2022 Redraft: Do the Spurs make the same selections?

It’s pretty easy for the Spurs and their fans to get psyched about the team’s most recent lottery pick (and highest draft selection since Tim Duncan) after one of his most productive games of the season— Jeremy Sochan dropped 15 points and 8 rebounds on the 4th seed (!!!) Sacramento Kings. 

But this article is about more than one night; Sochan is amidst the most consistent stretch of basketball in his young career. Since his much-maligned decision to shoot free throws one-handed, he has been very solid from the line.

Sochan has also become a highlight machine on a team that was in desperate need of fireworks.

As I said above, this is a piece about much more than a stretch of play. One of my biggest gripes about how basketball is followed today is how reactive fans and media have become. I believe I’ve used the phrase “this is a business of clicks” in another article, so on that basis, I get it. Being the first to a hot take drives interaction. 

However, in my personal analysis, five good games in a row don’t drastically improve my opinion of a player, the same way that five bad games in a row don’t make me feel that much worse about a player. 

The Spurs stand at 13-31 after 44 games. I’m comfortable with using that many games as a sample size to determine whether the Silver & Black made the correct decision by spending first-round picks on Sochan and fellow rookies Malaki Branham and Blake Wesley. 

The latter two have missed many games due to injury and G-League assignments, so their sample size is quite a bit smaller. The label “draft miss” really only applies to lottery picks, so I hope that you will be okay with me focusing more words on Jeremy.

With all of that in mind and what we know with half a season under our belts, let’s do a re-draft of San Antonio’s 2022 selections.

9th Overall- Original Pick: Jeremy Sochan; New Pick: Jeremy Sochan 

I hope that I had y’all guessing who I’d pick here after I essentially qualified Jeremy’s hot stretch as just “five good games." In the 40ish games that Sochan has played, he’s been everything that I hoped for, if not more. Sochan has shown the tools and size to be the five-position defender he was advertised as out of Baylor, which was the main reason he ended up as a lottery pick.

He’s struggled with quicker guards, which you can see in the clip below, but that will get better as he adjusts further to the NBA. I fully expect him to be a mainstay on All-Defensive teams sooner rather than later.

Offensively, it’s been more up and down. This was fully expected— a burning question I asked pre-season was if Sochan had worked on his shot over the summer. I wrote that both his free throw and three-point percentages coming out of Baylor needed vast improvement for Jeremy to contribute in the league. 

Credit to Jeremy. Obviously, he’s trying to better both, mostly through work on his shot mechanics, especially at the free throw line. My favorite comment on this matter came from DragonflyJonez on Twitter. It truly speaks to his character that he’s so publicly working on this weakness.

As far as other options at this pick go, Spurs' Twitter favorites pre-draft included Johnny Davis and Jalen Duren. It is too early to place the “bust” label on any rookie, but Davis has been that so far. Duren has been good, especially for a rookie center, and would be a great replacement if the Spurs were to trade Jakob Poeltl.

Some other names to consider in the range of the 9th pick include Jalen Williams and Tari Eason. Both have been impressive, but I don’t think that there is any regret in choosing Sochan.

20th Overall- Original Pick: Malaki Branham; New Pick: Walker Kessler (C, Jazz) and 25th Overall- Original Pick: Blake Wesley; New Pick: lots of options

As I mentioned earlier, neither Branham nor Wesley have played nearly enough minutes for them to be fairly judged as players. In fact, when given the opportunity, each has shown promise— Malaki has averaged 8 points, 2 assists, and 2 rebounds on 20 minutes per game in the month of January, while Blake had 5-1-1 in limited minutes in his second game back from injury on Sunday night. 

I figure that at least one of these guys ends up being a staple in the Spurs' rotation when they return to competitiveness. Hopefully post-trade deadline, they will be given plenty of time to grow. I combined their sections here because the conversation surrounding the two is almost identical.

My drafting of Walker Kessler at 20 says more about who he is—10-10 with 3 blocks in his last five—than it does prove anything about the young Spurs guards. Kessler, one of the many assets shipped from Minnesota to Utah for the services of Rudy Gobert, would be the Defensive Rookie of the Year if such an award existed in the NBA, and thus probably isn’t even here in a re-draft.

The Jazz essentially got a much cheaper, much younger version of The Stifle Tower as a throw-in to the massive trade. I know I just talked about being happy with San Antonio taking Sochan over Jalen Duren, but snagging the likely All-Rookie First Team center outside of the lottery would be huge. 

The 25th pick could go in any number of directions; hence there being “options.” I think either Branham or Wesley would still be a good pick here, assuming Malaki doesn’t go in the 4 picks between where he was originally selected and 25. I do really like the Spurs thinking backcourt here.

I was confused when the team went guard-guard during the draft, but after the Josh Primo news broke, it became very clear why they wanted to bolster their young depth at guard. The other name that I’d really be considering here is Jaden Hardy. He's under the microscope more because of the Mavs’ success and has delivered in the role given to him.

Other guys in the conversation for either pick include Christian Braun, David Roddy, Nikola Jovic, and Andrew Nembhard. I didn’t mention the guards as options alongside Hardy above because each is quite a bit older, and it was clear that the Spurs were targeting age. All four of these players have flashed NBA skills, but again, no regrets.

To wrap up my thoughts here, I thought that the Spurs came out of the draft as winners back in June (as did most of the media), which holds true today. I made a different selection based on who was available, but there was no truly obvious missed pick. Again, it is mostly too early for that conversation, and I reserve the right to change my opinions.

Nonetheless, I strongly feel that this year’s draft—along with those in 2019 (Keldon Johnson) and 2020 (Devin Vassell, Tre Jones)- will be seen as a catalyst toward the Spurs' success in a couple of years.