This speaks VOLUMES about the Spurs future...

This speaks volumes about the San Antonio Spurs as this aspect of this upcoming season reveals all as Mitch Johnson has some incredible decisions to make, but with all the talk about De'Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper, it's drowning out the other decisions with the lineup, such as the big man rotation, but most importantly, our two and three guard spots. We have to dive into exactly what is making this tough on Mitch Johnson, how he can navigate this and what it means for not only the Spurs playing this season, but the future trade market future signings the impact on the payroll there's a lot of aspects of this that Mitch Johnson is going to have to dive into and we're going to dive into all of it on this episode of Spurs Digest and hey before we get into it just a quick reminder hit that free subscribe button because we're super close to 10,000 thank you guys for tuning in every single day all summer long we're here with Spurs content we could not appreciate you more but before we get into the Mitch Johnson stuff and by the way there's an article linked down below for that that i suggest you read but we'll talk about that in a bit i want to talk about Derrick White because on his podcast recently yeah you know Derrick White D White the Buffalo are one of our favorite players ever i still love him and you know that funny quote came out about Pop but it's not that that i want to talk about i want to talk about what Derrick White had to say about Luke Cornett on his podcast and it's just awesome he said hate to see him leave but you're just so happy for him to get what he deserves I think San Antonio is going to love him he kind of just makes the game easier for you now this was a bit later he said this but i felt like it worked with this quote because he's not asking for the ball in the block and he's not asking for any stats hey we know that he's not asking for any stats in 19 minutes a night six and five with that 1.0 blocks per game and again the Cornette contest matters a lot but Derrick White's praise means even more honestly like we saw the effort that Luke Cornette gave for the Celtics but maybe not a lot of us Spurs fans had that much time to watch a ton of Celtics basketball again they won the title last year and it's like okay we did see a bit of it but to hear a player say how important Cornette was there D. White was raving about Luke Cornette this entire segment so that is amazing but the quote I showed you is not even the whole story he said they're probably going to play him and Wemby together which hey we might I mean look looking at the center rotation could play him together we have Barnes we have Sohan Olenek is a four or five we'll get into that a bit later but he said they're probably going to play him and Wemby together which is going to be insane he's going to be absolutely insane and he's just a guy that knows how to play the game the right way you want to play with and that is so true with Cornette but like to hear that from like we know the rim protection aspect of Cornett's game like that's what we wanted from him right to come in get some boards be that backup center in a role where he's never really played like the number one backup for a long stretch who might be relied upon to play 20-ish minutes so you know we've never really done that but we gave him 11 million in a year to do it and I think he's ready to do it and to hear the praise again from so many people not only from our own fans because obviously we're thrilled about Luke Cornett but Derek White himself saying like I hate that he's gone but I think him and Wemby are going to be insane I just love to see that look it just reinforces the opinion that we all have and again like I think the addition of Kelly Olenek by trading away our young players there to the Washington Wizards actually helps us insulate Luke Cornett a bit so some of those spot backup center minutes you can put Olenek there or maybe Olenek is going to be the top backup center and Cornett's going to be that guy I don't know right we also can't forget that Luke Cornett shot four threes a game in like his first two years in the league don't know if that's going to come back he kind of like stopped focusing on that but like I'm starting to wonder if he's just going to start bombing threes again anyway regardless I just thought that was a super cool thing to lead into this video but now we're getting into the big thing and again like I said there's an article linked down below because it was written by Sean McKenna talking about uh at Air Alamo saying Spurs Johnson has tough decisions ahead as the depth improves now there's different aspects that Sean touches on and i suggest you go read it down below i'm not going to spoil the article you got to go check out the original article that's why it's linked down there give Sean some credit but i'm not affiliated with Air Alamo by the way we are not I just like a lot of the articles they post they post but i wanted to dive into the spurs payroll this year and just some very interesting aspects for Mitch Johnson because like mitch himself he's been he was under scrutiny a good bit last year as he was dealing with an injury riddled team and now again this year like i said earlier that the narrative is controlled by De'Aaron Fox and Harper which I'm straying away from today I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the big man rotation and our swingman rotation because those to me are the positions with the most interesting interesting aspects to them and we're going to fix the base part there we go no editing this time I don't know what's going on with that but hey we got to fix some of the source code however we look at this team right you know what even better let's look at the lineup and yeah I'm done talking about point guard Fox and Harper they'll figure it out I'm not worried it's those other minutes and if I start with the big men I want to go there first because you know big men Jeremy Sochan could play some three probably more of a four Harrison Barnes again kind of the same thing they're both three fours but they're definitely both power forwards and again I know a lot of you think Barnes is going to start I probably don't disagree I just like Jeremy Sochan so I have him there starting and then I have Kelly there but Kelly is again a four or a five but this is where it gets confusing to me because you have five players that are very very solid rotation players every single one of these five players who you plan to play at the four or the five this season could easily play 20 minutes a game on many other teams and so it's not so much about misuse of the players well Sean touches a bit on that like how certain players will get locked out and maybe that's a bit more applicable to the guard situation I don't think I'm worried about players getting locked out from the big man situation because I think on any given night you can just afford to go with the hot hand It's more about how I think fans and, you know, media and maybe even us will react to Mitch Johnson's rotations, because I think it's an inevitability that if you look at this and you and you look at a guy like Jeremy Sochan, who is, again, hopefully coming into this season fully healthy, right? He's going to come in here and he's going to try and light the world on fire when he wasn't recovering from injury this year in like the games at the start of the season and the very end, he was averaging like 15 and 9 and he's just continuing to progress. We're seeing his good jumper coming out with training for Team Poland. And then Kelly O'Leary coming in, averaging nine a game last year on 42% from three. Like, this guy deserves a ton of minutes as well. I think for him, it's probably less about playing a bunch of minutes. But on a team like San Antonio, where floor spacing is so important, you want to deploy him in strategic ways. Harrison Barnes is another guy who shot like 43% from three last year. He was our best three-point shooter, bar none. Yeah, there were some other decent shooters, but it was Harrison Barnes. So obviously, Wemby's going to get his. And Luke Cornett, we just talked about. So I think there's going to be a lot of pressure, I think, on Mitch Johnson to make the decisions here to like figure out your best way. Again, I'm not talking about, you know, locking players out from the forward court. It's more forward and center, I should say. It's more about figuring out the proper balance on a night to night basis, which is not easy. Like as a coach, it is not easy, let alone to manage personalities. personalities none of these guys all love to be spurs but like to manage five guys who legit have a case to play at any given point in the game is extremely difficult and when you shift your focus to the guards that just becomes even more evident right and again less so, and not even the guards more the two and the three because Stephon Castle is, you know, he's gonna play the two guard this year he's not gonna have many minutes playing point unless it's a time where like maybe Fox is in foul trouble and you don't want to run Harper as the primary ball handler you can have Castle play those spot one minutes but like Vassell, Keldon Johnson, Julian Champagnie, and Stephon Castle again like are we really gonna run a team that's 11-12 deep throughout the whole regular season that's not really how we tend to operate because you don't have the minutes to play all these guys 10-15 minutes a night and so that does sort of now if we get to talking about locking out Carter Bryant it kind of hurts him a bit he's not gonna play that much I'm not worried about him because I think I don't think he needs to play that much and I think if he ends up playing it'll be his defense speaking for itself so that's just a win-win but again especially a guy Julian Champagnie here like Julian Champagnie like we have him at a very cheap contract so it doesn't really matter I guess if he doesn't play but his 3-and-D shooting is so valuable to the team especially at his cap hit right so there's there's some interesting aspects here like you might end up blocking a guy like Julian Champagnie out even a guy like Keldon Johnson I don't want to say you're going to lock him out but like again you look at this rotation you have like five guys or four or guys that have averaged at least 19 points a game in a season Vassell averaged 19.5 just a couple of years ago Harrison Barnes when he was with the Mavericks averaged 19 and I think he's averaged like 18 and 17 since then too obviously Darren Fox obviously Wembanyama and that Keldon Johnson is a former 22 point per game score so at the moment that is tough to navigate on its own for Mitch Johnson I need to hear your guys thoughts what do you think he's going to do with this 11 12-man rotation where all these guys could play are we just going to sit i mean McLaughlin and Bryant I think are the two clear guys that you can sit but that still leaves leaves you 11 deep with guys that are going to be you know they're going to earn their minutes but you got to find the minutes for them and that goes to my final point here where i'm looking at the payroll and i'm looking at the future for this team and how we can move around the roster because we know Victor Wembanyama's extension is coming up it's probably going to be signed next summer you just have to assume that we're going to pay him that year early it's done Jeremy Sohan's extension has to come between now and next summer at some point during this season same thing for De'Aaron Fox Harrison Barnes we have to replace him so maybe that opens up a door for you there Harrison Barnes contract leaving opens up some extra money and maybe another roster spot for maybe Carter Bryant to kind of jump up in the rotation sure but Harrison Barnes is already a good player and he's not the kind of guy that you'll trade away at the deadline for example for assets but a guy like Keldon Johnson who's still making 17 and a half this year and next who has a history of scoring near 20 points per game who again in on this roster is like he's gonna get his minutes i still really like big body i think big body's gonna force his way into this rotation but he's not gonna get the minutes to show the kind of player that he truly is the kind of player he could be on a team where there's more space in front of him and i think there's a few guys on the spurs like that right and again we brought in Cornette and Olynyk for a reason but like when i look at Keldon and i look at Champette like we need Champette shooting Keldon Johnson again seemed a bit expendable maybe even Devin Vassell too looking at this payroll it's like finding guys enough minutes to showcase their talent as well if you want to trade them is important because if a guy is getting pushed out of your rotation their trade value naturally goes down now on the plus side of that if you want to bring them back you can maybe sign them at a lesser deal but other teams might be willing to take a bigger swing so I'm just saying there are a bunch of different avenues that my mind goes down when I look at the rotation this year for Mitch Johnson so I need to hear your guy's thoughts like how would you handle this do you think he's under a lot of pressure to manage this because this team is the deepest it's been in a number of years and finding the minutes for all these guys i think is not going to be any easy task i have full faith in mitch johnson to do it but as i look at the rotation there's there's implications for not playing guys for overplaying certain guys and just wondering how he's going to handle it so let me know your thoughts down below but that'll do it for this episode of spurs digest and hey most importantly if you made it this far in the video 11 minutes in you listen to me ramble for 11 minutes straight come back to this tab if you clicked away thank you for being here please hit that free subscribe button if you haven't already I know I ask a lot but like every time I ask you guys do it we're so close to 10,000 thank you for tuning in every single day I'm your host Josh Goss I'll catch y'all in the next one