Hope dangles on a string

The Spurs extend Devin Vassell, who in Year 3 started to look like the player a team built around Victor Wembanyama just might need.

Good morning. Lots of links today. The emo(ish) lyric subject lines will continue until morale improves. Let’s basketball.

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Bain à la Grenouillère; Claude Monet; 1869

Everything we know about Victor Wembanyama indicates that he has the potential to be an instant life-changer for the San Antonio Spurs: players with this sort of hype and reputation coming in can launch themselves and their teams into the stratosphere as soon as Year 3. LeBron, Durant and Luka each finished top-5 in MVP voting within their first three seasons in the NBA. I wrote about this at some length just before the NBA Draft Lottery where the Spurs won the rights to pick Wembanyama.

So you won the rights to Victor Wembanyama. Now what?

That led me to a couple of arguments that the Spurs should, given that they had plenty of salary cap room and draft equity, be in the mix for some available players at key positions to help close the gap between their current place in the standings and competitiveness. The Spurs did not, in fact, do that: they didn’t get into the mix for any of the available point guards, instead re-upping Tre Jones. They didn’t hit Austin Reaves with an offer sheet. The Spurs mostly sat the offseason out.

It seems the Spurs might believe they already have some of the pieces they need around Wembanyama. To that effect, the Spurs this week signed 23-year-old Devin Vassell to a 5-year extension worth $146 million.

Vassell is one of the franchise’s three most promising young players, along with Wembanyama and Jeremy Sochan, who just completed his rookie season. This is to say that Wembanyama and Sochan won’t get expensive for a few more years, so locking in Vassell with a lucrative contract that kicks in for the 2024-25 season won’t constrict a franchise unlikely to spend lots of time over the luxury tax threshold. Alternately, locking in Vassell now prevents an even higher contract offer hitting in restricted free agency next summer.

What intrigues me most about Vassell is his fit with Wembanyama.