021-22 campaign (24 players), when teams were allowed multiple hardship exceptions in response to strict health and safety protocols.
By the end they’d whittled it down to a competitive group that, despite clearly struggling against teams with superior talent, had found some traction and chemistry with one another. San Antonio wasn’t simply rolling the ball out and letting the guys play; it clearly had a structure in place for each game, which is something that will further assist the staff in identifying who can be part of this rebuild process moving forward.
“Constant evaluation — who can learn, who can’t learn, who learns from their mistakes, how people reacted to their teammates, how they react to winning and losing. It was constant evaluation every day, and we were talking about that with our group,” Popovich said during exit interviews. “It’s not all inclusive right now, but we know the majority of those people we want to move on with, for sure.”
By all accounts from players, coaches and staff, the team that finished the season was full of guys who got along, who were good teammates, who played hard — all that kind of stuff. So attempting to single out “who can’t learn” would just be a guessing game. But from financial and positional standpoints, breaking down what the roster might look like at the beginning of next season is a bit easier.
Keep in mind, there is always the possibility of a trade — an ever-present element of a rebuild — but let’s start with players who at least appear to be locks to return.
There’s a lot to talk about with every player listed below, but we’ll get into some deeper individual dives over the summer. For now let’s keep this roundup brief, or whatever my definition of “brief” is.
Keldon Johnson
Johnson’s four-year, $74-million extension ($80 million if unlikely incentives are met) kicks in next year season, barring any big summer move from the Spurs, his role within this rebuild is going to be further defined.
It was a weird year in some ways for the de facto face of this young team. The tape showed a player who clearly improved in a handful of ways — attacking the rim, drawing and finishing through contact, shot creation in the short mid-range, playmaking, pick-and-roll ball-handling — but the efficiency numbers were all over the place thanks to major struggles from the perimeter.
The 3-point shot that arrived during the 2021-22 season appeared even further developed to start the 2022-23 campaign (42.3 percent through the first 14 games), only to almost completely abandon him at times over the course of the year. Johnson finished 32.9 percent from deep on 6.5 attempts per game, and friends, that just ain’t it. His form became inconsistent, and while there were some nights the shot looked fluid and confident, all too often it felt like he was just out there chucking.
It led to some ugly outings, even when other areas of his game were clicking. Johnson shot 52.3 percent on 2-pointers this season, but when that type of efficiency inside the arc is accompanied by a 1-for-10 performance from deep, the impact is largely washed away.
Keldon’s effectiveness as a player is going to come down to his outside shot. For all the improvements he’s made as a paint scorer and as a passer, it’s the 3-pointer that elevates his game to the next level. Without it, his ceiling becomes significantly lower. Regardless of who the Spurs draft, Johnson is going to be the recipient of easier off-ball opportunities moving forward, and he’s got to be able to make the most out of them.
(And just one more note: I try to stay away from the body stuff — I, too, absolutely need to get in the gym — but it’s going to be imperative for Johnson to head into training camp the way he did last fall after trimming 21 pounds during the offseason. The difference in his burst and agility was noticeable early in the year, and for a guy who isn’t one of the league’s more talented shot creators or physically gifted perimeter defenders, that additional athleticism was a boon to his nightly potential on both sides of the ball. Keldon is just naturally a big dude, so it’s going to take a little extra work. But it makes such an obvious difference.)
Devin Vassell
Vassell is in line to get a major salary bump this summer, when he’s expected to sign his rookie-scale extension. The Spurs have until the start of the 2023-24 season to lock him up for the future, but recent history tells us the team will likely try and move quickly to secure the soon-to-be-fourth-year guard before moving on to other offseason tasks.
Last summer, Johnson and San Antonio agreed to a deal just two weeks after Murray was moved. The Spurs showed an immediate commitment to this young group after dealing their All-Star point guard, and Vassell is one of that group’s most important pieces. And while the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement hasn’t quite yet been finalized, its rules stipulate San Antonio will be able to offer Vassell five years rather than the maximum of four previously allowed for players who weren’t signing max extensions.
By the way, I’m going to dive further into the new CBA once it officially comes out in writing, because there have been some adjustments that should prove beneficial to the Spurs.
There is always the chance he wants to wait and see how the market plays out — there were some BIG rookie extensions signed just weeks prior to the 2022-23 season, well after Keldon agreed to his deal — but the Spurs would surely like to get busy with negotiations as soon as possible, so long as they’re confident in Vassell’s health.
His season has been well-documented. Nagging left-knee soreness eventually led to arthroscopic surgery in early January, cutting into what had been a very promising start to his third NBA season despite the injury. He was aggressively attacking the rim, showing off new-found playmaking chops, and flashing some late-game isolation scoring sequences that had everyone and their dog screaming for him to see more touches.
Still, the knee thing clearly bothered him. Despite the spike in offensive output, his defense really suffered along with basically the entire team. He just wasn’t moving the same prior to getting surgery, and even though he had some moments upon his return, his legs and his confidence just weren’t there on a nightly basis.
But the Spurs don’t seem concerned about his knee going forward, and neither does he. So long as he’s healthy, there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic about Vassell’s future.
Getting a read on his potential future salary is tricky given the context of his season, but one can safely assume Vassell will get the kind of number Johnson did, at the very least, and potentially a bit more. He is the Spurs’ most talented and versatile offensive player, likely with the potential upside of a No. 2 option on a good team in the future. But that’s all theoretical at this point, and he’s got a long way to go before he proves he can be that type of player on a consistent basis.
San Antonio has confidence he can be, though, and a front-loaded salary in the range of $18-20 million annually wouldn’t be surprising in the least. Even with an injury-shortened season still visible in the rearview.
The rookie class
There isn’t much to tackle here. All three first-round picks are entering the second year of their rookie-scale contracts, and barring any trades, will be active participants in July’s Las Vegas Summer League.
Sochan had a hell of an introduction to the NBA, starting from Day 1 and improving on seemingly a nightly basis. He was everything the Spurs expected out of the ninth pick in the draft, and he became a sort of cult hero in San Antonio from the jump. More critically from a roster-building aspect, Sochan showed he could be something of a positional (or position-less) chameleon.
He’s most natural in the front-court but demonstrated a capacity for handling the ball and initiating offense that should give the Spurs reason to believe he’ll be able to float around any type of lineup construction. Now, it’s all about developing an outside shot. That alone is the dynamite that could blow the roof off his potential ceiling, but he’s got miles to go before defenses start to respect it.
Malaki Branham’s season was almost the inverse of Sochan’s, whose campaign was cut short by a lingering muscle injury in his quad and subsequent knee pain after a strong first half. Branham, meanwhile, spent many of his early Spurs days in Austin before getting more and more opportunity during Vassell’s injury absence and following the trade of Josh Richardson. And he really burst onto the scene.
His old-school game seemed to pop in the Spurs’ system, and he demonstrated a maturity in understanding how to get to his spots you rarely see from teenagers. But the most impressive development might have come on the defensive end. It is an almost impossible task to break down the defensive performance of any individual Spur after what was a dreadful season on that side of the ball, but players and coaches alike continued to bring up Branham’s improvement down the stretch.
More often than not he was the guy matched up with the opposition’s best offensive option throughout games, and considering defense was one of his biggest question marks last summer, there’s some real evidence of this kid becoming a much more complete player than his draft stock might otherwise suggest.
In an alternate reality, Blake Wesley could’ve potentially had a year more like the one Branham had. He immediately slid into the backup point guard role following the Joshua Primo debacle just a few weeks into the season, engines revved and ready to attack. Then BOOM, torn MCL just one game later. That eliminated months of training and development, and by the time he was able to fully return to the court, it was apparent he was behind.
I don’t necessarily want to compare the two — Branham is a much more polished player, where Wesley was always the rawer prospect — but there’s some wiggle room to do so. We saw the speed and burst, the disruptive defensive potential and the knack for getting downhill and making plays, but it all came in flashes. These summer months are going to be huge for Wesley, who still needs to refine his shot and has to figure out how to avoid shot-blockers at the rim. Those two areas of his game were among the most criticized coming out of Notre Dame, and each carried over into his injury-shortened rookie campaign. Consistency and awareness, as well as adding some shot-creation tricks to his bag, will be the name of the game for him moving forward.
Zach Collins
The writing is already on the wall for Collins. The only question that remains is whether it’s in pencil or ink.
“He had a great year after sitting out those two years, and then spending a lot of that time rehabbing and getting a rhythm back. And also getting confidence back in his feet so that he’s not worried about injury. He’s playing with abandon now. He’s added the 3-point shot to his game, he’s balanced better on the post, and he’s playing good defense. He’s made it. He’s going to be the guy at the ‘five’ for us. And the fact he can shoot it, and has gained confidence in that, makes him that much more dangerous.”
Collins shot 37.4 percent from the 3-point line this season on 147 attempts, defended 48.5 percent of all shots taken at the basket while he was on the floor, and allowed his man to shoot just 57.5 percent at the rim.
He was the only player in the league to put up those specific numbers (>500 minutes, >37 3P%, >100 3PA, >48% frequency of shots at rim defended, <58 dFG% on shots at rim), and even if you stretch a couple of those measurements out a fraction of a percentage point in either direction, he’s part of a group of centers that includes just Myles Turner and Kristaps Porzingis. That’s it.
Nobody is comparing Collins to the shot-blocking menace and versatile offensive weapon that is Jaren Jackson Jr., or the sharp-shooting rim-deterrent Brook Lopez has become, but that class of efficient stretch bigs who are also very active defensively — contesting nearly half of all shots at the rim while on the floor is a huge number — is still extremely valuable.
Note: Jackson Jr. and Lopez, two Defensive Player of the Year candidates, did not make the list above because the former shot only 35 percent from the 3-point line, and the latter only defended 35 percent of shots at the rim while he was on the floor. A ton of that is a result of volume, roster and scheme, though — that Giannis guy takes up some defensive real estate on the interior, too — and the point of this exercise was to identify a group tasked with both spacing the floor at a consistently above-average level and taking on massive responsibility for defenses that were often as porous as it got on the perimeter.
Collins can fit in any offensive or defensive scheme and can play alongside anybody the team brings in, Victor Wembanyama included, should they be so lucky. He will be entering the third and final year of his non-guaranteed deal, and the question isn’t whether or not San Antonio is going to pick up that contract, but whether or not they’re going to extend it.
If Pop’s words were any indication, there’s a high chance the latter is the route the Spurs will take.
Devonte’ Graham
There’s a Patty Mills comparison in here somewhere.
Graham fit in seamlessly with his teammates upon arriving in San Antonio, and even at just 28 years old himself, he became a mentor type for the guys eight and nine years his junior. He’s supportive, laid back and has the all-important sense of humor Popovich loves in a player. The locker-room stuff is all there.
On the court, he’s a completely unafraid shooter capable of getting hot and ripping off a run all on his own, often on self-created scoring chances off the dribble. That’s Mills-like, but his efficiency from outside is not. Graham shot just 35.8 percent from the 3-point line, and on most nights it seemed like it was all or nothing. Inconsistent shooting has been the story throughout his career, and it was no different during his first couple of months as a Spur. If he’s able to take a mid-career leap in that area, he could provide the type of pop off the bench San Antonio has long coveted in its reserve guards, all while increasing his potential trade value. If he can’t? The Spurs might just be temporarily stuck.
The reason he makes this list, however, is because it is highly unlikely that contract is moved. Graham still has two years and $25 million remaining (though the second year is only partially guaranteed), and given his shooting splits and small stature as more of a combo guard than point guard, teams aren’t going to be knocking the door down to acquire him.
But that’s fine for now. San Antonio isn’t going to be in financial trouble anytime soon, and there remains the possibility he’s able to rein things in and become an attractive trade-deadline asset in the next year or two. And that would likely be the best outcome. With so many draft picks on the way, it’s difficult to forecast a path for the “older” guys on the roster to remain in town for the long haul.
In the meantime, he can continue his role as the entertaining wild card, and the type of veteran presence this team still very much needs.
Charles Bassey
What a season for Bassey. From being a training-camp casualty in Philadelphia, to eventually signing a partially guaranteed four-year, $10.2-million deal in San Antonio, to then suffering a season-ending injury, the ups and downs have been prevalent.
But he can rest comfortably during his recovery, because he’s not going anywhere.
The Bassey storyline was a delight to follow this season. He burst onto the scene when Collins fractured his fibula head back in November, during which time he made a significant impact as a defender and shot-blocker. But as he became more familiar with the Spurs’ system, the other elements of his game began to poke through the lining.
Bassey flashed some nice touch around the rim and in the mid-range, and even showed a knack for facilitating from the elbows when the opportunities arose. He’s big, long and athletic, he actually has some range, and he sends any careless shot around the rim into the third row. The Spurs may have found a gem, and now they’ve got him secured with a contract that couldn’t be more team-friendly.
His deal is for roughly $2.5 million annually (which isn’t much more than the league minimum), and the third and fourth seasons are non-guaranteed. If this works out, that’s an absolute steal. If it doesn’t, there’s no financial skin off their back. And for Bassey, who was drafted late in the second round and did come with some injury concerns, it’s job security.
The 22-year-old from Nigeria is still very raw, but now he’s got the time to build his game — and to get healthy — under the guidance of an organization with an outstanding developmental track record.
In Part II, we’ll dive into the void of uncertainty and the different ways this team could potentially address the rest of the roster.
Thank you for reading the Corporate Knowledge newsletter. If you’d like to receive new posts and support my work, you can sign up below to become a free or paid subscriber, or you can share with others!
And a special thank you to all paid subscribers. Y’all have made the work I’m doing here possible, because your support has led directly to improved coverage and access this team hasn’t granted in the past to independent writers and journalists.
Having seven guys locked up on great deals with five of them (Collins and Malaki included) who will be among top eight rotation is great!
Loved this and looking forward to the more in-depth breakdowns over the summer! Small thing I noticed...you have Keldon at 9.3 3pt attempts a game but I believe it was 6.5