Spurs CEO hatched a plan to draft Wemby right when he just turned 16.
It’s not tanking, it’s “turning the team over”.
It’s letting the Atlanta Hawks think they were swindling us out of Dejounte Murray
We actually did get swindled by the Celtics.
Swindling implies the Spurs were tricked or didn’t know what they were giving up. All parties have said the Spurs got better offers but Pop loved Buffalo too much to send him to New Orleans or Memphis.
“we can’t pay you but we’ll trade you to a place that’ll treat you well.”
And boy did we treat him well, still sad you guys didn’t beat the knicks this year.
not sadder than I am
What he say fuck me for?
Memphis was pretty good that year so I think they would have loved to send him there, but they also tend to avoid trading within conference/division. Makes sense that Boston was their preferred landing spot for him because of the Ime/Spurs connection, the similarities in culture, and the potential for White to play winning basketball again.
This is why players like playing for the Spurs. They do right by guys.
There is a world where keeping DWhite somehow doesn’t get y’all Wemby
I never said we should keep him, just that we should have gotten more picks from yall.
No one with two brain cells thought this was a “swindle” in the Hawks direction
You call it Epstein, I call it Trump.
Flirting vs harassment
It’s a like a procedure, or method, maybe an approach you could call it?
Definitely not the process
Ok so Adam was 100% right in changing the draft. If guys are so open about it now even when it’s more taboo imagine how they must’ve been talking before
Idk tanking in basketball just seems kinda inevitable given how impactful a top player can be, as there only 5 dudes on the court at all times.
Like even in nfl, you draft a great QB on their rookie contract but if your defense, special teams, or weapons are bad, you aren’t getting the same impact
I’ll add that Stars not hitting FA for the most part anymore makes tanking more appealing, as most of the time FA tends to be mid or subpar role players
Inevitable in the old structure— the math really doesn’t work to tank now
Sure it does, it just moved the tanking. Now you’ll see some teams that want to lose the 7 vs 8 play in for a lottery shot, and teams that want to move from 8 to 9 to get an extra lottery shot, and teams that want to move from 9 to 11 for an extra shot.
You just have mid teams tanking for a path forward instead of bad teams tanking.
Those aren’t decisions you can make before the season starts. Outlier tactical tanking for a game or so will still happen, sure, but that’s much much different than systematically structuring your roster to lose games.
And frankly, I’d argue intentionally losing play-in games is not very likely to happen anyways. I don’t think owners are going to want to intentionally lose a play-in game and risk forgoing 2-3 playoff games worth of revenue to increase their expected pick from ~17 to ~12, even if there’s a small change they creep into the top 3-5. Not saying it couldn’t happen, particularly if the team has injuries, but that’s not a likely decision front offices are going to be making
I full agree with your first point, and strongly disagree with your second.
If after 70% of a season you are in a decent seed, but don’t believe your team is close to going the distance you can still get the full value of tanking, without having to commit to the full tank. I think teams like the magic, the heat, the trailblazer, and potentially a few others would have done so this year.
Whether or not you see it in the trial period I think really depends on if teams perceive the drafts as strong or weak. But if we see another strong draft I expect the middle to try to soft-tank
You’re still tanking for a very small chance to hit on a top pick, so you need a very understanding owner to not care at all about playoff revenue for what is zero guarantee lotto odds (in fact, chances are ownership forgoes playoff revenue for no gain at all)
I agree. And that doesn’t even include the team. It is lot harder to make a team tank several games in like the last month. The players have no incentive to tank. I think it’s different getting them to do so from the start for a clearly bad team vs doing it at like the last month or so.
Good luck keeping your players happy if you tank a season where you are in the hunt 70 percent into the season. Especially if you still don’t get an impact player in the draft.
To add on to your point, part of the problem is that winning in the NBA playoffs is hard as fuck. In other sports, the mentality is often “if we make it to the dance, a miracle could happen.” Miracles basically never happen in the NBA, or are at least way rarer, so that gamble just isn’t worth it.
We already saw that the hornets decided they weren’t gonna get there w/ lamelo, despite having a team that could be pretty good. Broadly there just isn’t value there for teams losing r1/r2.
My hotest take is that the 2nd apron and high roster turnover makes this issue worse because there’s not even the incentive to get experience anymore, you’re gonna soft blow it up in 2-3 years anyway so just try to import your vets instead of growing your own talent (excluding the rare superstars ofc)
Mark Cuban did
The Mavs intentionally losing the season end games to get 1.8% chance or in general to get better picks the next season.
When they dont see a goal at the end of the season they decided to just lose games to get higher picks instead of going into the playins.
This case still can happen.
And you have to convince the players. You can tank a season by trading players or shutting them down. You are not going to bench your star player for the play in game. And they are not going to throw the game for a chance at a better draft pick.
It moved the tanking to affect way fewer teams for way fewer games. With the current system you have a third of the league who are trying to lose on purpose after the all star break, that’s what the league is trying to get rid of. You can’t get rid of tanking completely as long as you have a system like the draft that rewards teams who are bad.
I don’t think we can say for sure that we can’t get rid of tanking completely. After watching how the system works out they can continue to tweak the rules to reduce the new pockets of tanking.
It moved the tanking and made the expected value worse to the point that social pressure just probably doesn’t make it worthwhile. Before you could tank and at worst get the fifth pick (4th if you go back ten years).
Now even if you math everything out perfectly you can very easily end up with a pick outside the top 10, I think the EV of even the ideal spots is like the 7th or 8th pick. At that point, why not just try to win and take slightly worse odds?
Trevor got drafted and we had Urban Meyer as our head coach and we all know how that went
Philip Rivers. For the younger people, Joe Burrow, but at least he made a superbowl.
Rivers can still make a superbowl
The problem is that it’s smart. Being able to draft Wemby got them in the finals in 3 years. One player can be so impactful in the NBA, when there’s a once in a lifetime freakazoid like Wemby out there, throwing a couple seasons in the trash is well worth it if it ends up working out.
It was smart because ping pong balls bounced their way
I mean they intentionally gave themselves a better chance for this to happen and it paid off. They had the literal highest odds to get Wemby alongside Detroit and Houston who also tanked the entire year.
Teams have been doing this for 15+ years. I’m not saying it’s “smart” but it is the best option for teams at a crossroads when a player like Wembanyama is available. The issue is how the draft/league so heavily incentivized it.
Exactly. It’s also not like they blew up some team on the cusp on contending to tank. If they decided to go for it during those years instead, it’s not like they would have been a contender. And now they’ve set themselves up for a long time.
Of course, knocking all of those picks out of the park and drafting Wemby, Castle, Harper 3 years in a row certainly helps. Could have been like the suns and ended up with Dragan Bender, Josh Jackson and DeAndre Ayton after 3 years of top 5 picks lol.
Yeah tanking is really the obvious solution when you don’t have a top 5-10 player, especially if you’re a small market team. Just somewhat pushing back against the narrative that the spurs are playing 4d chess for having good lottery luck
All of life is stochastic. The only option is to take the path which gives you the greatest chance for success.
No it was smart because they maximized their chances for those ping pong balls to bounce their way.
This isn’t Dame pulling up with 0.3 left and it’s a good idea just because it worked. This is Daryl Morey focusing on 3’s & layups and it’s a good idea because it gave the rockets the best chance to win.
And also incredibly lucky. They still only had a 14% chance.
focusing on 3’s & layups
If one of the rockets had tried a mid range, 27-0 might not be what we remember
No guarantee a different team goes to the Finals if they drafted him. Spurs were honestly the best organization for him and you have to look at the other guys they put around him.
Most of the other guys they put around Wemby were because of either further lottery luck or because they had Wemby on their roster. Outside of Wembanyama, the most impactful guys on the Spurs this year were Fox, Harper, Castle, and Vassell (Keldon Johnson as well, but he disappeared once the playoffs hit). The Spurs only got Harper and Castle because they got top lottery picks (Harper was a no-brainer at 2 and there were teams not far below the Spurs who were looking to get Castle in 2024), and Fox forced his way to the Spurs because he wanted to play alongside Wemby. Only Vassell can really be credited as smart drafting by the Spurs, but most teams could’ve put an extremely competitive roster around Wemby had they been given the same 3 draft picks that the Spurs got in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
I think the thing people also forget is when you tank you do it in the hopes of landing a superstar it can take multiple years, Spurs got lucky but there was also a chance we miss out on Wemby and then continue to tank, and enter the Flagg sweepstakes or this years draft hoping for a top 4 pick (basically what Utah/Washington have done the last couple years)
Once you land the right guy hopefully you get out of tank mode and in this case we just got lucky that it happened quite quickly for us
They also got the fourth pick the following year.
Was it not obvious that like 10 teams have been openly tanking each year for over 2 decades?
He wasn’t right. Tanking isn’t a problem. Bad teams need ways to get better so their fans have hope and stay engaged. Tanking is that hope. Flattening lottery odds just makes it harder for bad small markets like Sac to ever hope to get better.
Change the draft a bit maybe but this is an AWFUL change if anyone wants to actually be able to rebuild. If you are really bad now you are punished. If you are bad bad to just barely out of the playoffs you depend entirely on low level luck so you cant even position yourself for those future stars
Everyone acting surprised the Spurs tanked for Wemby like the entire league hasn’t operated like this for the last 15 years.
Spurs are the only team that get glazed for tanking
They get called smarter than everyone else for getting lucky enough to both get the number 1 pick frequently and also having it always be basically a generational/can’t miss prospect
Did the Thunder get swallowed into the earth or something?
Thunder got a lot of shit for tanking until Shai turned into a superstar, then the commentary became about the trade deal
OKC’s tanking didn’t really result in anything outstanding, though. The return they got one their high draft picks has been pretty much about what you’d expect any team to have gotten in a similar position.
San Antonio? Totally different story.
The Thunder did not get the same lottery luck as had to be much more shrewd to become what they are
where do we stand on “the process”? is it ironic? is it not glazing that they are open and upfront about how they tanked to get better?
Could have a dumbass fo like the Kings that pick Bagley over Doncic
just cuz we have a 7 foot horseshoe up our asses when it comes to tank for a generational big
lmao thank you. them tanking is not the issue. it’s that everyone else gets clowned for it.
Not saying it was you in particular, but there were absolutely a good grip of Spurs fans acting self righteous about how the Spurs never tanked, which is obviously bullshit.
No no point Sochan was crucial for his development, you all don’t understand 😭
Of course Pop perfectly played the Xanatos Gambit.
Any “Spurs fan” saying that is a Wemby kid that only started following the team when he got drafted. We obviously got intentionally bad after 2020. You can say we didn’t intentionally tank for Harper because Wemby and Fox were injured but we tanked for Wemby and Tim Duncan.
Wrong! The Spurs didn’t tank for Timmy. Literally all the best players on the team were injured a large chunk of the season. They just didn’t rush anyone back because it was a lost cause.
We’ve tanked for sure. We’ve also been lucky. But yeah I hear you.
Bro every anti-tanking thread this past season would just be filled with self righteous Spurs fans
Most teams don’t auto jump every time they are in the lottery tho
This didn’t read to me like deliberate hard tanking for Wemby either, iirc the Spurs were kinda in no-man’s land for a bit and they likely just scheduled selling assets like DJM and Derrick White so the downturn of their rebuild would happen around the 2023 draft.
Yea udk if anyone watches games or even looks at standings. 10 teams a year are just there to exist and lose. Of course most of them love to tank
For sure, more teams should have been tanking for Wemby.
Blazers did the same for Yang Hansen 😔
Iirc there were some leaks after that pick that a couple of teams were thinking they were getting him later in the draft. I want to say it was the Hawks and Nets?
I know it’s just a joke. We also tanked for Wemby
I really want him to work out, would suck if he was a bust.
Me too, I root for him heavy
I’m all in on Yangtime
China is the biggest basketball market in the world.
He’s become such a meme I want him to succeed. And plus the Blazers deserve something nice considering their owner. MVP Yang season loading 2026-27 all haters stay on that side
I wouldve tank for wemby bro
Tanking still doesn’t promise winning the lottery, unless….
You could tank for 2-3 years and not get your guy. Which is a waste of time and money.
Unless there is no lottery, just bidding.
Waste of money how? Don’t you make good money tanking?
Are you seriously gonna buy a ticket to watch Jeremy Sochan play point guard?
Depends, do they still have dollar hot dog nights? And how wasted can I get before they removed me for chatting up the big ol’ women.
but you are familiar with the concept of ticket sales dropping when teams suck
I am, but hopefully they run promotions to get me too drunk to process the tank Infront of me
Nah. But franchise value should still increase because it’s the NBA, no? And expenses decrease on lower payroll, no? Don’t feel like googling too much but I understood that tanking teams didn’t necessarily lose “money” (current year net income, separately league revenue, and separately franchise value)
They get $143m per season from the tv contract alone so it would take a trump level of mismanagement to lose money
they don’t necessarily lose money but they definitely don’t make as much money.
There’s a salary floor that every team has to get to.
Maybe not “lose money”, but you definitely make less money with a G League roster.
The Sixers tanked from 2013 onwards, they still haven’t got to a Conference Finals. They had lots of empty seats for 3 years before Embiid, Simmons and Fultz came. They tanked so hard and it still didn’t work out.
Spurs are incredibly lucky they landed number one.
Golden State haven’t won shit in 4 years but I bet they made more money during that span versus Wizards, Jazz, Bulls combined, solely on tickets and merchandise sales.
Well, Wemby was also on the floor.
You’re tellin me
Cries in ping pong balls
Lakers should have gotten Westbrook a season later
I would’ve tanked for Ron Holland
Instead we were damn near mediocre for years trying to make an aging LeBron led team work
This is a very cool clip of them giving insight on how the Spurs saw Wemby and it’s getting burried in the discussion between people who seem to be trying to paint tanking as some shady business and that they’ve just dropped a bomb lol
I remember seeing Wemby mentioned on shit about the tallest upcoming kids years ago as just a french kid who was very tall and not minding it much besides how damn tall he was and thinking what the fuck they were feeding this generation of athletes, it’s pretty fun, although obvious in hindsight, that at the time multimillionaire organizations were already planning based on his future
My recollection of this as a Spurs fan was Wemby’s potential was what made the team decide it was time to stop clinging to .500 ball with DeMar and roll the dice on rebuilding/tanking.
Fact of the matter is that the WORST place for a small market team in the old system was to be mid.
We traded away our only vet presence in Josh Richardson and Jakob Poeltl to 10000% ensure we didn’t win any more games lmao.
The tank was real and planned for way ahead of time and I think Wemby’s potential as a 16 yo had everything to do with it
rigged
Lakers fans should never be allowed to make any rigging accusations ever
The nba draft lottery is absolutely rigged, maybe not every season but it’s obvious when it happens.
If this was the case, I feel like NBA would’ve put their thumb on the scale for Zion to go to New York when they had the best lottery odds.
You’re missing “all roads lead to Anthony Davis”
They’ve been trying to rebuild NO with a superstar lotto pick since CP3. Something about that team is cursed bc it always seems to fail spectacularly
Please explain how they would rig it.
It’s the dumbest conspiracy. People actually think 29 other owners who are competing with each other said “yeah, you can give the generational prospect to San Antonio. We don’t want the championships or money from a generational player. In fact, we will even tank and lose money just to cover your tracks.”
Why the fuck would billionaire owners ever agree to rig the draft for someone else? Lol.
And it makes absolutely no financial sense for the league, either. Of all the places to send a potential face of the sport, fucking San Antonio? It wasn’t even the most profitable city in Texas in the top 3. The Spurs had already been a problem before as a 20-year dynasty in a tiny market while playing “boring basketball” that didn’t sell.
But, Robinson! Duncan! You know, Centers! It makes sense! /s
If you’re talking about the actual mechanism in which they could rig it. The Ewing one is speculated that they put the envelope in the fridge first so that Stern knew which one to pull.
I’m guessing for the lottery ball system, they would use a weighted system, but there’s quite a few ways it could be done.
They don’t televise it, people are going to claim rigging unless they see it with their two own eyes.
I honestly wish they would, the NHL does it and it’s great. The Maple Leafs ping pong ball a few years back got knocked out last second and the Rangers got the top pick.
They literally do record and post it though, it’s not presented live but it’s uploaded to YouTube immediately after the presentation show occurs. There’s a room of like two dozen people with representatives from all over the league plus reporters watching the lottery drawing (they have to leave their phones at the door), if something fishy were going on it would’ve been called out ages ago.
People like drawing conclusions out of patterns when true randomness will sometimes create patterns, that’s all there is to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8jEtnd4_0
You may examine the 2023 Wemby lottery here.
2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JjScsTNNaw
2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCxgXS7EBI0
2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCfBHzhqgbA
My personal opinion: these videos are kinda boring but the lottery method seem to be respected by the team representatives lol
we said this when the spurs got wemby, we said this when the mavs got cooper, and even lebron pointed out that cleveland got the first pick when he came out, and chicago got the first pick when rose came out
League wants its box office franchises what can I say
The only reason the league would send the Spurs Wemby is for the medical/training staff to keep Wemby healthy. Otherwise given how market crazy the league is they would’ve packed Wemby to Houston that year.
yeah we all know the NBA loves its big markets like… San Antonio Texas.
As did 29 other GMs lmao
Well no, Raptors for example were competing to be mediocre
We know
LeBron drafted to Cleveland. Wemby to Spurs. Yeah sure. It’s how the ping pong balls bounced
D rose to the Bulls
Flagg to Mavs post-Luka
Davis to the league owned Pels
Zion to the Pels right after trading Davis
Ewing to the Knicks
Bargnani to Raps 🤣
You know a conspiracy is ridiculous when it requires you to believe owners are rigging the league to send stars to the New Orleans Pelicans multiple times.
Billionaire selfish asshole James Dolan just said “Yeah, I want New Orleans to have Zion. Not me.”
The Pels trading AD to the Lakers right before getting the number 1 pick is a big piece of the conspiracy. Not that I believe it myself but if you look at the history of the draft, Ewing to the Knicks, LeBron to Cleveland, Rose to Chicago, it’s not hard to understand why the conspiracy theories around it exist.
they got zion as a thank you making the lakers and lebron happy, and when the piece that made that trade happen is AD who got drafted to new orleans conveniently at the same time when the FUCKING LEAGUE OWNED THEM and a nice big new rookie superstar should did help them get a few extra million on that sale. it stops being a fucking conspiracy when shits just keep fucking happening every other fucking year.
wasn’t this right after “basketball reasons” too?
Indeed
How many number 1 picks get drafted to their home state? It’s just LeBron and Rose, pretty much the exact number you’d expect by chance. There is a rigged narrative for all 30 teams, some much stronger than others but the strongest narrative doesnt win every draft. If Wemby went to Houston it’d be called rigged for Hakeem who has as much in common with Wemby as Tony Parker and Tim Duncan have, and Houston is the 5th largest metro area, it hasnt had success for a long time. If Giannis was sent to the 76ers you’d say it’s rigged cos it means brotherly love in Greek.
Flagg to the Mavs after the Luka trade
Anthony Bennett to the Cavs
Why would the other owners care gift Lebron to Cleveland? because it’s near his hometown? No one cares about that shit.
what happened to “the nba wants all the stars in big markets”?
you can invent an narrative for anything.
Idk how you can not come away from this with questions on draft integrity lmao
Survivorship bias. I bet a lot of teams had a similar plan in motion for Wemby.
Most of the guys picked early are already know around 15 or 16 it’s normal
That’s not some kind of revelation. I’m just a casual fan and was hearing about Wemby around that time. Of course teams that aren’t in a position to win a title would be tanking to try and draft him.
This isn’t like they discovered Baker Mayfield when he was a walk-on at Texas Tech or Cam Ward as a 0 star recruit
so they planned to tank before he was in the league lol
As opposed to tanking after?
Smartest warriors fan
Tank to get the 1st overall pick
Not to draft the player, to trade for the player!
Ofc, it would be dumb to tank after?
Never forget after the Wemby - Scoot game, Woj said a GM told him that we were about to see a race to the bottom like we had never seen before
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/s/SnHE44J9On
Which was basically the season that the Kings were let in as a 3rd seed
Eh people knew about wemby for years so not super surprising
Add Mavs getting Cooper Flagg right after Luka trade to the list
I was watching Wemby since his France days. Was already my favorite player and knew he was gonna be the next big thing. Imagine my excitement when the Rockets got the #1 overall pick in the draft 🥶
Spurs won a generational lottery. Imagine if Detroit won and we got Cade + Wemby
Would have been too perfect.
As a Spurs fan, i prefer Castle/ Harper/ Wemby
Spurs have always been good with scouting international talent.
You don’t really have to scout to draft wemby. I remember seeing videos of him back then. Obviously other picks like Mamu were great though.
They said our tanking is gonna peak during that draft. We’re gonna throw Silver a line tell him the only team that can responsibly manage the future of the NBA is us. The rest was history.
Crazy they knew they would get the #1 pick lol
Sucking balls doesn’t take a lot of hatching to plan especially when your best talent is Keldon Johnson and you’re unironically giving Isaiah Roby minutes
Hatched a plan to win the lottery three years before he got drafted. OK pal. Hatch to plan to draft a generational player that’s on every single scout radar for 10 years.? OK pal
Our plans are measured in centuries
That 2023 lottery had to be rigged
They have a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup table
This is called grooming and it’s illegal
I feel like every rebuilding team tried tanking for wemby
The real tank job was NBA gifting Spurs #1 picks for franchise players.
Yall realize they arent the only teams that did it
So anyone noticing how he’s looking at those thunder thighs?
I mean they are some big ass thighs
The sorry teams wouldn’t like this but i really wish of the lottery teams they all had the same % chance for the top picks.
Would it take longer for those bad teams to get better if they don’t land the pick? Yes but at the very least we wouldn’t have tanking anymore.
Utah and Indiana love this
this is why im supporting the new drafting rule against this shit, if your aim is to contend the only way that makes sense is to tank for a generational player
but fuck the jazz when they do it
The stupid greedy jazz sat healthy all-stars. The tanking was gross and messing with the integrity of the game. The Spurs played their guys. They just didn’t have good players. They literally tore it down. The Jazz are just too dumb to understand the difference
This is much more egregious that the Leonard shit
Stephen A grinding for Ballmer even when the cameras are off
Is the video not working for anyone else
How old was Wemby?!
I’d be too worried about injuries to spend seasons building a team around Wemby, but early in his career would be the time to try.
And the Hawks helped them. What idiots.
Dejounte averaged a near triple double when the hawks traded for him and there was a heavy sentiment at the time that the hawks needed backcourt help alongside Trae
What’s funny is White would’ve been a better fit next to Trae and they could’ve gotten him for less assets
Exactly! They picked the wrong guy for crazy amount of draft assets.
So genius to plan to draft an over 7 foot dude with guard skills. /s
Mitch needs to raise the 12th man flag this season for beating OKC
O’Dea finest!
It’s turning the team over, not tanking guys…
Wink wink
Nudge nudge
They basically just admitted to tanking to get him. They really need to change how the draft works. Intentionally making your team worse through trades is clever we get it, you can’t really prove tanking but it’s incredibly obvious to most fans. It’s like every teams cheating but nobody cares
Are you deadass my guy?