August 28, 2025 • 43 mins
Jason breaks down why he has San Antonio Spurs budding star Victor Wembanyama at No. 7 on his NBA player rankings list heading into the 2025 season. He discusses the partnership with De'Aaron Fox, the places Wemby can take another leap, and what his outlook is. Then he discusses Patrick Beverley's comments about Paul George, Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, and the Golden State Warriors.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, welcome to Hoops and I here
at the volume heavy Wednesday. Everybody of all of you
guys are having a great week. We are continuing our
player rankings today with number seven Victor Webbin Yama. We're
(00:24):
going to be doing a deep dive on Victor. Also
a little bit of a deep dive into the Fox
Victor partnership, one that we didn't see too much of
last year, but that didn't look overly smooth at first,
but I'm a little bit more bullish on it. We're
going to talk about what that partnership will look like
going into next season. After that, Patrick Beverly had a
comment saying that if Paul George had played with the
(00:45):
Warriors instead of Klay Thompson, they would have won more championships,
which is something that I disagree with and a classic
example of value in a vacuum versus value in your
specific team. So something I want to dive into at
the tail end of the show. You guys know the
joke before we get started. Subscribed to Hoops and I
YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos,
Follow me on Twitter and underscore JSNLT. So you guys
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(01:06):
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you guys follow us there. And last, but not least,
if you guys want to get questions into our mail bags,
drop them underneath these full episodes on YouTube. Just put
mail bag with a colon. Write anything you guys have
(01:27):
a question about. We'll get to it on our Friday
mail bags. If you disagree with anything in the player rankings,
you can tell me why, tell me where you'd put
a player. Make a little elevator pitch, and we'll get
to it in our mail bags on Fridays throughout the
remainder of the summer. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So you know, Lebron and Wemby being in this spot
here to me kind of represents two very different types
(01:47):
of conundrums in the sense that either one of these
guys you could rank very low because of their age
or very high because of their seiling. It's different. Like
many young players, Victor struggles to replicate his successes and
he struggles to minimize mistakes. Like last year, Victor Wemenyama
(02:07):
only scored thirty points in consecutive games twice all season long,
but on any given random night, he was able to
reach preposterous highs. Victor Wemnyam had his first fifty point
playoff game this year, excuse me, his first fifty point
game this season. He had a forty two point eighteen rebound,
(02:29):
four block game. He had a thirty five point eighteen
rebound game, a thirty five point fourteen rebound game, a
thirty ten game where the ten was blocks. He nearly
had four triple doubles with blocks, a twenty four to
thirteen with nine blocks, a thirty and seven with ten blocks,
a twenty three and fourteen with eight blocks, a thirteen
(02:51):
and twelve with eight blocks. He had a twenty twenty
game with twenty three rebounds against Denver, not his first
twenty twenty believe it or not. He had a forty
twenty one game when he was a rookie. These are
all statistical explosions that only a few players in the
entire league are capable of, and when it comes to blocks, especially,
(03:13):
he's kind of treading new ground that we've never seen
in the modern NBA. He's basically the only player in
the league capable of those stat lines. The block stats
with Victor will break break your brain. He had twenty
eight more blocks than any other player in the NBA
last year despite playing in just forty six games. He
averaged three point eight blocks per game, which led the league,
(03:36):
was second place just being two point four. So to
make that very clear, he averaged more than a time
and a half as many blocks as the second best
shot blocker in the NBA. So yeah, Victor is one
of those guys where, just like Lebron, it's kind of
like differentiating between Victor's youthful inconsistency versus Lebron's age related inconsistency,
(04:00):
but just the ridiculous, preposterous highs that those guys were
able to hit right now with Victor women Yama, is
he the type of guy that would be super high
on my list for guys I'd want in a big
playoff game. No, he has too many offensive awards right now,
and he's a young player who makes too many mistakes.
But his overwhelming overall basketball impact will easily make him
(04:24):
a top five regular season player this year when he's
healthy and on the floor at least, and his highs
will literally be as high as the highest highs that
any player could ever reach on a basketball court and
as far as the playoffs go, Like, yeah, do I
have some certain concerns about his ability to manage the
possession of possession stuff and on the offensive end there, sure,
but his defensive capabilities give him a high enough floor
(04:48):
in the postseason to keep him very high on this
list for me. So he came in at number seven
this year. But like I said, similar to what I
was talking about with Lebron on Monday, these two guys
in particular, make sure all time great who's young, and
a current all time great who happens to be very old.
These are two of the hot, the hardest guys to
rank on a list like this. So I would understand
(05:10):
if either with either of those guys, if you guys
have them substantially lower or substantially higher. Now let's get
into last season in review. For Victor, he played in
just forty six games after coming down with a blood
clot issue. He was pretty regularly available before that. He
had played in forty six of fifty two games before
that point, which means in the first season and a
(05:31):
half of his career, he had played in one hundred
and seventeen out of one hundred and thirty four possible
NBA games, So he was on pace to play seventy
plus games two seasons in a row in two tries.
So this particular injury, this blood clot thing, it's not
a foot or a knee or a back like that
kind of stuff that typically plagues super tall guys. So
(05:52):
I'm expecting wemb to be generally available coming this year.
I didn't punish him for that on this particular list.
In those forty six games that he played, twenty four
point three points per game, eleven rebounds per game, and
four assists per game, to go with a staggering four
point nine stocks per game, which led the NBA by
country mile. As we discussed earlier his percentages, he was
(06:14):
forty eight percent from the field, thirty five percent from
three to eighty four percent from the line, fifty six
percent in effective field goal percentage that's just field goal
percentage waited for threes, and fifty nine percent in true shooting,
which again is your efficiency waited for both threes and
your trips to the foul line. These were all improvements
year over year for Victor from his rookie season. Like
(06:37):
any superstar prospect in their first few seasons, he experienced
a new peak within the season. Often it's not like
an explosion each year. A lot of time, like Victor
actually got off to a pretty rough start to start
the season. He had that early game where Chet badly
outplayed him, if you guys remember, but from December Nintheen,
from December nineteenth to February fifth, the span of twenty
(06:59):
one games, he averaged twenty six points and twelve rebounds
with four point two blocks per game while shooting thirty
eight percent from three on nine attempts per game. It's
just become such an aggressive, high volume three point shoot
or something we're gonna talk a lot about when we
get further into this video. All right, let's dig into
some of the play type data. And I want to
(07:20):
start with Wemby as an off ball score. And the
reason why is I think this will inevitably be a
major swing factor for the Spurs moving forward because they
have Deer and Fox and Dylan Harper in such strong
play at the guard position. Stephan Castle and you know
Devin vessel Thing's players like that. Right, let's quick go
over Victor weban Yama's roleman numbers. Then we'll bring Fox
(07:42):
into the equation and talk about that partnership. So Victor
Weminyama logged one hundred and sixty three roleman possessions last
year and converted them at one point one seven points
per possession, which is very good. He shot just below
thirty three percent on pick and pop threes. That's obviously
not good. Strange because he was real good when he
was on the move in off screen situations, but it's
(08:04):
important to notice there that there's kind of a difference
in the movement. So Victor, we're gonna go over the
numbers later, but he shot really well coming off of
dribble handoffs or coming off of off ball screens from three.
So like imagine just running up to the ball, catching, turning,
and firing. In those situations, you're running towards the ball
(08:25):
and you have lots of steps to kind of load up.
You can run nice and low. You get your footwork
down plant that right left if you're running to your
left or your left right, if you're running to your
right and you have a chance to get all that
power up into the shot and rise and fire out
of ball screens. When you're popping out of ball screens,
you're typically back pedaling or shuffling sideways into the back right,
(08:48):
and as you're doing that, your momentum is going away
from the ball and away from the basket, and so
it's a little bit tougher to get your feet set
underneath you to get the lift you need to knock
down the shots. I think that is my best attempt
at an explanation for why Victor didn't shoot so well
on pick and pops, even though he shot really well
generally as a catch and shoot player, and especially coming
(09:09):
off of off ball screens. Right. We'll get into that
idea a little bit further when we get into the
off ball stuff, the off ball shooting stuff. He was
seventy one percent on twos out of pick and roll
as the rollman. Obviously, as great hands, he catches everything.
He's generally a great rim finisher too, like he shoots
over sixty percent on layups, which, as we've talked about,
(09:31):
can be a problem for some bigs in this league.
When they can't just dunk the ball. We talked about
this issue a lot with bam At Abaiyo, for instance.
He's also really good at driving closedouts. It's weird because
he's so upright and if there's a downside, he'll occasionally
turn the ball over in these situations as he tries
to kind of salal him through everybody. But he's usually
pretty good at using the threat of his shot to
(09:52):
get an angle on the closing defender, Like even if
they're a quick guard, he'll get that shoulder by him,
and then he just weirdly finds these angles to lollum
and euro three people and shoot layups. And he was
even fifty percent on twos driving closeouts and spot up situations,
for example, So pretty good putting the ball on the
floor when someone's sprinting at him. Now let's talk about
(10:13):
the Darren Fox partnership. It's important to note that because
of Victor's blood clot issue, these two just didn't get
much of a chance to gel. That's it. It didn't
look too good in the small sample. I actually went
back this morning and rewatched every single pick and roll
that Darren Fox ran with Victor Webbin Yama, and they
just didn't connect very often, especially in the pocket. There
(10:33):
were only about a half dozen possessions out of the
entire set of clips where Darren Fox actually managed to
successfully get the ball to Victor Wembenyama in the pocket.
I think I counted just one lob dunk in a
pick and roll situation. It just takes time to figure
out the timing in those pick and roll partnerships, and
it's especially hard with a guy like Fox. The guys
(10:54):
that we talked about this with Giannis and the difference
between like the the Dame fit versus the Kevin Porter
Junior fit, where like Kevin Porter Junior was a little
bit slower and more methodical, which helped Giannis get open
on the rolls, whereas Dame kind of had one speed
downhill and that was something that caused some limitations in
(11:15):
their pick and roll partnership over that stretch. Dame is
obviously a better player than Kevin Porter Junior by a mile.
I'm more just talking about specifically getting the ball to
Giannis in the pocket, which was something that Kevin Porter
kind of like naturally figured out how to do with Giannis. Similarly,
Darrean Fox is very downhill, very fast, not a ton
of change of pace, And so with that being the case,
(11:38):
the timing is going to be critical, and so I
think it's going to take a lot of a lot
of reps. So I want to give like a nice
half of the season to give those two guys the reps.
They need to kind of figure out the timing and
when to slip out of screens, when to push downhill
versus when to for Fox to slow down and wait
for Wenby to open out things along those lines. Dylan Harper,
(11:58):
for example, all he has a little bit more of
a change of pace shiftiness to his game than Darren Fox.
He's a rookie, so I'm not expecting him to just
be this magnificent partner for Wemby right away. But don't
be surprised if, just like the natural flow of a
Dylan Harper Victor wemen Yama pick and roll looks a
little more naturally fluid than the Fox one, just because
(12:20):
he changes pace a little bit more and is a
little bit slower as he comes off of those screens.
The partnership was also kind of exacerbated negatively by two
other things. One, the spurs are generally a poor jump
shooting team, and Dearn Fox hit a lot of really
really nice skip passes in ball screens that just weren't
paid off. We're going to talk about that in a minute,
(12:41):
because Darren Fox is actually kind of sneaky good at that.
And then secondly, Dearren Fox has had a brutal perimeter
scoring stretch to end the season with San Antonio, something
I expect him to direct by this year. He shot
horribly from three and about five percent worse on his
floaters than he did in his previous full season in Sacramento.
So all of those things added up to a lackluster
(13:01):
debut for the Deer and Fox Victor women. Yam a partnership,
but I am overall optimistic about the types of shots
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slash Audio. I'm concerned about the rest of the roster
and whether or not they'll be able to capitalize on
those shots, which we'll get to in a bit, But
(14:52):
I do think that they're going to be able to
get good shots. First of all, like I mentioned earlier,
I expect the timing to improve with reps, and I
expect Dearon Fox to have a better season as a
shot maker. But I also think there's real potential here
for this to be an action that generates a lot
of high quality threes for San Antonio. It wasn't just
the timing that led to Darn Fox failing to get
the ball to Wemby in pick and roll when he
(15:14):
was rolling to the basket. It also has a lot
to do with the gravity that Wemby has on the roll.
The whole defense reacts to Victor woman Yama when he's
rolling down the lane and Deern Fox, especially if you
can get him going towards his left hand. He's sneaky.
One of the better guys in the league at skipping
the ball across the court against loaded pick and roll coverages.
(15:36):
So imagine, if they're icing a ball screen along the
left wing and he's dribbling towards the left corner, he'll
whip it across the court if Victor rolls into the
lane and the guy comes off of the right corner
to tag, or if he's in the right wing and
he's coming towards the middle, if he manages to get middle,
or if he's in the middle of the floor like
where they can't ice, like if he's attacking from the
(15:56):
top of the key in a ball screen, if he
can get to that left hand, he's gonna whip it
to the right corner pretty consistently and generally. Dereon Fox
is one of the better guard ball handlers in the
league at reading the low man and finding those open
threes that come out of it. And so with that
being the case, if Wemby's gonna draw that type of attention,
(16:19):
they're gonna get a lot of really good threes. And
this is where it's gonna come down to the geometry
of the floor and setting things up in a way
so that the right guys get the ball. Because the
Spurs were really poor catch and shoot team last year.
They were bottom ten in converting catch and shoot jump
shots into points at just one point zero nine points
per shot. They have since added Kelly Olynyk, who will
(16:40):
help a little bit there, but this still looks like
a bad jump shooting team to me. So teams are
gonna guard the action by conceding skip threes. Like if
I'm game planning for San Antonio, I'm defending the Victor
Fox pick and roll three on two and I'm daring
you to beat me from the three point line. So
this is where floor geometry will be big. You have
(17:01):
to set it up so that the low man that's
coming over to help in these actions is coming off
of Harrison Barnes or Devin Vessel or Kelly Olynnok, and
fewer possessions where it ends up in guys like Steph
Castle's hands or Keldon Johnson, the situations along those lines.
That's the kind of floor geometry stuff that I think
will be important to make sure that the action is
(17:22):
as fruitful as it needs to be. And again, Dylan,
Dylan Harper, don't be surprised if he's more of a
natural fit right away with Wemby, even though he's not
going to be as NBA ready obviously is a guy
like Darren Fox is as a veteran. But I think
there will be some natural change of pay stuff there
that'll mesh nicely with Wemby. But with the Fox Wemby partnership.
(17:42):
If Fox shoots the ball well and if he can
skip the ball effectively enough and the Spurs can make
them pay enough, that's where it could open up those
opportunities for Wemby on the role. And then another thing
too is breaking out the pop again. Wenby didn't shoot
very well on picking pops last year. If you can
fix that, then you can start pop out of those
screens and it gets a lot harder to tag him
in those situations, and it just becomes a situation where
(18:05):
the paint's going to be more open for dearon Fox
to get downhill. Let's take into the rest of the
play type data first, the rest of the off ball scoring.
So Victor was excellent as a catch and shoot player
overall last year. He was thirty nine percent overall on
catch and shoot jump shots, forty point three percent on
one hundred and twenty four unguarded catch and shoot jump shots.
(18:26):
It was really his like Iso face up off the
dribble stuff where his jump shot fell apart. Most of
his off the catch stuff was really efficient. He also
shot exceptionally well as the trailing big in transition. He
shot forty two percent on eighty three attempts trailing the
play in transition from three. This goes back to that
footwork element we were talking about earlier, running towards the
(18:49):
ball momentum going towards the basket. As we mentioned earlier,
he shot the ball absurdly well when he was running
off of any of those off ball actions as well,
right coming off of a DHA, coming off of a
wide pin down, he shot over forty percent. He was
twenty five for sixty two from three running off of
(19:10):
off ball screens in DAH shows, which is funny because
like when I look back, if you guys remember when
the when his European team played against the G leagueing
Night team the Scoot Henderson Showcase where they played twice.
We did a video right after that and if you
guys remember, like my first big takeaway is that this
(19:30):
guy's like natural basketball inclination is to be like a
seven foot three inch tall Klay Thompson, like a guy
who's really comfortable running into shots, and that requires a
great deal of effort in footwork, and it requires a
great deal of effort in the weight room to build
the leg strength in order to get the lift you
(19:51):
need to knock those shots down to be clear. A
lot like this is not to say that Wemby won't
show off the dribble pop in his career. Of course
he will. I expect him to get better over the years,
but many super tall guys, including Kevin Durant, have had
this problem over the years, where like dribbling against active
defenders or dribbling through traffic with the ball is just
(20:12):
harder to do because the ball has to travel so
much further from the ground up to your hand every time,
and because they're thin, they're more susceptible to physicality. And
so that's a big part of why KD is such
a quick, decisive attacker, and why KD attacks off of
so many off ball screens, and why he likes to
attack out a triple threat. Often those are situations that
(20:33):
make it easier for KD to protect the ball. I again,
I know that Wenby will get better as an off
the dribble player, But to me, his ability to like
just sprint into jump shots both in transition and in
the half court coming off of screening action, that to
me is just an insane foundational offensive gift that should
make him a very efficient scorer in this league for
(20:55):
a long time. Now, let's take a look at the
on ball stuff kind of continues to fall into the
what I was just talking about between the difference of
like protecting the basketball with a live dribble or facing
the defender versus protecting the basketball when your back is
to the basket. So in ball screen situations, he ran
one hundred and thirty six ball screens including passes, and
(21:16):
generated one hundred and thirty three points. That zero point
nine to eight points per possession, which is slightly above average.
But interestingly enough, it came almost entirely down to his
passing ability. Victor is a very natural read and react player.
His turnover issues mostly come down to dribbling through traffic
and physicality. He sees the floor very well. It's not
(21:36):
like he doesn't see help defenders and is just throwing
the ball away. It's a dribbling through traffic issue for
him in terms of the turnovers, but he sees the
floor really well and in pick and roll, like when
he is running those inverted screens where guards are screening
for him, he's very good at hitting the guards slipping
out of the screen, which generated a lot of advantage
sequences for the Spurs last year. That paid off and
(21:58):
it extends to everywhere on his on his drives, he's
very good at hitting cutters along the baseline as helpers
react to out of the post. Very good at hitting
three point shooters as well as cutters along the baseline.
Has really good chemistry with Jeremy Sohan as a baseline
cutter when he uncuts rolls in post up situations. But
his one on one stuff is a mixed bag because again,
(22:18):
even shooting out of pick and roll, like when he
was on the ball in pick and roll and tried
to do something himself rather than pass the ball, he
got to zero point seven to three points per possession
with a twenty percent turnover rate. Again, that falls in
line with dribbling the basketball in traffic, the ball being
in front of him right in ISO, he got to
(22:40):
zero point six y nine points per possession when shooting
out of iso just hard to dribble at his height
in traffic, and he just the other piece of that
is he just isn't a very good off the dribble
jump shooter yet, But that I think will come in time.
I think the turnover issues to a certain extent, will
be something that he has to deal with throughout his
career and he'll just have to be very diligent about
(23:01):
the way that he looks to attack. But when he
was able to put his back to the basket, he
was really good. Even with turnovers against physicality, even when
you factored those in, he just shot so efficiently that
he was still just a hyper efficient post up player.
He personally shot fifty nine percent out of the post.
One of the things that really helped over the tail
end of the season is he just got really quick
(23:23):
and decisive on the catch out of the post, and
he used fewer dribbles. If he had space, he would
just catch and turn right over his right shoulder, sometimes
a simple right shoulder fade, sometimes a little one like
fade away over his right shoulder, but he would just catch,
turn fire, catch, turn fire, No waiting for the defense
to react, no trying to make things overly complicated. If
(23:44):
he got a small guy on his hip, he would
just like kind of pour Zingis esque, just turn directly
into him and go straight up and down rather than fading.
If he took a dribble, he would just take one
dribble bump and then go rather than dribbling too much.
He got much better at that towards the tail end
of the season. That is what allowed him to be
fifty nine percent shooting out of the post. Including passes,
(24:08):
he got one point one to one points per possession,
even with a high turnover rate out of the post.
That's sixty ninth percentile, so very very efficient as a
post player. His post passing is just super impressive, There's
no way around it. He is very good at finding cutters.
I mentioned that he has great chemistry with Steph Castle
and Jeremy Sohan on cuts. He's very good at spraying
(24:29):
out to three point shooters against double teams. Just awesome
out of the post. The main area is that Wenby
needs to improve on offense in order to become a
bona fide top tier superstar. Couple of fundamental things handling
physicality without turning the ball over guys just get up
in his business and attack the basketball because they know
he's thin and they know he's upright. I think this
(24:51):
will always be somewhat of an issue for him, like
it's still an issue for Kadi, even at his age,
even as he has put on a little bit of
strength and as he has become more comfortable playing in
the WNBA or in the WNBA. Sorry, we have a
WNBA segment for a mail bag, so that has been
in my head. But Katie's been in the NBA a
long time and he's become comfortable. But he still deals
with occasional turnover issues from his physicality, right, But you
(25:15):
can mitigate that by being very quick and decisive and
using more protected sequences. So coming off of off ball action,
for example, you're not going to turn the ball over
there in the post. He can limit his turnovers there
if he just continues to do what he did at
the end of the season, which just being really quick
and decisive off the catch, trying not to dribble too
much through traffic, which is where things are going to
(25:35):
go south. Secondly, he just needs to improve as an
off the dribble shot maker. He's a very good movement
shooter already, so the ability to shoot on the move
is not an issue. He just needs to connect that
dribbling to the shooting element. So it's like a fluidity
piece that'll just come in time with lots of repetition.
I expect Victor to get better at that. And then
(25:56):
we mentioned earlier just the footwork piece of shooting out
a pick pop where he's like kind of shuffling and
backpedaling more than sprinting into shots. Improving his shooting in
that specific situation will help him a lot. The only
real big picture thing I have my eye on with
Wemby over the years is his ability to find a
reliable go to move. He is relying pretty heavily right
(26:18):
now on long distance jump shooting. So, for example, fifty
seven percent of Victor's shot attempts last year or at
least sixteen feet away from the basket, and he's actually
trending further in that direction. As a rookie that was
only forty one percent, So he went from the majority
of his shots being inside of sixteen feet to now
the majority of his shots being outside of sixteen feet.
(26:40):
It's important to mention that he was efficient here because
he shot forty percent on long twos, and because he
shot well enough from three, he got one point zero
three points per shot on all those long jump shots.
That's fine, that's a reasonably efficient shot for him. But
like we always talk about, there's a certain element of
(27:00):
variants that comes in that type of long distance jump
shooting on single possessions. Towards the end of games, you
want to have something reliable that you can go to
that is a short range scoring move that is less
susceptible to that variance. So, for instance, last year, Victor
took just forty nine jump shots inside of seventeen feet
(27:22):
and he shot just thirty two point seven percent on them.
He made just ten hooks and floaters all year on
just over forty percent. It's basically not a part of
his game. Right now, you want to know how Jokic
made fifty clutch shots last year on fifty six percent
from the field. It wasn't all just bullying dudes to
the rim. He also has a super reliable set of
(27:44):
short range scoring moves hooks, floaters, and short jump shots.
We talked about similar things with guards guys like Kevin Durant,
Jalen Brunson, shake yelj As Alexander. That's what drives their
reliability at the end of games. They can get to
inside of seventeen feet and they can knock those shots
down more than half the time. I've been critical of
Luca over the last year for seemingly moving away from
(28:06):
that part of his game after it carried him to
a finals run in twenty twenty four. Wemby this season
was seventeen for forty six in the clutch, just thirty
seven percent, just five for twenty one on threes. Now,
there's variance with long distance shooting under any circumstance, but
those shots, especially at the end of games, they just
(28:27):
get incredibly hard to make consistently. You're exhausted, there's a
ton of physicality, you're playing a truly locked in defense,
playing their hardest defense of the game. The refs are
allowing more contact or swallowing their whistles. It's hard to
shoot from the perimeter in those situations. Okay, so what
does that look like for Wemby. What does the reliable
(28:48):
bit of short range shot making look like for Wemby?
To me, I think it's pretty clearly just that short
fade away over his right shoulder fighting for a position
in that ten to twelve feet away zone, or if
he's attacking with a lie dribble, just getting into some
contact in that eight to nine foot range and then
pounding into his spin by being able to shoot over
that right shoulder with that little short like thirteen fourteen
(29:10):
foot fade away. That's the kind of shot that I
think he could easily get up over fifty to fifty
five percent on. He's already pretty naturally good at that shot.
He just needs to really increase the number of reps
so that it becomes more reliable for him in that situation.
From there, he just needs a counter. If guys are
going to overplay the right shoulder, he needs something he
(29:30):
can do over his left shoulder. An easy one there
is just a left shoulder hook or a left shoulder
fade if he prefers to shoot jump shots in that situation.
But getting something a basic move, counter move sequence that
he can use at the end of games out of
the post, just turning and out of iso, a hard
drive to the right, wait for the guy to cut
(29:51):
him off, just pound into that spin over his right shoulder.
Those are the types of moves that I think will
become really dependable for him over the years. What I
don't want to see is when we go the Tatum
route of over indexing towards large sample efficiency. The analytics
guys love that stuff. You put up some sick ass
basketball reference numbers when you do that sort of thing,
(30:12):
But those guys have a tendency to go insanely cold
in big spots, kind of like Tatum did in Game
one and two of the knickt series. Tatum went cold.
Team blew the series as a result. Like that, you
can't have your best player going that frosty cold in
such a big moment. But when you rely so heavily
on tough off the dribble three point shooting, it just
becomes really difficult to have game to game consistency. You're
(30:35):
susceptible to that sort of thing. There is a place
for that sort of thinking, meaning that the high volume
three point shooting. I believe in the value of the
three point shot. I'm not an idiot. I also think
taking them a lot to help boost efficiency is smart.
It just can't come at the expense of a well
rounded approach to skill development, and you definitely need to
(30:57):
sacrifice a certain number of possessions each year, game to
game so that you can maintain some short range scoring rhythm,
especially right now, and Victor's not particularly good at it.
He's got to get good at it, and that's going
to come through repetition, and so I would be willing
to sacrifice a certain number of possessions, you know, three
four times a game where Victors go into that little
right shoulder fade away, maybe even a little bit more,
(31:20):
so that he can get really reliable with it so
that he can lean on it more at the tail
end of games. We talked about Wemby shop blocking earlier,
but I just want to go a touch deeper on
how incredibly gifted Victor wemen Yama is as a defender.
As I mentioned in the Anthony Davis video last week,
I think Wemby is far and away the best defender
in the world at this point. Victor made a bad
(31:41):
defensive roster looked like a good defense when he was
on the floor. Last year, the Spurs played seven and
fifty possessions with Victor wemen Yama off the floor, according
to Cleaning the Glass last year, and they posted a
one twenty two defensive rating in those possessions for perspective,
the Utah Jazz posted the word defensive rating in the
league last year at one to nineteen point four. Take
(32:04):
that same group of defensive talent, add Victor women Yama
three and forty one possessions a one to twelve point
four defensive rating. Her perspective, the Pistons ranked tenth in
defense last year at one twelve point five. So, in
other words, Victor women Yama's defensive talent is enough to
take effectively the worst defense in the NBA and turn
(32:25):
it into a top ten defense. The scheme versatility is
off the charts. He can defend in any pick and
roll coverage like He's insanely good as a drop coverage big,
but he can also come up to the level and
bother pull up shooters. His ISO numbers were a little
tricky because of his issues with Biggs, which we'll get
into in a minute, but guards in pick and roll
and switches he did very well on. He's insanely good
(32:48):
as an off ball helper, like you'll just see these
highlights where a guy gets blocked at the rim and
he didn't even know Victor was in the play. He
just can shock people with his ability to cover ground,
any race mistakes from his teammates, and again, like if
you look at the ISO numbers, there are examples of
like Anthony Davis overpowering him, Jaron Jackson overpowering him. Jokic
(33:12):
obviously had some success against him one on one, but overall,
even with those guys, like there's random possessions and the
regular season games where those dudes just dropped their shoulder
and just went right through Victor women Yama. But then
he'll lock in at the tail end of a game
and get really physical and his length just becomes such
(33:32):
a factor that I still think he's pretty good at
defending those guys in a big spot anyway, even with
the giving up all the weight, Like there was a
game against Denver last year, the one where they won
in Denver where Jokic was given gonna be a lot
of issues to get a lot of deep seals, getting
a lot of layups, but then two possessions at the
tail end of the game on the right block, he
played phenomenal defense, one where he absorbed the contact well,
(33:55):
stayed in front, and forced Jokich into an incredibly difficult
hook shot that Jokic made because he's fucking crazy good.
And then the next possession they went right back to
Jokic on the right block and Wemby smothered him so
bad that Jokic just threw the ball away and the
next thing you know, Devin Vessel was icing the game
with a dunk at the buzzer on the other end
of the floor. Like, even with those one on one
(34:17):
situations where he's had some issues, I like, if there's
a five minute stretch at the tail end of a
game where Victor needs to guard Jaron Jackson, this year,
I think he's going to figure out Jaron Jackson. You know,
he's just he's skinny, And there were times where it
was almost like he got caught off guard as one
of those dudes is just like I'm plowing through you
right now. And so yeah, ISO numbers weren't great statistically
(34:41):
this year, but overall, he defended guards extremely well, and
switches he defended well in every coverage. He defended as
an off ball defender extremely well. Even if you factor
all that stuff in his overall like, even if we
want to get nitpicky, his overall total impact as a
defensive weapon is far and away way the best in
the league to me, so it feels lame to even
(35:02):
focus on that specific element of it. He gets shoved
around sometimes and he'll still break your offense, and that's
ultimately what sets him apart. And just wait until they
actually surround him with some competent defensive players. That's when
you're really going to see a crazy level of defense
at a Victor womenyam in the Spurs. I'm not super
high on the Spurs this year. I don't think they
(35:24):
have very much talent on their roster compared to the
other top NBA teams. They're a really poor off ball
shooting team, and they don't have enough defensive talent to
be reliably great on that end night tonight. I think
they'll be a play in team this year. But I
am super high on Victor Woman Yama, and I think
he has the potential to explode onto the superstar scene
(35:44):
this year. He comes in at number seven in this
year's player rankings. All right, before we get out of
here today, Patrick Beverly said, quote, if you put Paul
George in that role as Klay Thompson playing with Steph
Draymond Green and Iguadala, I think that golden State probably
(36:04):
wins more championships. I completely disagree with this, and I
don't mean it as an attempt to say that Clay
was a better basketball player than Paul George at his peak.
I don't think you can make that case. Paul George
once finished third in MVP voting. He has three times
as many All NBA selections, including a first team All
NBA selection. But specifically, when you look at Klay Thompson's
(36:27):
role on the Warriors and what they specifically needed from him,
I thought Clay was every bit as impactful in that
role as Paul George could have been, possibly even more so.
For starters. Klay Thompson is one of the most underrated
defenders of all time. He only has one All Defense
selection in twenty nineteen he made second Team, but for
(36:48):
the entirety of his prime with the Warriors, he was
an excellent perimeter defender. He has great size and strength
for position. He can guard up and down. He could
guard Kyrie Irving well, but he could also guard Big
Foard as well as well. Is good lateral quickness, can
slide his feet, excellent instincts. This is the big thing
that sets him apart. He was just always really good
at anticipating which ways guys would go and then beating
(37:10):
them to spots, getting good contests, taking contact, just getting
a good contest, Like I thought the Jalen Brown series
in twenty twenty two was a great example of this.
Like this was after his acl and achilles injuries. He
struggled early in the series, so much so that they
briefly switched Draymond Green onto Jalen Brown. But towards the
tail end of the series, especially in Game four and
in Game five, Clay guarded Jalen Brown phenomenally well and
(37:34):
was just starting to anticipate his moves and was beating
him to spots and taking that contact in the chest
like I think Clay is like. Don't get me wrong,
Paul George probably at his peak was a better defender
than Clay, but that gap is much closer than we think,
and I don't think Paul George could have done much
better for the Golden State defense in this specific role
(37:55):
than Clay did over those years. And then on offense again,
it's important to look at what they needed out of
that role alongside Steph. Yes, Paul George in his prime
certainly would have been a much better lead option to
run an offense than Klay Thompson. But it's important to
knowledge first of all, even then Paul was probably still
(38:16):
not good enough to do it at a championship level,
and we're discussing it. In the role of playing alongside Steph,
the Warriors offense was all about read and react basketball,
quick decision making, very little dribbling, playing with an advantage
when Steph was off the floor. Clay was able to
provide a reasonable facsimile of what Steph did as an
(38:37):
off ball shooting gravitational force so that the Warriors could
run the same offense and essentially kind of keep some
continuity there. And he was an absolute monster on the
floor alongside Steph, benefiting from his gravity bringing much of
his own kind of a counterbalance effect like in that
role is so important. I mean, look at the job
that we've seen guys, Like when Buddy Heal played well
(38:58):
last year on the Knights. That Buddy Heield played well,
they looked like old Warriors teams. It was Buddy Heeld's
inconsistency that ended up being a problem, right, But Clay
Thompson brought that pretty consistently every night during that era.
And that was what allowed that Warriors offense to reach
the level that they did. Clay wasn't as good as Steph,
but his shooting ability was immensely valuable to that Golden
(39:21):
State team. Now, could Paul George have won a title
with Steph? Sure, But I just pushed back on the
idea that they somehow would have been better or that
they would have won more. That's just not how basketball works.
It's so much more complicated than that. Your value as
a player is unique to your role, unique to what
the team needs out of you. I actually found this
(39:41):
concept generally within modern team building to be very interesting.
We've talked about it with Luca, and the idea like
essentially that when you have a supreme offensive engine, you
don't need to track down another top tier superstar to
push you over the top. When you have a supreme offense,
the game is so easy that you can rely on
(40:03):
just a really really good star and then really high
level role player talent around them, right like Lebron James
with Kyrie Irving, for example, or Steph Curry with Klay Thompson,
Nikola Jokic with Jamal Murray. Luka Danci hasn't won a
title yet, but he got close with Kyrie, right, I
do believe that Luca could win one without a superstar teammate.
(40:27):
They certainly need to be surrounded by talent. I'm not
trying to say you don't need talent, but you open
yourself up to being able to surround those guys with
really high level role players, because those offensive initiators generate
such insane advantages that even high level role players can
fill a real role on offense, Like Draymond Green's role
on offense was unlocked by Steph's shooting gravity. It's what
(40:52):
made that work the guys like Luca and Lebron. There
are not a lot of teams where you can just
surround one guy with a bunch of shooters and the
offense is great. It worked with those guys because they
were setting those guys up with such high quality three
point shots and because they were able to absorb so
much usage. And again, Luca hasn't done it at a
(41:13):
championship level yet, but I believe he eventually will, and
Lebron did. Right, They need some support, right, Steph doesn't
win the title without Klay Thompson. Lebron James doesn't win
the title without Kyrie Irving, Luka donor excuse me, Nikole
Jokic doesn't win the title without Jamal Murray. But those
are guys that are like clearly off of that superstar tier,
(41:33):
that are really good at one thing. For Klay Thompson,
it's nuclear shooting. He's probably the second best shooter of
all time. And with Kyrie Irving and Jamal Murray, it's
that just bucket getting. It's the random possession here or
there where you just need that guy to create a
great shot. Having these elite offensive engines gives you the
ability to build a roster that is open to more
(41:56):
of that depth of role player talent and less dependent
on superstar. So you give those guys a legit superstar
and they're just gonna win easy right, Like Steph got
KD he won two easy ones. Lebron had Anthony Davis
as a top five player one season after that year,
AD declined pretty quickly into that like second tier of stars.
(42:17):
But when Lebron had Ad as a top five player,
that was the easiest title he won. No one threatened
to that team in twenty twenty because you had two
players at that level. If you gave Jokic, Shake Gildess, Alexander.
They're winning the title this year easy. But those guys
don't need that. They are capable of winning with really
high level role player talent because of their ability to
(42:40):
generate such easy offense for their teams. I just think
like I just think Pat's comments are both a lack
of understanding of what made the Warriors great, which started
with Steph creating easy roles for everyone, and then I
think it under sells what Clay did there, his ability
to impact games kind of at the level of that
of a superstar in his role. Some of the craziest
(43:03):
moments in Warrior's history were off the fingers of Klay
Thompson when he would just get blazing hot, or when
he would sit down in his stance and play incredible
on ball defense against a star on the other team.
And I just think he deserves more credit for what
he accomplished there. All right, guys, That's all I have
for today is always to sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting me and supporting the show. We will be back
(43:23):
on Friday with our mailbag. I will see you guys there.
The volume. All right, welcome to Hoops and I here
at the volume heavy Wednesday. Everybody of all of you
guys are having a great week. We are continuing our
player rankings today with number seven Victor Webbin Yama. We're
(00:24):
going to be doing a deep dive on Victor. Also
a little bit of a deep dive into the Fox
Victor partnership, one that we didn't see too much of
last year, but that didn't look overly smooth at first,
but I'm a little bit more bullish on it. We're
going to talk about what that partnership will look like
going into next season. After that, Patrick Beverly had a
comment saying that if Paul George had played with the
(00:45):
Warriors instead of Klay Thompson, they would have won more championships,
which is something that I disagree with and a classic
example of value in a vacuum versus value in your
specific team. So something I want to dive into at
the tail end of the show. You guys know the
joke before we get started. Subscribed to Hoops and I
YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos,
Follow me on Twitter and underscore JSNLT. So you guys
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(01:06):
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you guys follow us there. And last, but not least,
if you guys want to get questions into our mail bags,
drop them underneath these full episodes on YouTube. Just put
mail bag with a colon. Write anything you guys have
(01:27):
a question about. We'll get to it on our Friday
mail bags. If you disagree with anything in the player rankings,
you can tell me why, tell me where you'd put
a player. Make a little elevator pitch, and we'll get
to it in our mail bags on Fridays throughout the
remainder of the summer. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So you know, Lebron and Wemby being in this spot
here to me kind of represents two very different types
(01:47):
of conundrums in the sense that either one of these
guys you could rank very low because of their age
or very high because of their seiling. It's different. Like
many young players, Victor struggles to replicate his successes and
he struggles to minimize mistakes. Like last year, Victor Wemenyama
(02:07):
only scored thirty points in consecutive games twice all season long,
but on any given random night, he was able to
reach preposterous highs. Victor Wemnyam had his first fifty point
playoff game this year, excuse me, his first fifty point
game this season. He had a forty two point eighteen rebound,
(02:29):
four block game. He had a thirty five point eighteen
rebound game, a thirty five point fourteen rebound game, a
thirty ten game where the ten was blocks. He nearly
had four triple doubles with blocks, a twenty four to
thirteen with nine blocks, a thirty and seven with ten blocks,
a twenty three and fourteen with eight blocks, a thirteen
(02:51):
and twelve with eight blocks. He had a twenty twenty
game with twenty three rebounds against Denver, not his first
twenty twenty believe it or not. He had a forty
twenty one game when he was a rookie. These are
all statistical explosions that only a few players in the
entire league are capable of, and when it comes to blocks, especially,
(03:13):
he's kind of treading new ground that we've never seen
in the modern NBA. He's basically the only player in
the league capable of those stat lines. The block stats
with Victor will break break your brain. He had twenty
eight more blocks than any other player in the NBA
last year despite playing in just forty six games. He
averaged three point eight blocks per game, which led the league,
(03:36):
was second place just being two point four. So to
make that very clear, he averaged more than a time
and a half as many blocks as the second best
shot blocker in the NBA. So yeah, Victor is one
of those guys where, just like Lebron, it's kind of
like differentiating between Victor's youthful inconsistency versus Lebron's age related inconsistency,
(04:00):
but just the ridiculous, preposterous highs that those guys were
able to hit right now with Victor women Yama, is
he the type of guy that would be super high
on my list for guys I'd want in a big
playoff game. No, he has too many offensive awards right now,
and he's a young player who makes too many mistakes.
But his overwhelming overall basketball impact will easily make him
(04:24):
a top five regular season player this year when he's
healthy and on the floor at least, and his highs
will literally be as high as the highest highs that
any player could ever reach on a basketball court and
as far as the playoffs go, Like, yeah, do I
have some certain concerns about his ability to manage the
possession of possession stuff and on the offensive end there, sure,
but his defensive capabilities give him a high enough floor
(04:48):
in the postseason to keep him very high on this
list for me. So he came in at number seven
this year. But like I said, similar to what I
was talking about with Lebron on Monday, these two guys
in particular, make sure all time great who's young, and
a current all time great who happens to be very old.
These are two of the hot, the hardest guys to
rank on a list like this. So I would understand
(05:10):
if either with either of those guys, if you guys
have them substantially lower or substantially higher. Now let's get
into last season in review. For Victor, he played in
just forty six games after coming down with a blood
clot issue. He was pretty regularly available before that. He
had played in forty six of fifty two games before
that point, which means in the first season and a
(05:31):
half of his career, he had played in one hundred
and seventeen out of one hundred and thirty four possible
NBA games, So he was on pace to play seventy
plus games two seasons in a row in two tries.
So this particular injury, this blood clot thing, it's not
a foot or a knee or a back like that
kind of stuff that typically plagues super tall guys. So
(05:52):
I'm expecting wemb to be generally available coming this year.
I didn't punish him for that on this particular list.
In those forty six games that he played, twenty four
point three points per game, eleven rebounds per game, and
four assists per game, to go with a staggering four
point nine stocks per game, which led the NBA by
country mile. As we discussed earlier his percentages, he was
(06:14):
forty eight percent from the field, thirty five percent from
three to eighty four percent from the line, fifty six
percent in effective field goal percentage that's just field goal
percentage waited for threes, and fifty nine percent in true shooting,
which again is your efficiency waited for both threes and
your trips to the foul line. These were all improvements
year over year for Victor from his rookie season. Like
(06:37):
any superstar prospect in their first few seasons, he experienced
a new peak within the season. Often it's not like
an explosion each year. A lot of time, like Victor
actually got off to a pretty rough start to start
the season. He had that early game where Chet badly
outplayed him, if you guys remember, but from December Nintheen,
from December nineteenth to February fifth, the span of twenty
(06:59):
one games, he averaged twenty six points and twelve rebounds
with four point two blocks per game while shooting thirty
eight percent from three on nine attempts per game. It's
just become such an aggressive, high volume three point shoot
or something we're gonna talk a lot about when we
get further into this video. All right, let's dig into
some of the play type data. And I want to
(07:20):
start with Wemby as an off ball score. And the
reason why is I think this will inevitably be a
major swing factor for the Spurs moving forward because they
have Deer and Fox and Dylan Harper in such strong
play at the guard position. Stephan Castle and you know
Devin vessel Thing's players like that. Right, let's quick go
over Victor weban Yama's roleman numbers. Then we'll bring Fox
(07:42):
into the equation and talk about that partnership. So Victor
Weminyama logged one hundred and sixty three roleman possessions last
year and converted them at one point one seven points
per possession, which is very good. He shot just below
thirty three percent on pick and pop threes. That's obviously
not good. Strange because he was real good when he
was on the move in off screen situations, but it's
(08:04):
important to notice there that there's kind of a difference
in the movement. So Victor, we're gonna go over the
numbers later, but he shot really well coming off of
dribble handoffs or coming off of off ball screens from three.
So like imagine just running up to the ball, catching, turning,
and firing. In those situations, you're running towards the ball
(08:25):
and you have lots of steps to kind of load up.
You can run nice and low. You get your footwork
down plant that right left if you're running to your
left or your left right, if you're running to your
right and you have a chance to get all that
power up into the shot and rise and fire out
of ball screens. When you're popping out of ball screens,
you're typically back pedaling or shuffling sideways into the back right,
(08:48):
and as you're doing that, your momentum is going away
from the ball and away from the basket, and so
it's a little bit tougher to get your feet set
underneath you to get the lift you need to knock
down the shots. I think that is my best attempt
at an explanation for why Victor didn't shoot so well
on pick and pops, even though he shot really well
generally as a catch and shoot player, and especially coming
(09:09):
off of off ball screens. Right. We'll get into that
idea a little bit further when we get into the
off ball stuff, the off ball shooting stuff. He was
seventy one percent on twos out of pick and roll
as the rollman. Obviously, as great hands, he catches everything.
He's generally a great rim finisher too, like he shoots
over sixty percent on layups, which, as we've talked about,
(09:31):
can be a problem for some bigs in this league.
When they can't just dunk the ball. We talked about
this issue a lot with bam At Abaiyo, for instance.
He's also really good at driving closedouts. It's weird because
he's so upright and if there's a downside, he'll occasionally
turn the ball over in these situations as he tries
to kind of salal him through everybody. But he's usually
pretty good at using the threat of his shot to
(09:52):
get an angle on the closing defender, Like even if
they're a quick guard, he'll get that shoulder by him,
and then he just weirdly finds these angles to lollum
and euro three people and shoot layups. And he was
even fifty percent on twos driving closeouts and spot up situations,
for example, So pretty good putting the ball on the
floor when someone's sprinting at him. Now let's talk about
(10:13):
the Darren Fox partnership. It's important to note that because
of Victor's blood clot issue, these two just didn't get
much of a chance to gel. That's it. It didn't
look too good in the small sample. I actually went
back this morning and rewatched every single pick and roll
that Darren Fox ran with Victor Webbin Yama, and they
just didn't connect very often, especially in the pocket. There
(10:33):
were only about a half dozen possessions out of the
entire set of clips where Darren Fox actually managed to
successfully get the ball to Victor Wembenyama in the pocket.
I think I counted just one lob dunk in a
pick and roll situation. It just takes time to figure
out the timing in those pick and roll partnerships, and
it's especially hard with a guy like Fox. The guys
(10:54):
that we talked about this with Giannis and the difference
between like the the Dame fit versus the Kevin Porter
Junior fit, where like Kevin Porter Junior was a little
bit slower and more methodical, which helped Giannis get open
on the rolls, whereas Dame kind of had one speed
downhill and that was something that caused some limitations in
(11:15):
their pick and roll partnership over that stretch. Dame is
obviously a better player than Kevin Porter Junior by a mile.
I'm more just talking about specifically getting the ball to
Giannis in the pocket, which was something that Kevin Porter
kind of like naturally figured out how to do with Giannis. Similarly,
Darrean Fox is very downhill, very fast, not a ton
of change of pace, And so with that being the case,
(11:38):
the timing is going to be critical, and so I
think it's going to take a lot of a lot
of reps. So I want to give like a nice
half of the season to give those two guys the reps.
They need to kind of figure out the timing and
when to slip out of screens, when to push downhill
versus when to for Fox to slow down and wait
for Wenby to open out things along those lines. Dylan Harper,
(11:58):
for example, all he has a little bit more of
a change of pace shiftiness to his game than Darren Fox.
He's a rookie, so I'm not expecting him to just
be this magnificent partner for Wemby right away. But don't
be surprised if, just like the natural flow of a
Dylan Harper Victor wemen Yama pick and roll looks a
little more naturally fluid than the Fox one, just because
(12:20):
he changes pace a little bit more and is a
little bit slower as he comes off of those screens.
The partnership was also kind of exacerbated negatively by two
other things. One, the spurs are generally a poor jump
shooting team, and Dearn Fox hit a lot of really
really nice skip passes in ball screens that just weren't
paid off. We're going to talk about that in a minute,
(12:41):
because Darren Fox is actually kind of sneaky good at that.
And then secondly, Dearren Fox has had a brutal perimeter
scoring stretch to end the season with San Antonio, something
I expect him to direct by this year. He shot
horribly from three and about five percent worse on his
floaters than he did in his previous full season in Sacramento.
So all of those things added up to a lackluster
(13:01):
debut for the Deer and Fox Victor women. Yam a partnership,
but I am overall optimistic about the types of shots
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slash Audio. I'm concerned about the rest of the roster
and whether or not they'll be able to capitalize on
those shots, which we'll get to in a bit, But
(14:52):
I do think that they're going to be able to
get good shots. First of all, like I mentioned earlier,
I expect the timing to improve with reps, and I
expect Dearon Fox to have a better season as a
shot maker. But I also think there's real potential here
for this to be an action that generates a lot
of high quality threes for San Antonio. It wasn't just
the timing that led to Darn Fox failing to get
the ball to Wemby in pick and roll when he
(15:14):
was rolling to the basket. It also has a lot
to do with the gravity that Wemby has on the roll.
The whole defense reacts to Victor woman Yama when he's
rolling down the lane and Deern Fox, especially if you
can get him going towards his left hand. He's sneaky.
One of the better guys in the league at skipping
the ball across the court against loaded pick and roll coverages.
(15:36):
So imagine, if they're icing a ball screen along the
left wing and he's dribbling towards the left corner, he'll
whip it across the court if Victor rolls into the
lane and the guy comes off of the right corner
to tag, or if he's in the right wing and
he's coming towards the middle, if he manages to get middle,
or if he's in the middle of the floor like
where they can't ice, like if he's attacking from the
(15:56):
top of the key in a ball screen, if he
can get to that left hand, he's gonna whip it
to the right corner pretty consistently and generally. Dereon Fox
is one of the better guard ball handlers in the
league at reading the low man and finding those open
threes that come out of it. And so with that
being the case, if Wemby's gonna draw that type of attention,
(16:19):
they're gonna get a lot of really good threes. And
this is where it's gonna come down to the geometry
of the floor and setting things up in a way
so that the right guys get the ball. Because the
Spurs were really poor catch and shoot team last year.
They were bottom ten in converting catch and shoot jump
shots into points at just one point zero nine points
per shot. They have since added Kelly Olynyk, who will
(16:40):
help a little bit there, but this still looks like
a bad jump shooting team to me. So teams are
gonna guard the action by conceding skip threes. Like if
I'm game planning for San Antonio, I'm defending the Victor
Fox pick and roll three on two and I'm daring
you to beat me from the three point line. So
this is where floor geometry will be big. You have
(17:01):
to set it up so that the low man that's
coming over to help in these actions is coming off
of Harrison Barnes or Devin Vessel or Kelly Olynnok, and
fewer possessions where it ends up in guys like Steph
Castle's hands or Keldon Johnson, the situations along those lines.
That's the kind of floor geometry stuff that I think
will be important to make sure that the action is
(17:22):
as fruitful as it needs to be. And again, Dylan,
Dylan Harper, don't be surprised if he's more of a
natural fit right away with Wemby, even though he's not
going to be as NBA ready obviously is a guy
like Darren Fox is as a veteran. But I think
there will be some natural change of pay stuff there
that'll mesh nicely with Wemby. But with the Fox Wemby partnership.
(17:42):
If Fox shoots the ball well and if he can
skip the ball effectively enough and the Spurs can make
them pay enough, that's where it could open up those
opportunities for Wemby on the role. And then another thing
too is breaking out the pop again. Wenby didn't shoot
very well on picking pops last year. If you can
fix that, then you can start pop out of those
screens and it gets a lot harder to tag him
in those situations, and it just becomes a situation where
(18:05):
the paint's going to be more open for dearon Fox
to get downhill. Let's take into the rest of the
play type data first, the rest of the off ball scoring.
So Victor was excellent as a catch and shoot player
overall last year. He was thirty nine percent overall on
catch and shoot jump shots, forty point three percent on
one hundred and twenty four unguarded catch and shoot jump shots.
(18:26):
It was really his like Iso face up off the
dribble stuff where his jump shot fell apart. Most of
his off the catch stuff was really efficient. He also
shot exceptionally well as the trailing big in transition. He
shot forty two percent on eighty three attempts trailing the
play in transition from three. This goes back to that
footwork element we were talking about earlier, running towards the
(18:49):
ball momentum going towards the basket. As we mentioned earlier,
he shot the ball absurdly well when he was running
off of any of those off ball actions as well,
right coming off of a DHA, coming off of a
wide pin down, he shot over forty percent. He was
twenty five for sixty two from three running off of
(19:10):
off ball screens in DAH shows, which is funny because
like when I look back, if you guys remember when
the when his European team played against the G leagueing
Night team the Scoot Henderson Showcase where they played twice.
We did a video right after that and if you
guys remember, like my first big takeaway is that this
(19:30):
guy's like natural basketball inclination is to be like a
seven foot three inch tall Klay Thompson, like a guy
who's really comfortable running into shots, and that requires a
great deal of effort in footwork, and it requires a
great deal of effort in the weight room to build
the leg strength in order to get the lift you
(19:51):
need to knock those shots down to be clear. A
lot like this is not to say that Wemby won't
show off the dribble pop in his career. Of course
he will. I expect him to get better over the years,
but many super tall guys, including Kevin Durant, have had
this problem over the years, where like dribbling against active
defenders or dribbling through traffic with the ball is just
(20:12):
harder to do because the ball has to travel so
much further from the ground up to your hand every time,
and because they're thin, they're more susceptible to physicality. And
so that's a big part of why KD is such
a quick, decisive attacker, and why KD attacks off of
so many off ball screens, and why he likes to
attack out a triple threat. Often those are situations that
(20:33):
make it easier for KD to protect the ball. I again,
I know that Wenby will get better as an off
the dribble player, But to me, his ability to like
just sprint into jump shots both in transition and in
the half court coming off of screening action, that to
me is just an insane foundational offensive gift that should
make him a very efficient scorer in this league for
(20:55):
a long time. Now, let's take a look at the
on ball stuff kind of continues to fall into the
what I was just talking about between the difference of
like protecting the basketball with a live dribble or facing
the defender versus protecting the basketball when your back is
to the basket. So in ball screen situations, he ran
one hundred and thirty six ball screens including passes, and
(21:16):
generated one hundred and thirty three points. That zero point
nine to eight points per possession, which is slightly above average.
But interestingly enough, it came almost entirely down to his
passing ability. Victor is a very natural read and react player.
His turnover issues mostly come down to dribbling through traffic
and physicality. He sees the floor very well. It's not
(21:36):
like he doesn't see help defenders and is just throwing
the ball away. It's a dribbling through traffic issue for
him in terms of the turnovers, but he sees the
floor really well and in pick and roll, like when
he is running those inverted screens where guards are screening
for him, he's very good at hitting the guards slipping
out of the screen, which generated a lot of advantage
sequences for the Spurs last year. That paid off and
(21:58):
it extends to everywhere on his on his drives, he's
very good at hitting cutters along the baseline as helpers
react to out of the post. Very good at hitting
three point shooters as well as cutters along the baseline.
Has really good chemistry with Jeremy Sohan as a baseline
cutter when he uncuts rolls in post up situations. But
his one on one stuff is a mixed bag because again,
(22:18):
even shooting out of pick and roll, like when he
was on the ball in pick and roll and tried
to do something himself rather than pass the ball, he
got to zero point seven to three points per possession
with a twenty percent turnover rate. Again, that falls in
line with dribbling the basketball in traffic, the ball being
in front of him right in ISO, he got to
(22:40):
zero point six y nine points per possession when shooting
out of iso just hard to dribble at his height
in traffic, and he just the other piece of that
is he just isn't a very good off the dribble
jump shooter yet, But that I think will come in time.
I think the turnover issues to a certain extent, will
be something that he has to deal with throughout his
career and he'll just have to be very diligent about
(23:01):
the way that he looks to attack. But when he
was able to put his back to the basket, he
was really good. Even with turnovers against physicality, even when
you factored those in, he just shot so efficiently that
he was still just a hyper efficient post up player.
He personally shot fifty nine percent out of the post.
One of the things that really helped over the tail
end of the season is he just got really quick
(23:23):
and decisive on the catch out of the post, and
he used fewer dribbles. If he had space, he would
just catch and turn right over his right shoulder, sometimes
a simple right shoulder fade, sometimes a little one like
fade away over his right shoulder, but he would just catch,
turn fire, catch, turn fire, No waiting for the defense
to react, no trying to make things overly complicated. If
(23:44):
he got a small guy on his hip, he would
just like kind of pour Zingis esque, just turn directly
into him and go straight up and down rather than fading.
If he took a dribble, he would just take one
dribble bump and then go rather than dribbling too much.
He got much better at that towards the tail end
of the season. That is what allowed him to be
fifty nine percent shooting out of the post. Including passes,
(24:08):
he got one point one to one points per possession,
even with a high turnover rate out of the post.
That's sixty ninth percentile, so very very efficient as a
post player. His post passing is just super impressive, There's
no way around it. He is very good at finding cutters.
I mentioned that he has great chemistry with Steph Castle
and Jeremy Sohan on cuts. He's very good at spraying
(24:29):
out to three point shooters against double teams. Just awesome
out of the post. The main area is that Wenby
needs to improve on offense in order to become a
bona fide top tier superstar. Couple of fundamental things handling
physicality without turning the ball over guys just get up
in his business and attack the basketball because they know
he's thin and they know he's upright. I think this
(24:51):
will always be somewhat of an issue for him, like
it's still an issue for Kadi, even at his age,
even as he has put on a little bit of
strength and as he has become more comfortable playing in
the WNBA or in the WNBA. Sorry, we have a
WNBA segment for a mail bag, so that has been
in my head. But Katie's been in the NBA a
long time and he's become comfortable. But he still deals
with occasional turnover issues from his physicality, right, But you
(25:15):
can mitigate that by being very quick and decisive and
using more protected sequences. So coming off of off ball action,
for example, you're not going to turn the ball over
there in the post. He can limit his turnovers there
if he just continues to do what he did at
the end of the season, which just being really quick
and decisive off the catch, trying not to dribble too
much through traffic, which is where things are going to
(25:35):
go south. Secondly, he just needs to improve as an
off the dribble shot maker. He's a very good movement
shooter already, so the ability to shoot on the move
is not an issue. He just needs to connect that
dribbling to the shooting element. So it's like a fluidity
piece that'll just come in time with lots of repetition.
I expect Victor to get better at that. And then
(25:56):
we mentioned earlier just the footwork piece of shooting out
a pick pop where he's like kind of shuffling and
backpedaling more than sprinting into shots. Improving his shooting in
that specific situation will help him a lot. The only
real big picture thing I have my eye on with
Wemby over the years is his ability to find a
reliable go to move. He is relying pretty heavily right
(26:18):
now on long distance jump shooting. So, for example, fifty
seven percent of Victor's shot attempts last year or at
least sixteen feet away from the basket, and he's actually
trending further in that direction. As a rookie that was
only forty one percent, So he went from the majority
of his shots being inside of sixteen feet to now
the majority of his shots being outside of sixteen feet.
(26:40):
It's important to mention that he was efficient here because
he shot forty percent on long twos, and because he
shot well enough from three, he got one point zero
three points per shot on all those long jump shots.
That's fine, that's a reasonably efficient shot for him. But
like we always talk about, there's a certain element of
(27:00):
variants that comes in that type of long distance jump
shooting on single possessions. Towards the end of games, you
want to have something reliable that you can go to
that is a short range scoring move that is less
susceptible to that variance. So, for instance, last year, Victor
took just forty nine jump shots inside of seventeen feet
(27:22):
and he shot just thirty two point seven percent on them.
He made just ten hooks and floaters all year on
just over forty percent. It's basically not a part of
his game. Right now, you want to know how Jokic
made fifty clutch shots last year on fifty six percent
from the field. It wasn't all just bullying dudes to
the rim. He also has a super reliable set of
(27:44):
short range scoring moves hooks, floaters, and short jump shots.
We talked about similar things with guards guys like Kevin Durant,
Jalen Brunson, shake yelj As Alexander. That's what drives their
reliability at the end of games. They can get to
inside of seventeen feet and they can knock those shots
down more than half the time. I've been critical of
Luca over the last year for seemingly moving away from
(28:06):
that part of his game after it carried him to
a finals run in twenty twenty four. Wemby this season
was seventeen for forty six in the clutch, just thirty
seven percent, just five for twenty one on threes. Now,
there's variance with long distance shooting under any circumstance, but
those shots, especially at the end of games, they just
(28:27):
get incredibly hard to make consistently. You're exhausted, there's a
ton of physicality, you're playing a truly locked in defense,
playing their hardest defense of the game. The refs are
allowing more contact or swallowing their whistles. It's hard to
shoot from the perimeter in those situations. Okay, so what
does that look like for Wemby. What does the reliable
(28:48):
bit of short range shot making look like for Wemby?
To me, I think it's pretty clearly just that short
fade away over his right shoulder fighting for a position
in that ten to twelve feet away zone, or if
he's attacking with a lie dribble, just getting into some
contact in that eight to nine foot range and then
pounding into his spin by being able to shoot over
that right shoulder with that little short like thirteen fourteen
(29:10):
foot fade away. That's the kind of shot that I
think he could easily get up over fifty to fifty
five percent on. He's already pretty naturally good at that shot.
He just needs to really increase the number of reps
so that it becomes more reliable for him in that situation.
From there, he just needs a counter. If guys are
going to overplay the right shoulder, he needs something he
(29:30):
can do over his left shoulder. An easy one there
is just a left shoulder hook or a left shoulder
fade if he prefers to shoot jump shots in that situation.
But getting something a basic move, counter move sequence that
he can use at the end of games out of
the post, just turning and out of iso, a hard
drive to the right, wait for the guy to cut
(29:51):
him off, just pound into that spin over his right shoulder.
Those are the types of moves that I think will
become really dependable for him over the years. What I
don't want to see is when we go the Tatum
route of over indexing towards large sample efficiency. The analytics
guys love that stuff. You put up some sick ass
basketball reference numbers when you do that sort of thing,
(30:12):
But those guys have a tendency to go insanely cold
in big spots, kind of like Tatum did in Game
one and two of the knickt series. Tatum went cold.
Team blew the series as a result. Like that, you
can't have your best player going that frosty cold in
such a big moment. But when you rely so heavily
on tough off the dribble three point shooting, it just
becomes really difficult to have game to game consistency. You're
(30:35):
susceptible to that sort of thing. There is a place
for that sort of thinking, meaning that the high volume
three point shooting. I believe in the value of the
three point shot. I'm not an idiot. I also think
taking them a lot to help boost efficiency is smart.
It just can't come at the expense of a well
rounded approach to skill development, and you definitely need to
(30:57):
sacrifice a certain number of possessions each year, game to
game so that you can maintain some short range scoring rhythm,
especially right now, and Victor's not particularly good at it.
He's got to get good at it, and that's going
to come through repetition, and so I would be willing
to sacrifice a certain number of possessions, you know, three
four times a game where Victors go into that little
right shoulder fade away, maybe even a little bit more,
(31:20):
so that he can get really reliable with it so
that he can lean on it more at the tail
end of games. We talked about Wemby shop blocking earlier,
but I just want to go a touch deeper on
how incredibly gifted Victor wemen Yama is as a defender.
As I mentioned in the Anthony Davis video last week,
I think Wemby is far and away the best defender
in the world at this point. Victor made a bad
(31:41):
defensive roster looked like a good defense when he was
on the floor. Last year, the Spurs played seven and
fifty possessions with Victor wemen Yama off the floor, according
to Cleaning the Glass last year, and they posted a
one twenty two defensive rating in those possessions for perspective,
the Utah Jazz posted the word defensive rating in the
league last year at one to nineteen point four. Take
(32:04):
that same group of defensive talent, add Victor women Yama
three and forty one possessions a one to twelve point
four defensive rating. Her perspective, the Pistons ranked tenth in
defense last year at one twelve point five. So, in
other words, Victor women Yama's defensive talent is enough to
take effectively the worst defense in the NBA and turn
(32:25):
it into a top ten defense. The scheme versatility is
off the charts. He can defend in any pick and
roll coverage like He's insanely good as a drop coverage big,
but he can also come up to the level and
bother pull up shooters. His ISO numbers were a little
tricky because of his issues with Biggs, which we'll get
into in a minute, but guards in pick and roll
and switches he did very well on. He's insanely good
(32:48):
as an off ball helper, like you'll just see these
highlights where a guy gets blocked at the rim and
he didn't even know Victor was in the play. He
just can shock people with his ability to cover ground,
any race mistakes from his teammates, and again, like if
you look at the ISO numbers, there are examples of
like Anthony Davis overpowering him, Jaron Jackson overpowering him. Jokic
(33:12):
obviously had some success against him one on one, but overall,
even with those guys, like there's random possessions and the
regular season games where those dudes just dropped their shoulder
and just went right through Victor women Yama. But then
he'll lock in at the tail end of a game
and get really physical and his length just becomes such
(33:32):
a factor that I still think he's pretty good at
defending those guys in a big spot anyway, even with
the giving up all the weight, Like there was a
game against Denver last year, the one where they won
in Denver where Jokic was given gonna be a lot
of issues to get a lot of deep seals, getting
a lot of layups, but then two possessions at the
tail end of the game on the right block, he
played phenomenal defense, one where he absorbed the contact well,
(33:55):
stayed in front, and forced Jokich into an incredibly difficult
hook shot that Jokic made because he's fucking crazy good.
And then the next possession they went right back to
Jokic on the right block and Wemby smothered him so
bad that Jokic just threw the ball away and the
next thing you know, Devin Vessel was icing the game
with a dunk at the buzzer on the other end
of the floor. Like, even with those one on one
(34:17):
situations where he's had some issues, I like, if there's
a five minute stretch at the tail end of a
game where Victor needs to guard Jaron Jackson, this year,
I think he's going to figure out Jaron Jackson. You know,
he's just he's skinny, And there were times where it
was almost like he got caught off guard as one
of those dudes is just like I'm plowing through you
right now. And so yeah, ISO numbers weren't great statistically
(34:41):
this year, but overall, he defended guards extremely well, and
switches he defended well in every coverage. He defended as
an off ball defender extremely well. Even if you factor
all that stuff in his overall like, even if we
want to get nitpicky, his overall total impact as a
defensive weapon is far and away way the best in
the league to me, so it feels lame to even
(35:02):
focus on that specific element of it. He gets shoved
around sometimes and he'll still break your offense, and that's
ultimately what sets him apart. And just wait until they
actually surround him with some competent defensive players. That's when
you're really going to see a crazy level of defense
at a Victor womenyam in the Spurs. I'm not super
high on the Spurs this year. I don't think they
(35:24):
have very much talent on their roster compared to the
other top NBA teams. They're a really poor off ball
shooting team, and they don't have enough defensive talent to
be reliably great on that end night tonight. I think
they'll be a play in team this year. But I
am super high on Victor Woman Yama, and I think
he has the potential to explode onto the superstar scene
(35:44):
this year. He comes in at number seven in this
year's player rankings. All right, before we get out of
here today, Patrick Beverly said, quote, if you put Paul
George in that role as Klay Thompson playing with Steph
Draymond Green and Iguadala, I think that golden State probably
(36:04):
wins more championships. I completely disagree with this, and I
don't mean it as an attempt to say that Clay
was a better basketball player than Paul George at his peak.
I don't think you can make that case. Paul George
once finished third in MVP voting. He has three times
as many All NBA selections, including a first team All
NBA selection. But specifically, when you look at Klay Thompson's
(36:27):
role on the Warriors and what they specifically needed from him,
I thought Clay was every bit as impactful in that
role as Paul George could have been, possibly even more so.
For starters. Klay Thompson is one of the most underrated
defenders of all time. He only has one All Defense
selection in twenty nineteen he made second Team, but for
(36:48):
the entirety of his prime with the Warriors, he was
an excellent perimeter defender. He has great size and strength
for position. He can guard up and down. He could
guard Kyrie Irving well, but he could also guard Big
Foard as well as well. Is good lateral quickness, can
slide his feet, excellent instincts. This is the big thing
that sets him apart. He was just always really good
at anticipating which ways guys would go and then beating
(37:10):
them to spots, getting good contests, taking contact, just getting
a good contest, Like I thought the Jalen Brown series
in twenty twenty two was a great example of this.
Like this was after his acl and achilles injuries. He
struggled early in the series, so much so that they
briefly switched Draymond Green onto Jalen Brown. But towards the
tail end of the series, especially in Game four and
in Game five, Clay guarded Jalen Brown phenomenally well and
(37:34):
was just starting to anticipate his moves and was beating
him to spots and taking that contact in the chest
like I think Clay is like. Don't get me wrong,
Paul George probably at his peak was a better defender
than Clay, but that gap is much closer than we think,
and I don't think Paul George could have done much
better for the Golden State defense in this specific role
(37:55):
than Clay did over those years. And then on offense again,
it's important to look at what they needed out of
that role alongside Steph. Yes, Paul George in his prime
certainly would have been a much better lead option to
run an offense than Klay Thompson. But it's important to
knowledge first of all, even then Paul was probably still
(38:16):
not good enough to do it at a championship level,
and we're discussing it. In the role of playing alongside Steph,
the Warriors offense was all about read and react basketball,
quick decision making, very little dribbling, playing with an advantage
when Steph was off the floor. Clay was able to
provide a reasonable facsimile of what Steph did as an
(38:37):
off ball shooting gravitational force so that the Warriors could
run the same offense and essentially kind of keep some
continuity there. And he was an absolute monster on the
floor alongside Steph, benefiting from his gravity bringing much of
his own kind of a counterbalance effect like in that
role is so important. I mean, look at the job
that we've seen guys, Like when Buddy Heal played well
(38:58):
last year on the Knights. That Buddy Heield played well,
they looked like old Warriors teams. It was Buddy Heeld's
inconsistency that ended up being a problem, right, But Clay
Thompson brought that pretty consistently every night during that era.
And that was what allowed that Warriors offense to reach
the level that they did. Clay wasn't as good as Steph,
but his shooting ability was immensely valuable to that Golden
(39:21):
State team. Now, could Paul George have won a title
with Steph? Sure, But I just pushed back on the
idea that they somehow would have been better or that
they would have won more. That's just not how basketball works.
It's so much more complicated than that. Your value as
a player is unique to your role, unique to what
the team needs out of you. I actually found this
(39:41):
concept generally within modern team building to be very interesting.
We've talked about it with Luca, and the idea like
essentially that when you have a supreme offensive engine, you
don't need to track down another top tier superstar to
push you over the top. When you have a supreme offense,
the game is so easy that you can rely on
(40:03):
just a really really good star and then really high
level role player talent around them, right like Lebron James
with Kyrie Irving, for example, or Steph Curry with Klay Thompson,
Nikola Jokic with Jamal Murray. Luka Danci hasn't won a
title yet, but he got close with Kyrie, right, I
do believe that Luca could win one without a superstar teammate.
(40:27):
They certainly need to be surrounded by talent. I'm not
trying to say you don't need talent, but you open
yourself up to being able to surround those guys with
really high level role players, because those offensive initiators generate
such insane advantages that even high level role players can
fill a real role on offense, Like Draymond Green's role
on offense was unlocked by Steph's shooting gravity. It's what
(40:52):
made that work the guys like Luca and Lebron. There
are not a lot of teams where you can just
surround one guy with a bunch of shooters and the
offense is great. It worked with those guys because they
were setting those guys up with such high quality three
point shots and because they were able to absorb so
much usage. And again, Luca hasn't done it at a
(41:13):
championship level yet, but I believe he eventually will, and
Lebron did. Right, They need some support, right, Steph doesn't
win the title without Klay Thompson. Lebron James doesn't win
the title without Kyrie Irving, Luka donor excuse me, Nikole
Jokic doesn't win the title without Jamal Murray. But those
are guys that are like clearly off of that superstar tier,
(41:33):
that are really good at one thing. For Klay Thompson,
it's nuclear shooting. He's probably the second best shooter of
all time. And with Kyrie Irving and Jamal Murray, it's
that just bucket getting. It's the random possession here or
there where you just need that guy to create a
great shot. Having these elite offensive engines gives you the
ability to build a roster that is open to more
(41:56):
of that depth of role player talent and less dependent
on superstar. So you give those guys a legit superstar
and they're just gonna win easy right, Like Steph got
KD he won two easy ones. Lebron had Anthony Davis
as a top five player one season after that year,
AD declined pretty quickly into that like second tier of stars.
(42:17):
But when Lebron had Ad as a top five player,
that was the easiest title he won. No one threatened
to that team in twenty twenty because you had two
players at that level. If you gave Jokic, Shake Gildess, Alexander.
They're winning the title this year easy. But those guys
don't need that. They are capable of winning with really
high level role player talent because of their ability to
(42:40):
generate such easy offense for their teams. I just think
like I just think Pat's comments are both a lack
of understanding of what made the Warriors great, which started
with Steph creating easy roles for everyone, and then I
think it under sells what Clay did there, his ability
to impact games kind of at the level of that
of a superstar in his role. Some of the craziest
(43:03):
moments in Warrior's history were off the fingers of Klay
Thompson when he would just get blazing hot, or when
he would sit down in his stance and play incredible
on ball defense against a star on the other team.
And I just think he deserves more credit for what
he accomplished there. All right, guys, That's all I have
for today is always to sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting me and supporting the show. We will be back
(43:23):
on Friday with our mailbag. I will see you guys there.
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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