点击查看原文：Tough travel for San Antonio and the NBA trade deadline
Tough travel for San Antonio and the NBA trade deadline
Columnist Mike Finger and beat reporter Jeff McDonald discuss the Spurs surviving a brutal travel to beat Orlando, Mitch Johson as an All-Star coach and what the Spurs could do at the trade deadline.
Suggested reading:
Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama earns another award from the NBA
‘They wanted our heads:’ The Spurs-OKC rivalry is ready for Part 5
Inside the harrowing 25 hours that led to the Spurs’ win over Orlando
Warren grad Stanley Umude makes hometown debut for Spurs
Here is the transcript of the podcast:
Mike Finger: From a highly secure network of top-secret locations across South Texas, this is the Spurs Insider, trade deadline edition. I am your host Mike Finger, joined by San Antonio Express-News Spurs beat writer Jeff McDonald.
Tom Orsborn is on the IL this week, unfortunately, so you’re stuck with Jeff and I. We’re going to get into all the All-Star accolades that continue to roll in to the Frost Bank Center. We’re getting into the approaching of the transactional milestone that comes every early February, when the Spurs usually don’t make a big trade, probably will not make a big trade this year, but might make a small one.
We’ll get into some details about the continuing up and down nature of the Spurs’ schedule the last month or so. But I just want to start out, Jeff, by saying that it’s tiring. Exhausting, even, always being so right.
Jeff McDonald: Okay, is that you? You’re the one that’s always so right?
Mike Finger: I mean, it just seems like eventually I’m not going to be right about something, but man, it gets hard. It’s a burden. It’s a burden.
Jeff McDonald: What were you right about this time?
Mike Finger: I don’t know if I want to take the viewers—and I know they’re not viewers—through the weekend, but man, that was an all-timer. We had Tom Orsborn diligently, diligently doing the work of the people in Charlotte, battling through an all-timer of a snowstorm there.
And he got that game covered on Saturday, was updating us on what was happening with the Spurs’ team plane. We were getting updates from the plane: Are they going to make it? Are they not? They’re not going to get out on Saturday night. They’re delayed on Sunday morning.
And I’m getting these updates from Jeff McDonald: “Oh, it’s unimaginable that the Spurs could play that game on Sunday night. There’s no way they’d play it.”
Jeff McDonald: I think the direct quote was, “I can’t imagine that they would try to play a game on Sunday.”
Mike Finger: I don’t remember this. And I know you’ve only been covering the NBA for what, 18, 19 years? So I tried to educate you on all the many subjects that you aren’t well-versed in about how teams are going to try to play games.
Because when you postpone a game by a whole day, it’s expensive and it’s convoluted and it’s complicated. And you said, “Oh, it’s unimaginable that they’d play Sunday night.” And then, and then I think I said something along the lines of, at worst, if the Spurs’ team plane can’t get in in a reasonable manner, they might push it back to as late as 8:00 PM.
And wouldn’t you know it, lo and behold, they push it back to 8:00 PM. And I think there’s a text from Jeff McDonald on the official Spurs Insider group chat saying, “If I bet on sports, I could make the easiest million dollars—”
Jeff McDonald: Now, this one is correct. This is not a blatant lie that you’re spinning now. Now you’re getting to the truth.
Mike Finger: In the history of making money, I would make the easiest million dollars anyone has ever made betting against the Spurs. I think they were, according to Jeff McDonald, four-and-a-half point favorites.
And I think that the host of the Spurs Insider at that point said, “Actually, young fella, this makes me all the more confident that the home team’s going to win tonight, because that’s how these things work.”
And then late Sunday night, when the panelists, the members of Spurs Insider convene in the media room after that game’s over, Jeff McDonald walks in and says, “Thank goodness I do not bet on sports,” because you’d be a broke, broke fella.
Jeff McDonald: Anyway, I think the—I mean, I don’t know if people who have paid attention to this podcast over the last three months or so, but I’m terrible at predicting the outcome of games. That’s all that is.
It’s the Costanza thing. Whatever I think, it’s going to be the opposite. I should start deciding what I think is going to happen and then predict the opposite. Maybe we’ll do that later.
Mike Finger: The Spurs did pull one out. It was quite a day. I’m not sure it was the worst obstacle any team has overcome this year, but to be able to roll into San Antonio International Airport at 3:00 PM in the afternoon—actually, a little after that—and then head on over straight to the Frost Bank Center.
It’s like we used to do, dry-bussing over to Sabinal, bussing over to—when you’re playing for the Madison JV. I’m sure you got to games less than two hours before tip-off and probably handled it great. Or maybe you didn’t.
But that’s what the Spurs did on Sunday. And not only did they beat the Magic, they beat the Magic in a way where you ended the game with Harrison Ingram and Lindy Waters and the end of the bench playing. San Antonio’s finest!
Jeff McDonald: San Antonio’s finest out there.
Mike Finger: And that changes the tone of the Spurs Insider this week, because before that, you’re looking at a team that dropped a tough one in Charlotte that Tom covered.
Jeff McDonald: Yeah, but before that, they went to Houston and won.
Mike Finger: They won all the games you thought they weren’t going to win and lost the one you thought they wouldn’t. So this continues to be a team that does the unexpected, that is hanging in there as a quote-unquote contender much longer than most people thought they would. Continuing to prove Jeff McDonald wrong. Where do you want to start with the basketball portion of this podcast, just the week that was?
Jeff McDonald: Man, there’s a lot. It was a big week. Eventful. I mean, you’ve already been over the “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” portion.
Mike Finger: That sounded harrowing, by the way.
Jeff McDonald: It was something. I guess you’re in the NBA long enough, weird stuff happens. I mean, arenas in Mexico City burn down. That didn’t happen, it didn’t burn down, it was an escalator fire. But games get canceled for that. And there’s COVID delays and ice-outs. And looks like our local cagers responded to that pretty well.
Mike Finger: I was interested by another thing that we were talking about on Sunday as this was unfolding was the fact that the local cager’s best player is a guy notorious for needing a routine. And I think that was more of the case early in Victor Wembanyama’s career when he was a rookie.
You know, we all wrote stories with the details of his minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour steps that he goes through, not just on game day but on non-game days, after games, before games.
And we talked to him a little bit after the game on Sunday, kind of reflecting on how he’s adjusted over the first two-and-a-half years of his career, because you kind of have to as an NBA player, right? The nature of an NBA season is stuff like this happens.
And there are sometimes back-to-backs, and there are sometimes three days off between games, and there are travel issues and afternoon games. You can’t just be like, “Oh well, I’m just going to be worthless every afternoon game for my entire life.” Like, you can’t really do that.
Jeff McDonald: Right.
Mike Finger: And sometimes you have to fly out after a night game. Sometimes you have to spend an extra day in a city. And so I think one—we’ve all seen all kinds of on-court progress from Victor Wembanyama over two-and-a-half years, and we’ve seen the way that his game has grown and the game of the players around him has grown.
I think part of it has been just being a little more flexible with rolling with the NBA punches. And nowadays a day like Sunday—which we’re not trying to overstate the adversity that the Spurs overcame there. I mean, they were staying in nicer hotels than we’ve ever stayed in before. First class on the team plane.
They had to—wait, no, they had to, when they returned to Charlotte for the unexpected night, they had to slum it at a Marriott. It was a JW Marriott, though. The listeners of the podcast are aware of the tiers in the various Marriott brands. And Marriott is not a sponsor; we’re not endorsing the company, what have you.
But the levels of the Marriott brand that sportswriters and podcasters stay in on the road is not quite the level of the Marriott—like, I think Marriott owns the Ritz-Carlton. We don’t stay at the upper-level Marriotts that the Spurs stay in.
And anyway, so they had to slum it at the JW. In Atlanta, when they have to switch planes, they leave their cushy charter, which has luxurious seating for everyone up and down the plane, made for NBA pro teams.
And I think they got a commercial jet, and I think we were told, Jeff, that the players got the first-class seats and the support staff was in the back, and the coaches were in coach. I think the coaches got exit row seats, but the coaches were in coach.
Anyway, this is not the most, again, the most difficult set of circumstances any team has overcome. But to go through that, and for a guy like Victor who loves his routine, to kind of roll with those punches and come out and play a solid game and really give it to a decent-to-good Orlando team. Another little step for Victor and the Spurs, I think.
Jeff McDonald: It was interesting to me that—and if you think about it, maybe this is correct—Victor was talking about what other teams have gone through. And I think what he was referring to is there was a game last month where Miami had kind of similar troubles, but got out that night, but they didn’t get into Chicago until like 4:00 AM for a back-to-back.
And Victor said that would be way worse than getting a full night’s sleep and then hopping off the plane and playing immediately. Like, he thought the 4:00 AM would throw everything off for everybody because what do you do? You get in at 4:00, you go to bed, I guess, and then you wake up at what, noon, and then try to get your day going? I think he might have a point that that’s a harder thing to do than what the Spurs did.
Mike Finger: Well, I don’t want to go over the top and say it’s all because of Victor, but I think the addition of Victor Wembanyama a couple of years ago was part of the reason that the Spurs have changed their typical protocols that were in place for 20-some-odd years in terms of when they would travel after games.
Sometimes teams have an option; when it’s a back-to-back, you have to fly out the night of a game, the NBA mandates that. But sometimes if there’s a day off between, you have the option of flying to the next city after the game or the next day. And I think for a lot of times, especially if they were going to an appealing city, the Spurs always would travel after the game, fly out after the game.
Jeff McDonald: I was going to say, the main thing that changed the Spurs’ travel protocols was they have a new coach. Yeah. Pop was big on getting places. So they would fly after games a lot. And they do that less this season. They’ll play a game, spend a night in that same city and then fly the next morning.
And Victor is a fan of getting the full night’s sleep and sticking with the routine. But he can—he’s also been flexible, so that’s good.
The game—it’s ancient history and people are long past it, but the win in Houston was a significant one too. We won’t spend too much time on that. But that’s been since our last podcast, another game against a team that you’re probably going to have to get past in the playoffs if you want to make a run.
A game against a team that had pushed you around not too long before that, and another game that could have gone either way down the stretch, and the Spurs found a way to hold on. What’d you think of that one?
Jeff McDonald: It was a team that had pushed you around not too many days before and was still pushing you around for about a half of that game. The word that gets thrown around anytime there’s a Houston-Spurs game, you hear the word “punched” a lot. “We got punched,” “They punched us,” like on both sides.
And the Spurs were the ones getting punched in the first half of that game, that rematch at Houston. The real thing that turned it in the fourth quarter was this little defensive switch where they decided to—I was going to say have Victor Wembanyama guard Amen Thompson, but not really.
It was more like have Victor Wembanyama ignore Amen Thompson and just give him an 18-footer if he wanted to take it, which he kind of got to the point where he did not. And that allowed Victor to kind of roam and clog the paint a bit.
And the other part of that was Steph Castle got to guard Alperen Şengün a little bit, he got to guard Kevin Durant a little bit. And of those three players I mentioned, like they combined to go like two-of-15, two-of-16 in the fourth quarter. And that turned the game.
The Rockets could not score in the fourth quarter, 13 points. And it turned a game that the Rockets had been winning by 16 into a pretty decisive victory for the Spurs.
So a lot of that was defense. And the thing that’s significant to me is that’s kind of how things happen in the playoffs. You have to make an adjustment, sometimes on the fly. Sometimes you have to pick and choose when to make this adjustment you’ve got in your back pocket.
And I think the Spurs kind of sprung that on the Rockets, and the Rockets and especially Thompson—who had been killing the Spurs for three quarters—just didn’t know what to do with it.
And the other interesting thing is it’s basically a version of what the Rockets do to Victor: put a smaller guy on him and let the center guard somebody else. And yeah, it was an interesting night there at the Toyota Center.
Mike Finger: Well, the listeners of the Spurs Insider podcast are fully conscious, fully aware of the many shortcomings that the Spurs have, that we’ve talked about many times, that the fans pull their hairs out about in terms of going through these stretches where they don’t know how to get a bucket.
And that there are some weaknesses in the offensive lineup sometimes in terms of not being able to hit a three-point shot, relying too much on the three-point shot. If they’re making the three-pointers, they’re doing well; if they’re not, they’re not. Too many guys attacking the basket, not enough guys to space, that type of thing.
But one thing that that Houston game pointed out or accentuated was that other teams have those issues too. Like everybody’s kind of got their bugaboo where they cannot solve a defense in certain situations. And Houston doesn’t have, really, a true point guard, and I think everybody’s aware of that.
Even though those shortcomings are different in terms of how they manifest on the court during a game like that, you do see those situations where, when you’re playing a good team, like when the Spurs are playing the Rockets, a defense kind of has you figured out for a while.
And it worked in reverse this last game, where the Rockets had some shortcomings where they couldn’t get into their offense, and the Spurs just decided, “Well, you’re not going to get into your offense in the fourth quarter.”
And Jeff, you’re right that in a seven-game series in the postseason, those things are going to cycle back and forth probably multiple times in a series where one team’s going to have the other figured out and it’s going to be up to that other team to kind of respond.
It’s fun to watch even in the course of the regular season where you see a team like the Rockets and the Spurs play each other once every couple of weeks, different tone every time.
That sort of leads into the game that’s coming up this Wednesday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder, where the Spurs had their number for several games in a row. And we will see how long that lasts, because that’s another good team that’s probably going to have some adjustments this week.
Jeff McDonald: Yeah, the Thunder got them back too in that meeting in Oklahoma City; that game was not close. So the Thunder are playing better than they were when the Spurs were beating them in December. And the Spurs are not quite as consistent as they were back in December.
December is still the high-water mark of the Spurs’ season, which I don’t know if that’s so great. But I’m bad at predicting these things. It feels like a game that the Thunder should win, even though it’s on the road, even though it’s in San Antonio.
You know they’re going to want to be there to show that they’re still the champs, and they still remember losing to these guys three games in a row.
But it’ll be a good test for everybody. And one thing I thought was interesting after the last game was, for all the rivalry talk and there’s supposed to be bad blood and whatnot, I think it was Jalen Williams of the Thunder who said—the good one—that they really like playing the Spurs.
And the Spurs should take this as a compliment—Jalen says, “These guys are making us better. They’re making us having to learn to adjust and learn to play different ways and learn to play through some adversity.”
And it’s good for us to play a team like the Spurs. And I don’t know that a defending champion would have been able to say that with a straight face about a Spurs team last season or the season before or the season before that.
So more than anything, it’s more proof that the Spurs are a team that is on the rise in the NBA. And that’s literally true, but also I think people see them that way too. The perception of them is high in the NBA. People are taking them more seriously; people are seeing them as a threat. And I think that’s a compliment that the Spurs can take.
Mike Finger: One of the men who will be charged with responding to that last loss to Oklahoma City and coming up with those adjustments is an All-Star coach. And that’s official now, when Mitch Johnson will be leading one of the three All-Star teams.
Maybe, again, they’re making up the rules as they go along on All-Star weekend, but because the Oklahoma City coaching staff wasn’t eligible to coach the All-Star festivities this year because they did it last year, Spurs wrapped up by percentage points in that thrilling victory against the Magic on Sunday night a chance for Mitch Johnson and his staff to go to Los Angeles to the Intuit Dome and draw up some plays that will be ignored, draw up some defenses that will not be employed as part of those festivities.
Jeff McDonald: Do you think Mitch will be able to get the All-Stars to embrace the mundane?
Mike Finger: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. But it’s worth taking a few seconds here to reflect on what he’s done. I mean, we’ve talked about him a lot in the past 14 months since he was thrust into the head coach’s role that Saturday night against Minnesota at the end of November 2024.
Handled it pretty well. It’s easy to say, “I know you had an exchange with somebody who said well, it’s easy for him to be the coach because he has Victor Wembanyama.” He’s done pretty well in the non-Victor Wembanyama aspects of his job too.
And by the way, coaching with Victor Wembanyama isn’t nothing automatic in terms of winning games and competing for titles. I just think he’s proven to be a really solid choice for what the Spurs needed. And what was the stat you threw out there? The Spurs are nine-and-three without Victor this year?
Jeff McDonald: Well, that was just those 12 games he missed with the calf. I didn’t add up the other couple that he missed, but in those 12, yeah, they were nine-and-three.
That was a key portion of the season too, because we all remember when you heard Victor was out with a calf strain, it was kind of like the sky is falling. Off to such a good start, now it all comes crashing down because they’re going to be without Victor for maybe a month.
And to hold it together with a nine-and-three mark during those is—that’s the reason they are where they are is that they weathered that specific section of the schedule better than anyone could have expected.
Mike Finger: One thing that I’m not sure people are totally aware of in terms of his personality is that I think there’s a perception from the outside when a known curmudgeon, known no-nonsense hard-coaching guy like Gregg Popovich retires—and a guy who would yell at guys, coach the heck out of Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker and David Robinson, a guy who’d call for some nasty, who was not afraid to be tough on guys.
And when he’s replaced by a guy in his late 30s who’s never coached a team before, I think there’s an inclination to think, “Oh well, this is a guy who will be more of a player’s coach, more of a guy who it’ll be a different personality, all that tough coaching stuff will be gone.”
In a way, Mitch is every bit as intense, every bit as tough on guys as holding them to the standard as Gregg Popovich was. Wouldn’t you agree with that?
Jeff McDonald: Yeah, and when you’re talking about on a sideline, I almost think he out-Pops Pop. Like, I think if you take both at their ceiling, like the worst they could be, I think Pop wins. But I just think Mitch is more consistently intense.
Some of those games when we get to sit down there, I’m like, “Man, it’s December, you’re not going to make it a whole season if you don’t take the foot off the gas a little bit, man.” I mean, he’s just a maniac down there.
But that’s also the energy of youth, right? He has a lot of “piss and vinegar,” as they would say. The guys respect it too. I mean, to a man, they talk about him—that’s what strikes me, really, is they talk about him in terms of the way he gets on them the same way they used to talk about Pop.
In terms of, “If he’s not yelling at you, that means he doesn’t care.” And that’s a lot of the comments that we used to get from players about Gregg Popovich, that you start to worry when he’s not upset with you, when he’s not getting in your face, when he’s not calling out every mistake.
And I just think that’s another part of the Spurs’ way that has continued. He’s not the next Pop, he’s not like Pop in every way. He runs different stuff, he has different approaches to practice and travel like we mentioned earlier and just the way he plans for games.
But there’s similarities in terms of holding guys to a standard that I think works really well because when your best player buys in and allows himself to take some of those tongue-lashings, I think that sets the standard for the rest of the team.
If Mitch Johnson is coaching Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle and De’Aaron Fox hard, he can coach everybody hard. And you know, are there moments when the Spurs let some lead slip away and there are people in the crowd demanding different rotation, a different substitution, what have you?
Of course that happens every year and every night and every NBA arena in the country. But I think when you look back at 14 months of a guy who’d never been a head coach in the league before doing this job, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect much more than what the Spurs have gotten from Mitch Johnson.
Jeff McDonald: Going back to your point about coaching guys hard, that’s the benefit of hiring from within to replace Pop. It’s a guy that’s already here, already has those relationships built in.
That’s what I took from—Keldon talked at length about Mitch Johnson after the game the other night against Orlando, because Mitch had just clinched the All-Star nod and so there were a lot of questions about that.
But the takeaway I got from Keldon’s very eloquent soliloquy was like, if you think about Keldon Johnson and Mitch Johnson, those guys have known each other for almost ten years now. Like, they were both in the bubble together.
Keldon was saying Mitch was the guy that was going through film with me when I was a rookie and a young guy. Seven years, seven years, just for clarification’s sake.
Mitch was the guy that was going through my film with me and when I was a rookie and a young guy. And so they build those relationships year over year and then once you have a relationship with a player, then you can coach them hard. You can’t just show up and coach somebody hard.
And so to have a guy that has a relationship with Keldon Johnson, Devin Vassell, all the guys up and down the roster that have been here for so long, especially those young guys, it gives him credibility in the locker room.
And like Keldon was saying, when you have a relationship with a coach and you trust him and you believe that he has your best interest at heart and he’s not BSing you and he’s not sugar-coating things for you and he’s not being mean to you just to be mean to you, and that the purpose of all of this is to make you better and the team better—when you believe that about a coach with your whole heart, it makes it easier for that guy to coach you, for that guy to tell you hard truths and to tell you what you need to work on and to bench you if he has to bench you or to yell at you if he has to yell at you.
And so I think that was really—like I said, that’s a huge plus and maybe a big reason the Spurs didn’t go outside their own walls when it came time to replace Gregg Popovich, because they had a candidate they really liked in the building and it was a candidate that already had those relationships built in.
Mike Finger: Yep. And I go back to that night when the Spurs were playing Minnesota, late November 2024, and Pop has what we later learned was a stroke at Frost Bank Center.
And when that happens, obviously the first reaction from everyone is concern about Gregg Popovich and his future and what have you. But as the team is deciding in a very short period of time—it happened Saturday afternoon, the game Saturday night—the organization has to make a decision there as to who’s going to take over.
And I think that if Gregg Popovich had a bout of stomach flu or something along those lines and had to go home and it’s a one-night issue, the reaction, the assumption from everyone, at least in the media core, or everybody in the arena, was that Brett Brown would take over because he’s the ranking member, he’s the eldest assistant on that staff at that time, that he would be the guy to fill in because I think he’d done it before.
Didn’t he take over in a game in LA one time when Pop had a medical issue? Yes. The reason in that moment, that afternoon, that the Spurs turned it over to the then-37-year-old assistant who’d never been a head coach before and had worked his way up from an assistant G-League coach in Austin, is because—and you know, we talk to people in the organization around this time—they had the utmost faith in that young 37-year-old guy who’d been in the organization since the middle of the last decade.
They had the utmost faith in him to take it over long term. And it wasn’t that they decided at that moment that Mitch Johnson is going to be Gregg Popovich’s eventual successor; it was more of a thing—and I can speak pretty confidently on this—that they thought that he had it in him to take over for an extended period of time.
And obviously when that happens with Gregg Popovich that day, they know it’s not going to be a one-day, one-week deal. And that they thought that Mitch Johnson had it in him to carry on what the Spurs were building over an extended period.
Now, they needed to see enough from him in the months that followed to decide to make it permanent. But he did pretty well last year in those months that followed, everything that you were talking about, everything that Keldon Johnson talked about in terms of the credibility that he obviously had with the players in the locker room, the ability to keep installing, keep improving upon what the Spurs were building.
He showed all of that and proved that he deserved the job over the next few months. And when he got it, all he’s done—have there been some inexplicable losses? Have there been some losses that like Mitch the other day said are maddening? I think that was a word he used.
Sure, he hasn’t done everything perfectly. But to look at it now and say that he’s going to go to the All-Star game with the second-best record in the Western Conference with a team that had missed the playoffs six years in a row, pretty impressive stuff.
Jeff McDonald: Right or wrong, your coaching job is judged by your record. And they’ve got the second-best record in the Western Conference at a time when I don’t think anybody would have predicted that coming into the year.
So however you want to nitpick this rotation or this play call or “Why is this guy dominating the ball, not that guy?” They have the second-best record in the Western Conference and nobody would have predicted that coming into the season. So that has to go to coaching. Other factors, but also coaching.
Mike Finger: Hey, you just mentioned rotation, there was a big rotation development for one day in Charlotte. Oh, we forgot about that. Yeah, Harrison Barnes. Yeah, it almost seems like that’s the move they were trying to make and then Stephon Castle came up hurt, so they moved Barnes back to the starting lineup against Orlando.
So Barnes’ bench streak ended at one. But I don’t know, I think that seems like a way they’re trying to go. It makes them small, it helps that Julian Champagnie can rebound his tail off. There’s going to be lineups where having Julian Champagnie as your four is not ideal on defense, but it helps that Stephon Castle can guard his tail off.
It helps that Victor Wembanyama’s standing behind you to clean up some of your messes. And that lineup with both Julian Champagnie and Devin Vassell in it helps the spacing.
So that’ll be—again, the Stephon Castle adductor issue on Sunday against Orlando kind of put an interruption into this experiment. I’m not sure how long it’ll last, if it makes it to Wednesday against Oklahoma City. I don’t think that Castle injury is going to linger.
That was one of those things where because of the travel issue, I think they were—with both Victor and Stephon—they weren’t going to push either one of them to play in that game. Victor decided that he wanted to, the calf thing was no big deal, they played it safe with Stephon.
But we’ll see how long that lineup lasts. And Harrison Barnes, the ultimate pro, I think is not the kind of guy who’s going to pout about coming off the bench. But that was a long streak.
Jeff McDonald: He started every appearance for a decade for Harrison Barnes. And if you’re—that’s maybe not surprising if you’re like Kevin Durant or Steph Curry or—well, Victor Wembanyama came off the bench.
But for a guy like Harrison Barnes, who’s really a role player, to be a starter in the NBA, and that spans—does that span four different teams, that starting streak? Golden State, Dallas, Sacramento, San Antonio. That’s a heck of an accomplishment.
I think as it—in terms of this year’s team—it makes a lot of sense to start Harrison Barnes when it was like November and he was Mr. 100%. It’s really hard when he just can’t buy a bucket. You don’t know what to do with that, and I give Mitch credit for giving him time to dig out of it.
Because you never know when it’s time to bail on a guy who’s in a slump. Sometimes it’s just a slump and you got to let him shoot himself out of it and you don’t want to mess up their routine or their confidence by changing their role, so you just roll with it and hope the worm turns.
But Harrison’s had a couple of bad months shooting the ball. So the spacing doesn’t work as well if he’s not making anything. So I think there had to be a move there at least to try to see if you can improve the spacing, improve the three-point shooting from the first unit.
And like Mitch keeps insisting, it’s nothing set in stone, nothing’s permanent. Kind of just checking some stuff out here. Mitch did make a good point that they have not had a full roster for very many games this year. So they’ve not really had a chance to see what this looks like versus what that looks like versus what that looks like. And this is the time that they have now that they have mostly full roster to do that.
Mike Finger: So we’ll see how all that goes. We’ll see how it shakes out at the trade deadline, which we didn’t discuss at all.
Hey, you know how I opened this podcast talking about how exhausting it is to always be right? Do you remember we were talking the other day—maybe on the charter level of Frost Bank Center where we were having some food from the culinary students? That’s a good place to go at the Frost Bank Center, check out what the culinary students are making.
Jeff McDonald: Don’t make the lines long, man.
Mike Finger: Okay. But we were talking about how the NBA was making up the rules as they go along with All-Star weekend, as they always do. And someone threw out there, “Well, what’s going to happen with the international team? How—there’s three teams and only two automatic coaches, you know, the Eastern coach and the Western coach. Who’s going to coach the World team?”
And somebody might have thrown out there, “Well, are there any international coaches?” And what was the first one that I mentioned? The first one that I suggested, the first name that I brought up.
Jeff McDonald: The first name you could think of. Maybe the only name you could think of. That’s what I think.
Mike Finger: I think—I think that I said, “Well, they should let Darko Rajakovic do it.” The coach of the surprising Toronto Raptors. He’s international. You should have the top international coach coach the international team.
And during the recording of this podcast, the NBA has announced that Darko Rajakovic will coach the World team at the NBA All-Star game. So there you go. There’s the answer to that question. We do need to—Tiago Splitter was robbed. Jordi Fernandez.
People do like the trade deadline stuff. I really—a Spurs podcast. Do you have a practice to get to?
Jeff McDonald: No, I got about 15 minutes or so.
Mike Finger: Well, we don’t need to fill 15 minutes, because of course not. We don’t have 15 minutes of irresponsible trade speculation when it comes to this franchise. You can do that in Sacramento. You can do that in Milwaukee for sure.
But you can’t really do that in San Antonio because the Spurs aren’t really a trade deadline team. They made the big move—here’s the thing, I wrote this over the weekend—we’re celebrating an anniversary.
A lot of people are celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Luka Dončić trade, but it’s also the one-year anniversary of the biggest trade deadline move the Spurs have ever made when they added De’Aaron Fox a year ago Sunday, a year ago the other day. It’s been a little over 365 days. And just looking back on it, what do you think of the trade?
Jeff McDonald: How it worked out? It seems like it worked out okay. They got an All-Star caliber guard for basically nothing.
And it’s still all that, if you want to get back in the on-court stuff, all that’s still a work in progress, how to mesh him and Vic, him and Steph Castle, how that all fits. As I kind of alluded to earlier, all those guys have not been all healthy at the same time for a whole bunch of games. So there’s still a lot of wrinkles to iron out.
But I mean, you have to give that trade an A+ still, in part because Fox is such a good player and in part because you lost players you didn’t really mind losing and picks that—you kept the Atlanta picks that seemed very valuable at the time, gave up picks you didn’t really care that much about.
There’s a chance that no pick will be higher than the number 12 pick that Chicago took, the Chicago pick the Spurs gave back to the Bulls in that three-way deal in which the Bulls took Noah Clowney, I think, number 12 overall.
The Charlotte pick didn’t convey. There’s two more first-rounders that could come. One of them is a Timberwolves pick several years from now, that might turn into something. One of them is a Spurs pick in '27 that should be in the 20s. In a year, by the way, when the Spurs will have a higher pick from Atlanta.
Mike Finger: The cost is basically nothing. And to be more emphatic about looking back at this trade, you made that trade at a time when you were in the process of missing the playoffs for the sixth year in a row. When you probably weren’t going to make—I think there was a chance that you could compete for the play-in last year, but this was a move for the future.
You saw De’Aaron Fox as sort of being on Victor Wembanyama’s timeline. He’s older, but you still saw peak years from him. And I think the hope was that in a couple of years when they were ready to compete for titles, that De’Aaron Fox would still be in his prime.
I think the fact that they are, again, number two in the West a year after that trade—I do not think that last year, a year ago, when they made that trade for De’Aaron Fox, that they thought in 365 days they would be sending their coach to the All-Star game and be second in the West. Like, that has exceeded expectations.
And they did not also know that they would get another lucky bounce of the lottery ball and end up with the second pick in the draft and end up with another really impressive-looking point guard, by the way, who’s had a pretty good week, Dylan Harper. You know, maybe if they knew they were getting Dylan Harper, they might not have made that trade.
But the point I’ve been trying to make is even though they did end up with Dylan Harper and do have Stephon Castle, like using the assets that they used to acquire De’Aaron Fox was a no-brainer. And there’s no way they could have used those assets—I shouldn’t say no way—it’s not automatic that they could have used those assets to acquire a better asset than De’Aaron Fox.
So I think when you look—again, people are doing the retrospectives on the Luka trade, just on trades in general, and our friend of the podcast Sam Amick wrote in The Athletic over the weekend that it’s pretty clear looking back how well he’s—he’s lived there a long time, he really knows the Kings.
And he said they are clearly regretting the outcome of that deal. And that’s a win for Brian Wright and company. As it looked a year ago, it looked like a heist back then, it looks like more of one now.
It’s Thursday, we’re going to give the people what they want? Some trade deadline?
Jeff McDonald: Well, that was my blowhardy transition into that, and that the Spurs did their deal last year. They won their heist last year, which lessens the need to do it this year. We’re going to agree there’s not going to be some big-name trade target coming to San Antonio, right? We’re going to just agree to those ground rules right now. We know there’s no Giannis coming.
Mike Finger: Right, Giannis, absolutely not. I will preface the “Spurs aren’t going to do anything” statement with a couple of caveats. There are dream additions that would fit the Spurs’ lineup perfectly that I believe at the time of this podcast recording are unrealistic because all the reporting says they’re unrealistic, like Trey Murphy from New Orleans.
If New Orleans were to suddenly make him available and the Spurs could do that, sure, that’d be something you’d have to look at. Again, Lauri Markkanen from Utah, I think that’s like a dream front-court mate for Victor Wembanyama, but no, those teams aren’t making those players available.
And they’d be kind of foolish to without opening it up to a big bidding war for them, because I think a lot of teams would like those two players. But aside from that, I don’t see any big moves for the Spurs this year.
Jeff McDonald: The player off the Pelicans’ roster that I would be taking a good hard look at is Saddiq Bey. Yeah, because I think that can fill a need for you. It’s a small move, low cost. It’ll fill a need, you won’t have to throw a bunch of picks at it like you would with Trey Murphy.
I mean, Trey Murphy would be a great fit. I don’t know what the cost is or if that’s too high, and it sounds like New Orleans is asking for a lot for that. So I’m going to say, let’s just for argument’s sake say Trey Murphy is not going to be available in any kind of price range the Spurs want to approach.
Saddiq Bey’s the guy that I would look at. Give you a little 3-and-D, a little more size on the wing than you’ve got. You know, if you’re looking for someone to fill that Harrison Barnes role in your starting lineup or even in bench rotations, Bey could be that guy. So that’s one guy I would look at.
And there’s other—tell me what you think about this because this is news—you heard overnight where the Clippers and Cavs are going to discuss swapping James Harden. The Spurs could maybe get in on that as like a third team and maybe take like a John Collins. What would you think about like a John Collins? Or are we past the John Collins era in San Antonio where that makes sense?
Mike Finger: There was a time in my life, there was a time in the history of this podcast where I was intrigued by John Collins when he was an Atlanta Hawk.
Jeff McDonald: What about him as like a third, like a third big though? He’s not starting for you, he’s not necessarily your backup big, but he’s basically—you’d probably lose Olynyk in this deal, so it’d probably fill kind of the Olynyk space, maybe.
Mike Finger: I’m not against it. That doesn’t make me as enthusiastic as it makes some people, because maybe you’re overpaying—to me that’s almost like—there was a time when he was a name, like people thought of him as the future star, and that sort of faded.
Jeff McDonald: There were Spurs fans that wanted that to be the big trade target. Mortgage all the assets for John Collins.
Mike Finger: I think he might be one of those guys that was overrated for so long that he might start to become underrated. I don’t know.
I’m setting my sights much lower. Those are kind of the level of names I’d be thinking about if I’m a Spurs fan. Well, I’m looking at even lower-level names. Like, during the course of this podcast, friend of the podcast Andy Larsen put out a skeet that says Kyle Anderson and Kevin Love have been added to the Jazz’s injury report with illness. Anderson is questionable, Love is doubtful.
And that’s like, hmm. Those are the names. Those are the names. Just kind of the bottom of the NBA rumor mill type names that—
Jeff McDonald: Do you want to take players that aren’t even playing for the Utah Jazz, though?
Mike Finger: To me, that’s the type of move that I’ve thought from the beginning of the year that the Spurs might make at the deadline is just add more veteran guys who you don’t even expect to play much, but can come in and hit a shot and do veteran stuff and be around and give you some experience in the playoffs.
I’m not advocating for that move, by the way. But those are the—it’s sort of a joke. But when you see names like that, those are the types of players that I wouldn’t rule out the Spurs adding, just like guys who aren’t going to play much.
Saddiq Bey makes more sense. Jeremy Sochan, who I still think the Spurs are going to try to help out at the deadline to get a fresh start somewhere else. Percentage chance Jeremy Sochan is still a San Antonio Spur come Friday?
I’ll take 48%, because I think it’s more likely than not that he’s gone, but I don’t think it’s automatic.
Jeff McDonald: It’s coin-flip territory just because I don’t think the Spurs are going to do something just to do it. It sort of has to make sense. And I’m not sure there’s one of those out there. But I mean, that seems about right.
I do know they tend to, like you say, they’re not going to just give him away for funsies, but they do try to do right by guys that need a fresh start. So I think they will look at the market and see what they can do for him.
Mike Finger: All right. Well, this was supersized. Hope the viewers slash listeners are going to see this pop up in their feed, see there was a 40-almost 50-minute Spurs Insider podcast and they’re going to think, “Well, look at all the trade expertise that these guys are going to give us this week,” and they’re going to be sorely disappointed as usual to learn it’s just more nonsense.
Jeff McDonald: Did you say to start this thing, did you mention that Tom Orsborn is on the IL?
Mike Finger: Yeah. Should we clarify that that’s not, you know—
Jeff McDonald: Normally this time of year when guys are on the IL like you mentioned with Kyle Anderson and Kevin Love, you start to wonder if they’re going to get traded. We’re not going to trade Tom Orsborn, are we?
Mike Finger: I’m not ruling that out. I hope not. He’s a good teammate. I think we value him as a member of the organization, but you know, you got to consider all options. How many first-round picks do you think we get for Tom Orsborn?
Mike Finger: I’m not allowed to speculate. I’m not allowed to comment on those types of things. But if he’s here next week, we’ll be glad to have him, you know. But I’m not committing to anything publicly. Anyway.
Jeff McDonald: We are a ruthless GM. We could improve, we could improve. It’d be hard to improve. He’s having an MVP-caliber season. Of course we’re not going to trade Tom Orsborn unless the Bucks make Giannis available.
I think that—would that improve the podcast to have Giannis, Jeff, and me every week talking about nonsense?
Jeff McDonald: If you’re talking about podcast, wouldn’t like Draymond be a better—wouldn’t he be the GOAT? That’s true. He would be the GOAT of NBA—does Draymond fit into Tom Orsborn’s salary slot or would we need to throw in some fillers?
Jeff McDonald: No, we would have to carve some cap space. Well, Tom’s fine, he had another obligation. He’s fine, we’re looking forward to having him back. It’ll be much more professional, much better next week. He’s the true MVP.
Thank you all for listening. We’ll see you next week. Take care of each other and keep it real.