Popular X account asks honest Jeremy Sochan question that deserves attention

If you ask an older NBA fan, they’ll say the league’s gone soft. Playing tough, physical defense and keeping teams below 100 points per game appears to be a relic of the past. The league has become full of excitement for the lay fan, with backboard jarring slam dunks and three-pointers galore littering television broadcasts league-wide.

Players get drafted and paid these days based on what they can offer on the offensive end of the floor. With TV contracts paying oodles of money and teams building billion-dollar arenas, it's like the average fan doesn’t want to see defense anymore.

Defense wins championships and Sochan is Spurs' best defender

Stat Defender, a popular page on X, recently illustrated just how good a defender Sochan is.

Contrary to the early tone of this article, Sochan wasn’t drafted for his offensive acumen, as most members of the Silver and Black Nation have surmised to this point in his career. Although he’s a serviceable offensive player, albeit with a unique shot and signature one-handed free throw motion, Sochan’s real impact for this team is on the defensive end. He hasn’t gotten enough credit for this key ingredient to his game, though.

The Spurs drafted the American-born, Polish forward ninth overall in 2022 after playing one season at Baylor University. At Baylor, Sochan was known for his bombastic hair and his ability to get under opponents’ skin, which he did (and still does) very well.

Sochan’s built to be a premier NBA defender. He’s got the size at 6’8” to guard every position on the floor. The Spurs’ number ten has held Orlando power forward Paolo Banchero to a 25% field goal percentage while guarding him and has held point guard LaMelo Ball to a 33% field goal percentage, proving his versatility.

Sochan even has the strength, at 230 pounds, to slow down players like Lebron James, who is notoriously a bigger-bodied player.

The Spurs dynasty was built on defense. Smothering and suffocating defense has always led to offense for the team, and the five Larry O’Brien trophies in the hallways of the Frost Bank Center prove as much. The NBA game is different now, and it’s moved towards positionless basketball, where players built like Sochan can excel in the old mode the Spurs culture was built on.

With Sochan on the wing, able to defend the positionless game today’s NBA has morphed into, the Spurs are on the right track. Stephon Castle, their first-round pick this past season, is cut in the same mold, and it appears the organization has a vision for defensively-focused basketball moving forward, just like the Spurs of old.

Sometimes, what’s old becomes new again. For San Antonio, it starts with a refurbished strategy that, hopefully, leads to not-so-refurbished championships.