FanPost

Why Remembering The Richard Jefferson Experiment is Helpful Right Now


As this Spurs season approaches an end (come on, let's face reality), there is a lot for die hard Spur fans to process. First and foremost, it is likely one of the greatest Spurs of all time, Manu Ginobili, will hang it up after the season. To make matters worse is the realization, that the best case scenario for Tony Parker is that he somehow completely heals and is back on the court, getting back into playing shape in January 2018...at the age of 36.

With all of the mileage already on those legs (Parker has played professionally and almost year round since he was 15) already showing this season, what would he look like a year older after a repaired quad? What could the Spurs realistically expect from him? And, in the meantime, who steadies the ship at the point for 30-32 minutes a night next season to keep the Spurs in playoff contention until he returns? Murray has shown that he may well become a Very Special Player, but ready to run the whole show next season? Probably not.

So, the Spurs need to ideally sign a veteran point guard, someone who can run the offense, score, play stout D—someone exactly like George Hill. I love Patty Mills, but the playoffs, particularly against the Dubs, have clearly revealed what most knew: Mills is a great guy coming off the bench, but is, in reality, a shooting guard in an undersized point guard body. He’s not a starting point guard for a team with serious playoff ambitions. He’s the backup point, except when you have a guy like Murray who has Very Good Starting Point Guard Potential written all over him, and in such a case, Murray has to be your number 2 guy. Besides, someone is going to offer Mills a ton of money betting he can be that starting point guard. Best to let him walk.

In the ideal George Hill scenario (already knows the coach, the system, etc..), the Spurs have Murray at the backup point, with Pop pushing him as hard as he once pushed an 18 -year old Parker. That would be ideal too. With Hill and Murray in full stride, if Parker returns, the Spurs have a great veteran emergency option if the proverbial wheels fall off as they did this season. Talk about ideal…

Speaking of ideal, it would be even more ideal if this whole George Hill thing happened and the Spurs could also re-sign Jonathan Simmons. His ascendency during the playoffs has been nothing short of remarkable and he has yet to reach his ceiling. He is as hungry as he is fearless. He might even be the running mate Kawhi Leonard needs.

And, speaking of ideal things and re-signing players, how about Dewayne Dedmon? Sure he has been erratic at times, but he’s also grown a lot as a Spur. And besides, you can’t coach height and athleticism and fire. Dedmon has all three. He’d be a great addition to the Spurs big rotation moving forward in the Kawhi Leonard Era.

And make no mistake about this being an Era with a capital "E." Kawhi is one of the top 3-4 players in the league. The Spurs know this. When you have a player with that kind of talent, a team has an obligation to do whatever they can to build around him. Just as the Spurs did with Duncan, they must do with Leonard. Kawhi’s not just a great player. He’s in rarified air.

The Spurs know this of course. Hang on to that. The Spurs know they cannot waste the Kawhi Leonard Era, and they won't. Not if past patterns are indicators of future ones. But back to ideal situations…

There’s only one problem with my George Hill Homecoming Tour, and the whole re-signing Simmons and Dedmon thing: The Spurs have a big salary cap problem, as in big enough to not be able to do anything like sign Hill and re-sign Dedmon and Simmons.

There's that.

Maybe the only thing the Spurs can do is try to fast track the young guys they have under contract, hope veteran players improve, get lucky in the draft and maybe find a couple of old vets willing to play for the minimum, or some such thing.

That’s not ideal. That’s wasting an entire year of the Kawhi Era.

So, it’s hopeless until some guys *ahem* get off the payroll, right? That looks like the only option. It is what it is. It's a depleted, young and financially messed up team headed toward a first round exit. At best. Right?

Embrace the Despair.

No. Let's look at past patterns.

Let’s go back in time. For some reason, I think the following Spurs story might be helpful. Relevant. Might bring you some hope. It does me. You can connect the dots. I’m just here to retell a story.

In the 2009 NBA Playoffs, the third seed Spurs were manhandled by the sixth seed Dallas Mavericks, 4 games to 1. Bounced in the first round. Not even close. The Mavericks played fast and scored a lot. The Spurs looked old, slow and had difficulty scoring. Duncan and Parker carried the offensive load for the Spurs. There was little else in the way of help.

Manu Ginobili sat out that series due to an injured ankle.

I find that factoid interesting. For some reason. Rings a bell…

Oh well, back to the story.

Also in that Mavericks series, game three to be precise, the Spurs scored the fewest number of points in Spurs playoff history. An all-time worst.

An all time-worst...that also sounds familiar for some reason…

Anyway, things were bad. Pundits wondered if this was the ‘beginning of the end’ for a great Spurs team. Even with the Big Three returning the next season, too much depended on Parker and an aging Duncan and Ginobili being healthy. The Spurs had enjoyed a marvelous 10 year run, winning titles in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007, but this team was a far cry from those great teams. The game was speeding up and the Spurs weren't. The Spurs hadn’t evolved.

They needed more firepower and to make matters worse, there wasn’t enough salary cap space to sign the kind of player they needed to address that problem via free agency, and, the spare parts they did have around as the supporting cast for the Big Three, had little trade value.

What were the Spurs going to do? What could they do? One thing was obvious-they had to change, and easier said than done. It seemed very unlikely they could pull off anything significant as they entered the offseason.

But they did make a change—a big change. They swung for the fences. On paper, the move looked like a home-run. On paper, the argument could be made that with this new player, as long as The Big Three remained healthy, scoring should never be a problem. This new guy could score the ball. He just came off a season averaging just under 20 points per game, and shot just under 40% from 3- point land. He also had the ability to create his own shot and he could play solid D. Perfect fit for the Spurs. He was at times, electric. When the news broke the Spurs pulled this deal off, a lot of Spur fans were thinking, ‘we’re back!’

Getting him meant saying farewell to some fan favorites, namely Fabricio Oberto, Bruce Bowen, and Kurt Thomas, but it was painfully clear the Spurs could not remain the same and remain relevant, not if they were to keep the Tim Duncan Era alive.

General Manager R.C. Buford was excited about the trade and the new player, praising his energy, his durability, his high scoring. He even said this new player would help the Spurs’ transition into a new era.’ Again, rings a bell….

Anyway, Buford wasn’t alone in his praise for the move and the new guy. Tony Parker was also excited, eager to have a ‘big, athletic, high scoring wing player on the team.’

Yes, Spurs fans, this former Milwaukee Buck was going to make a big difference moving forward. A new era had indeed dawned! The only question some of us had was 'why in the world would the Bucks trade him for basically…nothing? '

ESPN said the only real incentive the Bucks had to make in the trade was related to finances and the future. The players the Spurs traded to the Bucks were in the final years of their contracts and the move would provide a little more financial flexibility for Milwaukee the next season and a whole lot the season after.

A team doesn’t trade a guy like Richard Jefferson to a team like the Spurs just for spare parts. There has to be some larger incentive, right?

Oh, I forgot. That is one of the points here. The Spurs had a very real need and saw a very great opportunity in meeting that need to move forward into a new era and were willing to part with some guys they really liked to get what they thought they needed, and the guy they thought they needed was…Richard Jefferson.

Richard Jefferson…this seems relevant too, for some reason.

The only problem (and any real Spurs’ fan knows this) with this whole great trade and new era thing, Richard Jefferson was absolutely not the answer to the problem. Instead, he became a problem, like an albatross or something.

He didn’t bring his scoring to San Antonio or his explosiveness. He suddenly seemed to lose 50 basketball I.Q. points the moment he first put on a Spurs uniform. During his time with the Spurs, he often looked lost, soft, he passed up shots or took dumb shots, wasn’t a great defender. He frustrated teammates and coaches alike. Where was the fire? Where was the guy they traded for? Why wasn’t he more assertive? That is pretty much the brief history of the Richard Jefferson Experiment.

And again…these descriptors seem relevant. For some reason.

If, for some reason, you’re still not connecting the dots let's try more recent Spur history: Recently, very recent in fact, the Spurs had a need. They needed to transition into a new era. Duncan was old. They needed someone to run with their emerging star, Kawhi Leonard. They got their man, but, the guy they thought they were getting didn’t turn out to be the guy they got. This player, like Jefferson before him, proved to be enigmatic. At times he appeared all too willing to pass up shots, appeared soft, confused, profoundly underperformed, frustrated his coach and teammates. On paper, he looked like what the Spurs needed. But, like Jefferson, he just wasn’t a good fit. At all.

But let’s get back to the Jefferson Experiment. It didn’t take long for the Spurs to realize something was wrong. They tried adjusting line-ups, doing all they could to get Jefferson into the flow. They thought things would improve the next year. "Year two, that's when new guys 'get it' in the Spurs system.' No such luck. Jefferson continued to flounder.

As such, changes had to be made-namely, Jefferson had to go. The difficult part? Well, the rest of the league had seen just how different Jefferson was as a Spur as opposed to the Jefferson who played for Milwaukee. He was a hard sell. That contract with that kind of performance? Good luck with that.

Still, the Spurs knew they had to make the most of whatever was left of the Duncan Era. They could not solely rely on the draft and internal improvement to get them back to being contenders again. And, because of Jefferson, they didn’t have enough salary cap money to sign the kind of players they would need to ascend to supremacy again.

Sound familiar?

They tried to move Jefferson in the offseason. No dice. They kept trying during the season, and nada. Then, right at the trade deadline in 2012, the Spurs and Warriors swung a deal: Jefferson would go to the Warriors in exchange for Stephen Jackson. Jackson had been a Spur before and honestly was a wild-card, a loose cannon. This was one of the guys, after all, who had been involved in the brawl in the infamous Malice at the Palace game when he was playing for the Pacers. Jackson had punched a fan.

So yeah, there was some baggage.

Yes, he was a volatile personality, played with a lot of emotion, but he was also a solid defender and rebounder, a good spot up shooter and would give the Spurs the swagger they needed—he was the anti-Jefferson.

Kawhi Leonard started and Jackson came off the bench and the Spurs made it to the Western Conference Finals before being eliminated by the Thunder.

To sum up: The Spurs once had this great need, and they went hard after a guy they thought they needed, Richard Jefferson, but it really, really didn’t work out. It looked like the Spurs were stuck in a bad situation with player who consistently underperformed, didn’t fit in, and was nothing short of an enigma—and a player they likely couldn’t move.

Just remember: the Spurs found a way to get out of that mess. You see, in the NBA, crazy things happen.

A team trades away its best player for spare parts to be in better financial shape and to prepare for the future.

A team trades for a guy who had much better numbers a few years earlier, convinced that in their system, with their coach and players, he’ll be a much better fit and will return to his old form.

Teams also get desperate. Teams do dumb things (I'm looking at you, Knicks). Right now there are teams in the East who think they are just a couple of players away from being able to contend with LeBron and the Cavs. Guarantee it.

That's another post, however.

The Spurs have been here before. They know what they have in Leonard just as they knew what they had with Duncan. They know how to do the hard things and have a track record of doing what needs to be done, even if it seems improbable or unlikely.

If you still doubt, and if I had more time, I’d tell you another story, one about a Spurs team bounced by the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round. In that series, the Spurs (again) looked like they were too old, too slow, not athletic enough. Something had to change. They had to get longer and more athletic.

They did something in the draft that year that shocked most fans: Pop traded one of his very favorite players, George Hill, to go after a kid named Kawhi, a kid they thought could be really, really special. They were not going to waste the Duncan Era. They swung for the fences. The end result was not only Kawhi Leonard but also Davis Bertans thrown in for good measure.

But that is another story for another time.

Just remember: there is a precedent, a pattern. In the past, when the Spurs have either been stuck with someone that simply didn’t fit, and/or realized that changes needed to be made to remain relevant and stay in the hunt, to address weaknesses, when it was apparent that ‘internal improvement’ would not be enough, they have not been hesitant to do what was necessary to keep moving forward so they would not waste the prime years of a transcendent player.

For some reason, I just thought you should remember these things as we prepare to enter the offseason.



This is fan-created content on PoundingtheRock.com. The opinion here is not necessarily shared by the editorial staff at Pounding the Rock.