I don’t think you understand how big of a crap shoot draft picks are outside the top 10. If you end up with a draft in which 1/2 of the first round picks end up as top eight rotation Players are better You’re doing pretty well.

Everyone wants a star or a showy player. But if you’re not drafting at the very top of the draft, if you end up with someone that gives you a handful of solid seasons ur right in like with where u need to be as far as return on investment.

And you were definitely very careful to cherry pick for this post. You conveniently left out the 2 years before Walker the Spurs drafted an all-star, and a borderline All-Star caliber guard with freaking 29th pics.

Speaking of the 29th pick… You mentioned Luka but failed to mention San Antonio drafted Johnson in that same draft. Who has way way out succeeded his position.

Walker didn’t turn out great, but again if you look at that draft and players taking around that position there were a heck of a lot Bigger misses than a guy Who gave the Spurs four productive seasons before moving on due to a lack of progress. Middle and late first round picks again, rarely turn into players who get second NBA contracts with the team that drafted them

You also conveniently skipped over 2020. I wonder why. Could it possibly be because you know that San Antonio drafted out side the top 10 and ended up with a guy who pretty much is a consensus top six player in a pretty solid draft, and another guy in Jones who had probably go in the lottery they nabbed in the second round.

Also, Wesley was always looked at as a gamble of a pic. Anyone that followed his draft stock knew exactly what he was and the Spurs did too. They also had three draft picks and decided to invest one in a guy who has theoretically an extremely high ceiling.

Again, you’ve skipped over the two definitive successes they had in that same draft with Jeremy, making it all rookie team and being an extremely unique player with a high ceiling, and Malachi being someone who would definitely go in the lottery in a redraft and is going to be a 10 plus year pro based off his scoring instincts, with a late first round pick.

No team is perfect. San Antonio, definitely wishes they could redo the Josh primo selection for sure.

But if the last 5 years only primo and Luka really qualify as busts and one of those was a situation way outside the Spurs control. Walker was a meh pic, and Wesley has been poor but is way too early to make a full declaration on him being a poor selection as of now. Every other draft pick San Antonio has made in the first round during that time has either overachieved where they were selected or at the very least, been within reasonable expectations. And like I said, that’s only if we stay within your hand selected 5-year window and ignore the two huge steals that happened right before that period of time.

This team most certainly deserves some criticisms with how they have gone about things since the Leonard window shut. If anything in retrospect they should have picked a direction way sooner. But they have been at worst adequate in their drafting ability, and in my personal opinion still one of the top five best teams at drafting over that period of time. Every single team has had some pretty bad misses and San Antonio’s are more minimal and understandable than most.

But I swear this fan base wants to have its cake and eat it too. Do you want a roster filled with talent or do you want the number one Pick generational talent in Victor?

The fact that you thought a 22 win team was going to add a 19-year-old and then suddenly be filled to the brim with talent amuses me.