'Patience': The word nobody wants to hear right now

The real timeline has officially begun in San Antonio, but the Spurs need to figure out if right now is the best time to start making moves.

There are few professional basketball teams worldwide in a more enviable position right now than the Spurs. They’re on the verge of drafting the centerpiece they’ve been chasing since Kawhi Leonard was unceremoniously dealt for fragments of a franchise; they’ve got a pristine salary-cap situation with plenty of room to maneuver; and on top of all the excitement surrounding the future No. 1 overall pick next month, they’ve got a possible 12 first-round picks over the next six years and about a million second-rounders just to sweeten any pot.

Beyond basketball, Victor Wembanyama is going to be a one-man economy in and of himself. The team’s valuation just jumped about $500 million or so; the city will benefit from an influx of visitors traveling to watch a unicorn play basketball on top of the many people who continue to move to San Antonio on a daily basis; business will boom around an already thriving downtown area; conversations about a new arena will pop up in the coming years, perhaps even near the River Walk once again; and newsletter writers might get a few more subscriptions out of it.

*ahem*

But as the energy level peaks and the excitement swirls, it would be wise to douse yourself with some lukewarm water at the very least. Because despite the inevitable arrival of one of the greatest basketball prospects we’ve ever seen, the Spurs (and Wemby) still have plenty of work to do before they’re ready to make their push.

All your Damian Lillard proposals? Your Jaylen Brown rescue efforts? Your big trade-machine ideas? The hours you’re spending trying to find ways to bring disgruntled stars to town as buy-low candidates? It’s probably best to divert your focus from instant gratification to long-term well-being.

For the Spurs, this isn’t about winning now; it’s about winning soon, and continuing to win for the next couple of decades.

General Manager Brian Wright preached patience during his post-lottery media availability. As excited as he and the team were, they are dead-set on the idea of longevity, and have been throughout this entire process. They want to build something that will last, and avoid the fate that befalls the greedy. The Spurs don’t want to be the Dallas Mavericks — or even the Memphis Grizzlies to a degree — and jump the gun on assembling a roster the second a transcendent player enters the building. They want to be the version of themselves that ran the league for nearly 20 years, operating on not just great talent, but unending flexibility.

“The reality is, our team is very young. The core of our group — we had 11 players under 23 years old. And so, we’re still learning about them,” Wright said. “We’re still learning about how they fit together and how they’re going to grow. The players they are today, that’s not going to be the player they’ll be in Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, and so we have to have some patience to understand what that looks like.

“But obviously, with this pick, we have the opportunity to add another foundational piece. Hopefully we’ll put the right pieces around them that helps them to continue to grow as an individual, and allow the team to grow as a group.”

The beauty of the situation is, there are no complications when it comes to building around Wembanyama, no players blocking his path or predetermined faces of the franchise at this point. Not only are things wide-open, but the supporting cast has already been under construction with the idea of versatility in mind.

Jeremy Sochan is the perfect utility-belt sidekick — someone who can defend all five positions, wreak havoc as a freelancer, make plays for others as a wing or small-ball big, and who’s shown flashes of shot-creation in the short mid-range and around the basket.

Before injury took him down last season, Devin Vassell was tracking toward becoming the team’s clear-cut top option on offense as not only a scorer and dead-eye shooter from the perimeter and in the mid-range, but as a much-improved facilitator out of the pick-and-roll and off dribble-penetration. Once he returned from his midseason absence, we even started to see flashes of the old Vassell on the defensive end as well — disrupting passing lanes, flying in for weak-side blocks, and pestering ball-handlers with his long arms and active hands.

Keldon Johnson was stuck playing hero for a roster that lacked any semblance of continuity last season. But in a perfect world, he could be the perfect complementary, physical wing who can take full advantage of the extra attention given to his teammates. Let Johnson run and gun offensively without having to worry about reading defenses that are loading up against him, and you’re looking at an offensive ignition switch with easier access to his rim-attacking, 3-point shooting preferences.

Tre Jones and Zach Collins are, at the very least, capable placeholders. A point guard who excels in getting the ball to his teammates in their ideal spots on the floor, pushing the pace, turning defense into offense and not turning the ball over, and a big who has no problem manning the middle — and does so well, I might add — or fitting in as a complementary scorer anywhere from the post to the 3-point line.

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In theory, the Spurs already have a functional roster in place that will allow Wemby to be Wemby in most facets of his game. But any consternation that exists hasn’t necessarily spawned from what the Spurs already have in-house, it’s stemmed from the want and need for future moves, and the pace with which San Antonio intends to act. Because there’s a difference between “functional” and “ideal,” and there’s a lot of work to be done before this team is a finished product.

Take a step back for a second, though. For anyone under the impression the Spurs believe they’re ready to go for gold immediately, I’d suggest to you they’re not. Wembanyama is incredibly skilled, but there’s a literal and figurative growth pattern that must be considered.

There aren’t many examples of a human body that has been more closely monitored than Wemby’s has been and will be moving forward. Don’t twist things around too much, because he’s going to play, but San Antonio is not about to launch a 19-year-old, 7’5, 230-pound player into the rigors of an 82-game NBA season without an abundance of caution, especially considering he’ll be coming off a schedule that had him playing just once per week. Until they’re able to truly understand what it is they’re working with, it’s in both parties’ best interests to feel things out as best they can.

This will be a multi-stage process, the first being adapting to both Wembanyama and the rest of the Spurs’ young roster while moving into a state-of-the-art practice facility and human-performance center out at La Cantera, where they’ll establish individual programs specifically suited for each player. But the second part of the equation is where they begin to pump the brakes. In San Antonio’s mind, there’s no reason to further rush its rebuild plan. Rather, it must stay on a steady, deliberate course, and maintain its optionality until it’s ready to run.

That starts with making shrewd moves on the margins in free agency (which includes their own players), if not going in aggressively on a potential move back into the middle-to-latter stages of the first round. Again, the timeline starts now for the Spurs, so they will not be sitting on their hands.

If they decide to make a move for a veteran or two, it won’t be the high price tags they’re after, who aren’t yet under full team control. Unless some young star who’s an obvious fit becomes available on the trade market — the free-agency class isn’t great — San Antonio will search the bargain bin for players who can make life easier for Wemby and that young core over the long haul. Floor-spacers, rebounders, defenders and ball-handlers — guys capable of being the glue.

Beyond that, if trading up for another first-round pick in this summer’s draft is part of the game plan, the ideal scenario would have the Spurs using picks as currency, without having to trade their best young players. If there’s a world in which someone like Keldon Johnson fetches top-10 value — it’s a stretch to say San Antonio has the assets to crack the top five — then by all means, listen. But moving on from an already valuable piece on top of draft picks means sacrificing one proven young player to attain a rookie project while also limiting future flexibility during an ongoing process. And if you are considering that route, it shouldn’t be before taking into account what’s next on the horizon.

The Spurs have this mapped out. While we’re sort of stuck in the present, they’re identifying when and where will be the best time to pounce. San Antonio could have up to three first-round picks next summer and three more the following year, so spending draft capital right now when they could wait just one more season for a possible haul is a decision that requires a lot of thought and reason.

“You’ve seen us trade for picks that are six years out, and projecting what a 15-year-old will be by the time they’re draft-eligible is a difficult thing to do,” Wright said. “But it’s something our staff takes very seriously — to try and understand the strengths of drafts and what could be in that draft, and try to align what we do to some of that. And again, it’s luck, things change over the course of time, but it’s part of our process and hopefully we can continue to do that well going forward.”

If there’s a chance to streamline their roster in a positive, lasting way this summer, the Spurs will take it. Any realistic opportunity to draft or trade for their starting point guard of the future, or perhaps even more spacing on the wings in addition to the Wembanyama pick, would be huge at this juncture. But if the end game doesn’t feel quite right, they will not jump the gun and sacrifice long-term mobility.

That element of flexibility has always been part of San Antonio’s lifeblood, something it’s been able to fall back on when times get tough. It understands the value of competing and thriving for the entirety of a player generation, rather than sprinting through one contract at a time. Besides, fans can rest assured the moves are coming at some point, because the Spurs have more draft picks than they’ll ever be able to actually use to select players.

The world is the Spurs’ oyster right now, but high-level returns on their upcoming investment aren’t going to be immediate. And that’s just fine. This is why they saved money and raked in draft picks in exchange for veterans; this is why they didn’t go out and splurge on free agents just because they had cap space; and this is why they assembled a tightknit roster of homegrown young players on similar timelines who would eventually form a supporting cast. If they were lucky enough to land The Guy, they’d be able to move forward seamlessly with a clear hierarchy and focus.

Players will come and go — that’s just how the league works — but the primary objective from here is building out a cohesive group for what the franchise hopes is a decades-long run. This is not a team that’s on the verge of winning a championship in the next year, and drafting Wembanyama doesn’t change that math. But what it does ensure is a path toward that goal, so long as everyone stays healthy.

Once Wemby is ready, the team can begin to split time between micro- and macro-management approaches. It can shift toward building the best possible roster it can on an annual basis, rather than opting for youth and potential first and foremost. It can lock in and make championships the immediate focus, not a future goal. The good stuff, the reason people invest in this silly sports thing.

But until then, whether you like to hear it or not, “patience” is the operative word. Don’t worry, though. It’s still going to be a hell of a lot of fun in the meantime.