Aren’t the Spurs Too ‘Classy’ to Tank Again?

“Tanking? It’s a weird strategy,” Wembanyama said in French in an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien. “I find it unreasonable, and I try not to think about it.

After mulling it over, I think I was wrong: I think Gregg Popovich is tanking the 2023–2024 season.

My position is that there are different types of tanking and the Spurs are now employeeing the unethical one.

To optimize the chances of winning the rights to draft Victor, I thought the Spurs tanking was fair: trade your best players for draft picks, decrease your chances of winning, and hope for the best.

This to me, is strategic and appropriate decision-making. The Spurs were never going to be in the top 10 teams with their former roster makeup, so they had to reshuffle the deck and play for the future.

We saw DeJounte Murray, Derrick White, and Jakob Poeltl all shipped off and the Spurs didn’t appear to actively try to lose games; they still amassed 22 wins.

Trying to Lose

But what’s happening this season is disgusting.

What I see this season is either some of the worst coaching an NBA history or an outright tank.

And, again on second thought, I don’t think anybody is this much of an idiot contrarian. I think Gregg Popovich is throwing away Victor’s rookie season because he thinks its the best route to building a contender.

To get another high lottery pick, Pop is purposefully using horrible strategies to lose more games.

• Like the Jeremy Sochan experiment.
• Like not including Victor in the offense.
• Like limiting Victor’s minutes.
• Like forcing rest games for phantom injuries.

Etc. Etc.

Is this stealth tanking?

It may be an attempt at being stealth but it’s too overt.

Detection isn’t that difficult as other people (like Richard Jefferson and Austin Rivers) have already jumped to the conclusion that the Spurs are tanking.

I had a binary shot at calling tanking but chose option A, because purposefully throwing away a season of Victor Wembanyama’s career is so wrong on so many levels and it’s so, so greedy.

Here’s a list of reasons why I subconsciously thought Pop wouldn’t tank:

• You already won the lottery prize of all prizes
• Victor’s goal was to make the playoffs
• You’d have to purposefully lose games
• Losing decimates team culture
• The Spurs team has nice talent/pieces already
• The Spurs have a nice haul of draft picks in the future
• The Spurs have salary cap flexibility

Again, this list of reasons was all lying beneath the surface. I never even entertained the idea that the Spurs were tanking, AGAIN, until Pop’s opposite-approach began to stack more and more losses.

Auditing The Spurs Record

This Spurs team is 4–24 and on pace for a historically low win total (11.7 wins), which is beyond embarrassing.

And I mean that literally. It’s a deviation so far outside the Las Vegas projected win total (28.5 to 30.5 preseason) that it would be a red flag on an audit.

Which means we have some evidence that, statistically, something is artificially interfering with the Spurs competitiveness.

Auditing The Spurs Decision-Making

The Spurs basically have one point guard on the roster, Tre Jones, and he doesn’t even start. Tre only averages 23.1 mpg.

Rather, for most of the season they went with a power forward who can’t handle the ball and has no court vision.

Not only this, but they waived veteran point guard, Cameron Payne in the offseason.

Also, the Spurs signed no notable free agents in the offseason even though they had cap room to make moves. And, as Bill Simmons rightfully emphasizes, the Spurs made no effort to sign Austin Reeves.

Other dubious on and off court decisions (and non-decisions) indicate that the Spurs aren’t trying to win this season.

The official organization chart shows Brian Wright as GM but it’s unclear to me who actually makes the calls.

The Inevitable Run

Eventually the Spurs are going to go on a run and rack up some wins.

It has to happen; they can’t get any worse.

And as the season progresses, I won’t be surprised if Pop suddenly starts to figure out that getting the ball to Victor, having a point guard, etc. is a good idea.

But this will be a light cover to try and hide what’s happened.

Don’t forget what happened to start this season.

And don’t forget how Pop went against Victor’s wishes and completely ruined his rookie year.