Victor Wembanyama CLEARED! Brian Windhorst’s Spurs expectations! | The Hoop Collective

Victor Wembanyama CLEARED! Brian Windhorst’s Spurs expectations! | The Hoop Collective

some uh good and interesting news on Monday. Um Victor Wanyama told the Keep in France um that he had been cleared over over the weekend, actually Friday. He was uh I believe McMahon he was in Las Vegas, right? Wasn’t he at these games? Oh yeah, I know. He just walked right in in the uh you know during that game and big guy. Can’t really miss him as he’s walked in his courtside seat. Well, he apparently saw the Spurs medical staff in Vegas just back from Tokyo. He’s made two trips to Asia this offseason that we’re aware of. I mean, um, one to China and one to Japan. He was, uh, dancing in a Japanese club last week. I saw some video from that. Um, but anyway, the point is he has been cleared to, um, uh, he has been cleared to resume basketball activities. Uh, now, wasn’t he doing like bicycle kicks and stuff? Yeah. So, look, I don’t training with monks. Yeah. I don’t exactly 100% know all of the stuff. So, I’m not going to, you know, say I would say this as somebody who had a blood clot years ago, typically you would not be able to be cleared for that stuff if you didn’t if the doctors weren’t pretty sure you were not going to fall and have internal bleeding. So, as you were returning from your blood clots, were you doing bicycle kicks? I have I was able to cut those out of my uh my routine. So it was hard but um but so my guess is he had already been um in a good spot from you know potentially off blood thinning medication. Yeah. But um you know he he has been vague about whether he had surgery for this or not. So maybe he’ll clarify that later on. Um the Spurs from the start were confident that he would be cleared to return. So this is what’s important. He has been cleared. he’s going to be able to start playing basketball again, which McMahon is good because it’s only July. Like, he shouldn’t be able to get, you know, I’m sure they’re going to be careful with him, but he should be able to get several months of court work coming into the season. So, I’m sure they’ll, you know, not let him play 48 minutes, but sure. Two and a half months though of of, you know, real offseason basketball work. Has there been any clarity on uh his potential participation in Euro basket for France? That is a really good question. Um uh now um Bonteps mentioned last week um that Chris Epsorzing uh re reaffirmed he intends to play for Latafia. Latafia by the way a sneaky contender to win. Yeah. At least to be a good spot. Yeah. Also the final four is in Latvia. Ah, I didn’t even I knew it was in three different countries. I knew it was Poland. Well, yeah, the group plays in in different spots, but the the uh final rounds are in Lapia, so you know, some extra motivation for Zingas to play. This would be Wimy’s Euro basket debut. But whether he plays in that or not, obviously great news that he’s going to be uh in basketball activities for two and a half months heading into camp. um no reason to think anything other than he’s going to be uh you know ready to roll and and you know in great form come the start of the season and the Spurs are a very interesting team. You know I don’t know what the overunder would be. I don’t know if we can go a little double or nothing. I believe I’ve probably chipped away at that dinner bet despite the uh you know the the fact that Wimpby not playing 50 games waved it off. Um, but they’ve got some really interesting pieces. Um, obviously made the big deal for Darren Fox. Stefan Castle, rookie of the year, Stefan Castle, rookie of the year, I should say. And, uh, man, bond temps. We were in the arena the other day for the little bit of summer league a action that Dylan Harper got, but it was a pretty pretty good whatever it was 18 19 minutes of action that you know, lo and behold, the number two overall pick looks like a guy who can make an instant impact. Yeah, I think he had 16 points in 18 19 minutes. It was his first game since February or March, the beginning of March playing for Ruckers. Um hadn’t done anything really since then. missed the first couple summer league games with a groin injury in California and in Vegas. Um, but yeah, he he I think he’s going to be awfully good. I I I’m very curious to see what happens with the Spurs this year because they do have some obviously some present day talent with Victor and Dearan Fox. Um, Jackson says the overunder is 43 and a half. I mean, that’s interesting. That’s a pretty good line. I They do have a lot of fit issues to sort out. Um, I don’t really know if De’aran Fox, Dylan Harper, and Stfan Castle long-term make sense to all be on the same team, which is an interesting thing to sort out. Um, you know, it’s so I’m very curious to see what that looks like. Um, you know, so they they they do have some real questions to answer with their team, but you know, they go hire Sean Sweeney this summer. They very clearly, you know, Victor is clearly going to be coming in this season expecting to win games. They have the ability to move money around to go add more pieces if they want, if they choose to. Um, their situation and how they approach this season and what they look like in year three. Victor is going to be very interesting on a lot of fronts. And you know, we also they made the Dear Fox trade. I think those guys played like me I don’t think it was I was going to say I knew it was five games. I don’t even think it was 100 minutes on the court together. So, you know, they’re basically going to be starting from scratch with that partnership, too. So, there’s just a lot of stuff in San Antonio to get sorted out. And I mean, obviously, we haven’t even really hardly talked about it, but you know, mentioned Sean Sweeney, he’s going to be coaching under Mitch Johnson, who was officially the successor to Greg Papovic. And, you know, even though he was the interim coach for a lot of last season, it’s a different thing when you’re fully in the job and you come in from training camp and you’re the guy replacing Greg Papovich with that team. So they are going to be one of the most interesting teams in the league next year and it is going to be fun to see what that group ultimately looks like on the court cuz they I think they expect that they’re going to start winning games and you know as we’ve talked about a ton the West is really really hard. There is a report out of Europe today by the way I just looked that he still is not planning on playing in Eurob. I don’t know if that’s a definitive thing but I just wanted to follow up on that. Sorry. Yeah. It’s good to know. Uh I was at, you know, when we were out in Vegas, talked to some Spurs folks and basically saying, “Hey, you know, how do these guards fit together?” Um obviously Darren Fox, a guy that made a a big swing out in the trade market and then, you know, two guy a number four overall pick who just rookie of the year in Castle and Harper the number two overall pick and they’re all kind of lead guards. Um, but I didn’t get a whole sense of concern about the fit of basically like, hey, two guard spots, 96 minutes, three guys, they’re all going to play. Um, and then you kind of figure that out as you go. Um, and but they’ve got some real depth on this team now. You know, Devin Vel, quality player, you know, Kell Johnson coming off the bench. Uh, you know, Harrison Barnes still there, Jeremy Sohan, and then, you know, added Carter Bryant. We’ll see how much he plays as a rookie. Um and then went out and added a couple big men this summer in Luke Cornet and uh and Kelly Olen who they just traded for. And it’s, you know, the the the sense around the Spurs is like, hey, it’s time to make a jump. It’s time to really be a competitive team. Now, what exactly that means at the end of the season in this loaded Western Conference, they might be a very competitive team that doesn’t get a playoff spot. like that’s possible, but you know they definitely like they need to they need to make a a big stride forward this season for sure. Two things with the Spurs to keep an eye on going forward in addition what you guys talked about. One, um De’aran Fox is extension eligible. He cannot extend until August 3rd. We’ve talked a lot about Luca Donuch. His extension date is August 2nd. Fox can’t till August 3rd. So, we’ll see in the month about whether or not that gets done. They can give him another max and give him up to 230 million. There was an expectation that when they traded for him and they sent three firsts for him to Sacramento, that that would be their intention. You can’t just hand out, you know, automax contracts these days. So, let’s just see how that goes. Maybe that’s what they’ll do. I don’t know. Um, the other thing that is important for them going forward is you mentioned Oolen and Harrison Barnes. Both of them are on expiring contracts. You slap them together and you got almost $33 million between the two of them. Um uh you put in Sohan in there, you get up to 40. Not that they could extend Sohan this off seasonason if they want to. Now, right now, I would say that there isn’t anybody they should be trying to trade for, but they have extra picks. They have young players. um they have the ability with those with that with what’s on their roster that if they want to go big game hunting they can. That’s one of the reasons why you saw Kevin Durant put him put them on there on the list um on his short list for where he would like to go um if the uh if the you know if they were interested they ended up not making a serious bid. So just keep that in mind when you think about the Spurs going forward. Can I ask you a question that I don’t think you would get a straight answer uh from Spurs folks about? Sure. There’s quite a few things you wouldn’t, but go ahead. Do you think they would have traded for De’Aran Fox had they known they were going to land second in the lottery and get Dylan Harper? No, I don’t I don’t think they would have. But also, it’s you know, they also weren’t going to know that. I mean, there’s no way to know it. But I’m I’m It’s just It’s interesting because, you know, they obviously traded for Fox thinking, “Hey, here’s a guy approaching his prime who can be the long-term uh fit next to Wimi and then and then they got a guy uh in Harper who could be the longer term.” Well, I would say this. This is why the Fox extension becomes something you’ve got to just do some work on in my view. Maybe they’ll just give him the max and they’ll move on. But let’s say Harper turns out to be the stud that many people think that he is. Mhm. And you get into a situation where you have an excess guard. May look maybe Fox and WBY work well together great and you would not dream of it. I’m not I’m just saying that. But, you know, this is the way you got to think if you’re a front office. Yeah. You don’t want to sign Fox to a contract that if you have interest in a year or so to trade him that it becomes an issue, right? And I mean, you know, how do you you know, how do you know? You don’t know. I mean, Fox could be an all-star again this year and maybe Dylan Harper turns out to be a very good player but not great player. Maybe that’s not the way to do it. You got him you got to get him into a contract because he’s headed for free agency otherwise. You don’t want you want to get them signed and there’s going to be a lot of space next year. Unlike this year where only two teams really had significant space next year, Bobby was telling us, you know, depending on how things go, there could be more than 10 with significant space. And you know, you do not want Darren Fox as a free agent in that situation. So, you do need to get him into a contract. But, you know, you know, Bonds and I have talked about this for months. There needs to be, you know, Bontemps has been calling out teams that are not doing negotiations. You know, they’re just giving guys extensions. He’s been, this is why you got to negotiate everything. Even if you love the player and you want to keep the player, you just can’t auto give, you know, the most amount of money. You’ve got to negotiate. It is it’s the responsible thing to do for these teams. So, you just you have to you have to in the new environment. there’s no there’s just no wiggle room anymore cuz even if you want to spend all the money, there’s other costs that come with it beyond just spending the owner’s money. So, just makes it very difficult to keep building the team. And it it but yeah, look, I mean, I think if I think if they knew they were getting um Dylan Harper, they wouldn’t have invested draft picks and getting another lead guard. They would have just got Dylan Harper and probably went and found other pieces to try to put around those guys to build out the roster. I mean, this is a team that is pretty weak on the wing. They don’t have like Luke Cornet’s a nice backup center, but you know, the the three, four spots are not where I think they need to be for these guys to be a real threat to, you know, be a top six team probably in the West. So, they do have some other stuff to do, but they’ve got a lot of stuff they can move around. They got a lot of interesting pieces to fit together. And like I said, I just it’s going to be a very fun puzzle on a lot of levels to watch how they operate this year to see how these guys all fit. And I mean, I don’t remember if we talked about it before or not, but Carter Bryant is a hell of a defensive player already. And he might end up just starting right off the bat. I mean, that’s not a sourced thing. That’s just me watching. But I I’d be surprised if Vel doesn’t start, but we’ll see. Yeah. I mean, but he’s kind of a two. Like that’s the thing. Like he’s not even I don’t know if he’s big enough to really be a three like that. They they just have a lot of they got a lot of questions to answer across the board. But the good thing is they got a lot of talent to do it with and it is going to be a fun jigsaw puzzle to see how Mitch Johnson tries to put it together and puts the pieces out on the court and hopefully Victor is out there doing his thing again. If they’re a top six seed in the West, Wimby will be an MVP candidate. I’ll I’ll go out on that limb. Yeah, I’d agree with that, too. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

On The Hoop Collective, Brian Windhorst, Tim MacMahon and Tim Bontemps react to news of Victor Wembanyama being cleared to return to basketball activities.
0:00 Wemby news
6:00 Spurs this season
11:00 how do you know?!

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