Following the Warriors‘ preseason-opening win over the Lakers on Sunday, Pat Spencer, a two-way player who started off as a lacrosse star before shifting to basketball and, at present, has played his way into a potentially meaningful role as a backup NBA point guard, submitted an early entry for quote of the year.
“If you’re a guy who can connect the dots, but also do some other things, knock the 3-ball down, there’s always going to be a place for you in the league,” Spencer said. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of organizations that are stuck in the bottom that continue to value length and athleticism over IQ. And they tend to stay in the lottery every year.”
Generally speaking, this is an insightful and true quote. Basketball people have overvalued traditional athleticism forever and they always will. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. Of course it does. Just like size matters. But it’s not a replacement for lack of skill and/or IQ, or more granularly, system competency. Every team in the league has, at some point, whiffed on an “athlete” who turned out not to be a very good basketball player.
But through the specific prism of the Warriors, this quote is so rich in irony. We can safely assume Spencer didn’t intend for that. But it still is. Think about it: What built the Warriors into a dynasty? It surely wasn’t speed or height or how high anyone jumped at the combine. It was, in fact, the complete opposite of those traditional markers.
It was the skill of Stephen Curry, who was long saddled with the “he isn’t a great athlete” tag. It was the shooting of Klay Thompson, another underwhelming athlete. It was the smarts of Draymond Green, who doesn’t pass one single traditional athletic test but connects these dots of which Spencer speaks — on both sides of the ball — like few players in history.
The Warriors knew this. And yet, when it came time for them draft their next crop of franchise players with what would probably be the last two top 10 picks they would have for a long time in 2020 and 2021, they tore up the blueprint they had personally designed and selected James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga.
Both athletic. Both long. And both, in the end, entirely wrong for the Warriors.
Wiseman was a complete bust who was probably never going to make it in the league, certainly not as a starter, regardless of who drafted him, and nobody needs any reminding of the round peg in the square hole that is Kuminga within this Warriors’ system that is still built around all the qualities he so evidently lacks.
Now, Kuminga can play. Let’s not get that twisted. It’s vital to understand that these athletic traits are sought after for a reason. But in a league littered with 1% athletes, even an athlete as gifted as Kuminga will wind up marginalized if he can’t do the things Spencer is talking about.
Kuminga isn’t a shooter. He doesn’t want to play a supporting role. He connects no dots. The Warriors want to trade him, but nobody wants him enough to give up anything valuable for him. This two-year contract that Kuminga just signed is an arranged marriage that is, almost unquestionably, headed for a divorce.
Which is all the more frustrating when you look at the player who was drafted one spot after Kuminga in 2021. Franz Wagner: perfect Warriors guy. Not an eye-popping athlete but supremely skilled and, through any lens independent of combine numbers, an immeasurably better basketball player than Kuminga.
The Wiseman pick at No. 2 overall was even worse. Tyrese Haliburton was sitting right there in that draft, but he fell to No. 12 because teams didn’t think he was a great athlete and his shot looked weird. Never mind that he was always an elite shooter and an even better connector and has, not surprisingly, turned into a superstar.
Spencer, of course, is far from a superstar. But these rules are relative to all levels of player. The fringe guys who make it, generally speaking, are the ones who consistently execute the things that Spencer is talking about, and the guys who go from good to great do too. If they can jump out of the gym on top of the smarts and skill, all the better. But closing your eyes and betting on athleticism is, generally speaking, a losing proposition. And make no mistake, the Warriors lost with the Wiseman and Kuminga picks. Big time.
The only reason they still won the title in 2022 and continue to have a chance to compete for another one is they still have Curry, the all-time cautionary tale for any team scared off by what a player looks like either on paper or in person or both, Green, who can hardly jump over a phone book at this point and is small for his position (though very long, to be fair), and Jimmy Butler, whose basketball intelligence is, and always has been, off the proverbial charts.
So yes, there’s a place for Spencer on this team. More teams should be looking for guys like Spencer and, in all honesty, more and more are these days (there’s a reason Cam Whitmore fell to No. 20 despite universally lauded athleticism. But the bias toward “athletes” and “measurables” — be it length or speed or vertical leap or all of the above — will always exist on some level.
It’s how guys like Josh Jackson and Scoot Henderson and Marvin Bagley III and Deandre Ayton and Emmanuel Mudiay and Derrick Williams and Michael Carter-Williams and Elfrid Payton and Jarrett Culver and Cam Reddish and James Wiseman, and on and on down the list, will always have a place in the lottery, because they look the part, even as we sit here talking about a league in which, arguably, the three best players — Nikola Jokić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Dončić — are not traditionally gifted athletes.
The rule is actually pretty simple: When in doubt, bet on skill and smarts over traditional athleticism at all levels of your roster. You probably won’t win at the highest level if you don’t have some of both, but be careful. Potential is what gets coaches fired. These things that Spencer is talking about, that stuff makes careers.
