Wemby Watch: Victor Duels Anthony Davis in Close Loss to Lakers

Story of The Game

Were this one of the few Spurs games you’ve watched, you might think the story of the game was Anthony Davis going head-to-head with Victor Wembanyma.

And you’d have a point. Tonight’s big man duel brought back shades of 90s basketball where big men reigned supreme. Instead of A.D. vs. Wemby, the marquee might have read David Robinson vs. Shaq or Charles Barkley vs. Shawn Kemp for an NBA on NBC showdown.

I even had some Spurs vs. Lakers rivalry nostalgia while watching the game.

But the real story was something more in the background: Gregg Popovich is now a horrible coach.

You might think that’s hyperbole, but it’s not.

We’re 28% of the way through the season and the Spurs, with Victor Wembanyma, are on pace for 11 wins.

Once you get past some initial mental gymnastics and accept that stat for what it is, you’ll agree that Popovich’s coaching abilities have fallen off the cliff since the Spurs were peaking with their Beautiful-Game basketball in 2014.

Victor Stats

30 points, 2 assists, 13 rebounds, 6 blocks in 33 minutes

11–21 fgs, 4–5 3 fgs

Quick Thoughts

I’d never listened to an NBA TV telecast before and I’ve got to say, Channing Frye and Greg Anthony were fantastic.

What was especially nice was they were extremely candid.

And just like when the Spurs visited the Warriors and the ESPN crew of JJ Reddick and Richard Jefferson provided the color commentary, the broadcasters wondered aloud why the Spurs weren’t doing the obvious.

In tonight’s game, Channing Frye remarked how the Spurs had 4–6 possessions where Victor didn’t touch the ball.

And after Devin Vassell forced two horrible shots (one an off balance, contested fading 10 footer and the other a pull up 28 footer), Channing stated how the Spurs needed to stop being selfish.

Another Channing comment: good things happen when your best player touches the ball.

Channing also threw-in a nice one-liner: “Look for the dude who’s 7'12.”

Greg Anthony poured in more wisdom, noting that the Spurs need to look for more fast break opportunities and also echoing that the best players need to touch the ball.

Anthony also directly implicated Popovich when commenting on the lack of veteran leadership and how that should have factored into the roster construction this summer.

Now we’re at four objective former NBA players who are observing the same things that I’ve been writing about over and over again.

What I haven’t really criticized Pop for is his lack of basic coaching, but now is the time.

At some point, the misses, the missed passes, and the turnovers can’t be excused away.

We’re 23 games in and this team is still making the most basic of errors, Basketball 101 plays as Greg Anthony called them.

Just look at Jeremy Sochan’s late game turnover where he passed the ball to Anthony Davis in the back court and basically ended the Spurs chances at a comeback.

This wasn’t the only time the Spurs directly and/or lazily threw the ball to the Lakers. The count may have hit five completely inexplicable passes by the time the final buzzer sounded.

The NBA TV crew also commented on the Spurs three point futility in the Rockets game, stating that at some point, you have to stop shooting threes and drive to the basket.

Here’s a quote from my Spurs-Rockets notes:

At some point, don’t you start driving the ball rather than continuing to hoist at an 11% clip?

And, of course, we had more prime examples of the Spurs selfishness on display tonight.

Tre Jones, Devin Vassell, and Jeremy Sochan all passed on very clear Victor opportunities in the paint, ignoring the #1 pick to do something else.

And, as Channing once again nailed, Victor’s not a selfish player, you’ll get the ball back if you have an advantage.

And let’s throw in one more thing Channing correctly picked up: Victor needs to look for his own shot more and not be so eager to pass.

But getting back to the Spurs making very, very basic mistakes, this all traces to Gregg Popovich. He’s been absolutely horrible.

Saying the Spurs are a young team has been the easy excuse all season long, but the Spurs being young and making inexperienced mistakes is one thing. The Spurs not knowing how to play basketball is another.

With Gregg Popovich at the helm, the Spurs:

• Still regularly ignore their franchise player
• Don’t get the ball into the best player’s hands
• Continue to take three’s even though they continue to miss
• Don’t value the basketball and routinely make careless, unforced turnovers
• Still have no real direction on offense

The Spurs were getting blown out early in this game. The only reason they came back is because Keldon Johnson and Malaki Branham got hot while taking the offense upon themselves and Victor also picked up his competitiveness and became an offense force.

Forget advanced strategy, the Spurs could pick up a few wins just by:

• Practicing shooting
• Practicing passing
• Looking up while dribbling
• Studying film to learn court vision
• Implementing a basic offense featuring Victor

It’s basketball 101 and this Spurs team is sorely lacking in discipline and direction. It shows in their record and the stats.

Did you know the Spurs are:

• 27th in points allowed
• 24th in opponent field goal percentage
• 29th in opponent three-point percentage
• 25th in points scored
• 26th in field goal percentage
• 29th in three-point percentage
• 28th in turnovers

And it all points back to Gregg Popovich’s coaching.

It’s the elephant in the room and the more the Spurs lose, the bigger the elephant gets.

Another thing I loved about tonight’s game is it shows that this team has talent. They may be young, but they can compete.

But their coach has done a horrible job. There’s no way this team should be on pace for 11 wins.

One last talking point from the NBA TV crew: the losing starts to wear on anyone, including Victor.

Gregg Popovich may feel like he carte blanch to lose as much as he wants while “experimenting” but he really doesn’t at all.

Victor isn’t a loser, but Pop is making him one. This could prove costly once Victor’s rookie contract ends.

Here are some of my in-game notes.

• Victor’s one-handed passes need to be eliminated. The turnover liklihood is very high.
• The Spurs guards need to learn to come get the ball when a non-ball handler is brining it up.
• Victor sometimes gets lazy with rebounds and relies upon his height but doesn’t battle
• Victor is too eager and is falling for Anthony Davis’s pump fakes
• Spurs still not looking for Victor down low
• Jeremy Sochan drives without a purpose; he doesn’t have a plan and gets stuck in bad positions
• Spurs are making the same mistakes over and over
• Spurs don’t have fundamentals, their passes are careless and naive
• Victor has a superstar flurry to end the first half, giving the Spurs strong momentum with a big moment alley oop fast break slam from Keldon Johnson (reminds me of another big dunk that brought the crowd to a roar on opening day vs. the Mavericks)
• Teammates constantly missing Victor for easy buckets down low, so much so that Victor is developing a horrible habit of fading out of the paint to create room (because he anticipates not getting the pass)

Pre-Game Setup

The Lakers-Spurs matchup is game #23 for the Spurs.

Betting: Lakers -3, Over/Under 231.5

(Guess-Prediction: I’ll take the Spurs and the over.)

Betting Record going into the game 8–10.

The Lakers travels to San Antonio for this contest.