The San Antonio Spurs won the NBA Draft Lottery on May 16 and, in doing so, won the offseason among teams that missed the postseason a year ago. Ever since then, they have been focused on Victor Wembanyama and crafting a short- and long-term plan for the organization focused on maximizing his development and building the best possible team around him.
However, they can’t know exactly what that ideal roster looks like until Wembanyama’s played NBA games and figured out where exactly he’s going to be best deployed on an NBA court. We saw in Summer League that, to start, he’s going to be playing more like a big wing, and the only rumblings about major additions to the team this summer was trying to add a center next to him, giving a clear indication that will be a priority at some point. In the meantime, the Spurs are remaining patient and will use this season as a chance to evaluate all of their young players to see how they fit in alongside Wembanyama — both in who can thrive next to him and who might be a redundancy in the rotation. For now, that requires patience, and they’ve shown plenty of that this summer.
Here we’ll grade out their summer of offseason moves from the Draft, free agency and contract extensions, and on the trade market.
Draft: A+
This was really the only section that mattered for the Spurs this summer, as they won the lottery and got to draft Victor Wembanyama. That has set them up for the chance to build around a generational prospect, and while there will be challenges in the years ahead, this summer is a rousing success simply because of the way the ping pong balls bounced in Chicago in May. Wembanyama still has plenty to work on and develop in his game, but he is as unique a talent as we’ve seen enter the league in a very long time. The Spurs will have to determine what is the best way to build a roster around him to maximize that talent by figuring out where he should be playing, what complementary skills teammates need to bring, and how they can add secondary stars. However, those are all easier tasks than bringing in a true franchise cornerstone, and it appears they have gotten that in Wembanyama, as our Brad Rowland wrote on Draft night.
The Spurs had a bit of good fortune in the lottery to even have the chance to draft Victor Wembanyama, so this isn’t exactly the product of incredible scouting work, but he’s the best prospect in the draft by a wide margin and one of the best prospects to enter the league in the in decades. Of course, that doesn’t ensure anything once he arrives, but the tools are virtually unprecedented and San Antonio has a franchise centerpiece.
Free Agency/Contract Extensions: B-
San Antonio could’ve gotten in the mix for some restricted free agents this summer and tried to pry, say, Austin Reaves out of L.A. with a big offer sheet, but like most of the teams that came into this offseason with lots of cap space, they preferred to eat that up on the trade market. We’ll get to those moves later, but in terms of actual signings made, they chose to simply bring back players from last year. Tre Jones is the most significant of those, landing a 2-year, $20 million to play point guard for the Spurs once again. The Spurs also re-signed Julian Champagnie to a 4-year, $12 million deal and Sandro Mamukelashvili to a 1-year minimum deal. It’s very clear the team wants to spend this upcoming season evaluating their roster around Wemby and then, next summer, they can begin making more significant moves with that information in mind. Right now they want to stay understandably patient, with a focus on having a contender built around Wembanyama once he’s ready to take the mantle as one of the league’s top stars.
Trades: B-
San Antonio was active on the trade market, happily joining trades as a third team or taking on a veteran in a salary dump. It’s possible they still could get in one of the pending blockbusters to further add future assets, but it seems clear they’re not looking to take on any long-term commitments. As such, this was a perfectly fine summer. Again, they have a plan in place and added some veterans in Cam Payne, Reggie Bullock, and Cedi Osman to the rotation that can be helpful to varying degrees. None of them are on long-term deals and won’t clog up space they might want to use to make a bigger splash in the future, but add some depth in the backcourt and on the wing, while also netting some more future second round picks and pick swaps for San Antonio to use in deals in the future.
This summer’s plan in San Antonio was decided when they landed the first pick. It’d be fascinating to know what they would’ve done had they slipped in the Draft and whether they would’ve had a more aggressive mindset like Houston did, but we’ll never know for sure and Spurs fans will be thrilled not to have to worry about that. Everything now revolves around Wembanyama and maximizing his enormous talents, and that means slow-playing it this year and simply evaluating everyone on the roster through the lens of what they can do alongside Victor.
