The Good, Bad, and Ugly of the San Antonio Spurs' Season So Far
Eight games into the 2023-24 NBA season, the San Antonio Spurs are sitting at 3-5, an inverse of last season’s 5-3 start. With the season basically only 10 percent over, it’s too early to draw definite conclusions about this young squad, but trends are starting to be set.
Unlike last season, the Spurs are receiving some national attention. The arrival of Victor Wembanayma means the press is swarming the Spurs with questions and scrutiny regarding their superstar in the making. Wemby is 19 years old and very much adjusting to the NBA, but he seems unfazed by the attention. Granted, all the cameras were in his face well before the season started, so he has been able to get used to it.
The Spurs were not expected to be seriously involved in the playoff race, but their losses include two 40-point blowouts, one 21-point loss, and a blown lead that went to overtime. Safe to say that the Spurs are not good at closing, which is to be expected with such a young squad.
With the season 10 percent finished, we can start to issue some judgments. As expected, most of them are negative, hence the good, bad, and the ugly.
The good, clearly, is Wembanyama. He leads all rookies in points and blocks and is second in rebounds. He is clearly a focal point of the Spurs’ offense and consumes opponents’ defense, who all scramble to make sure he can’t get an open look.
Wembanyama is already showcasing his ability to take over games and is in contention to be named Defensive Player of the Year as a rookie, which is downright insane.
Victor Wembanyama and Kevin Durant meet at midcourt after Wemby's 38-point effort pushed the Spurs past the Suns.
© Mark J. Rebilas, USA TODAY
Wembanyama is not the only positive in San Antonio. Before going down with an injury, Devin Vassell was a 20-point scorer and emerged as the best player on the roster. It’s only a matter of time before Wembanyama takes that title away, but for now, it’s clearly Vassell.
The bad is the point guard situation. The Spurs are 12th in the league in turnovers, and point guard Jeremy Sochan is a large part of that. The Spurs are experimenting with Sochan as the primary facilitator, and so far it hasn’t worked out.
Among players on the roster who see the court for at least 15 minutes a night, Sochan is second to last in win shares, behind only Malaki Branham. Most of this is due to him learning a new position. Usually a power forward, Sochan is learning the point guard position, and trying to facilitate an offense led by a 19-year-old.
Both young men still have to order Big Red on team outings, so expecting instant success is just ignorant. Sochan’s PG play is listed as “bad” instead of “ugly” because of the potential there. If the experiment doesn’t work out and he gets rerouted back to the forward position, oh well. However, if it does work out, then a generational 7-4 wing is paired with a 6-9 point guard who can act as an enforcer and elite defender. Think prime Ben Simmons but without a confidence issue.
Sure, Sochan will never be a knockdown shooter, but if all goes well, he will be able to do literally everything else. Pair him with floor spacers like Wembanyama, Vassell, Zach Collins, and Keldon Johnson, and once he grows into the floor general role, the league will be on notice.
The ugly is perimeter defense. The Sochan experiment is fixable, very much a work in progress. The Spurs’ three-point defense is just horrible. They allow the second-most attempts from deep per game in the entire league, which is paired beautifully with them allowing 40.9% of those shots to fall, which is dead last.
Naturally, the Spurs give up the most threes per game, which adds up to them allowing the second-most points, ahead of only Washington.
The reason this falls into the “ugly” category is because there is no sign of the Spurs fixing this issue anytime soon, and it has plagued them for multiple seasons now. Last year, the Spurs boasted the worst three-point defense in the league and were dead last in points allowed.
The arrival of Wembanyama and the continued development of Vassell and Sochan were supposed to rectify this alarming trend, but so far it hasn’t.
The Spurs allow over 16 made threes per game but make only a dozen. They simply can’t catch up to the opposition, who shoots them out of the building night after night. Until the Spurs can lock down the perimeter–or at least play average defense–the team will have a long way to go.
