Make Your Post-Aldridge Dreams Come True
Only a year into the LMA as the future of Texas experiment and we’re faced with the rumors of his departure. Where can he go? Where should he go? Will Shea Serrano throw a block party when it happens and invite the world?
Few things are certain in this life. You will get wet if dive into a lake. The sun will set and then will rise again in the morning. Donald Trump will say something despicably racist and offensive in the time it took me to type this sentence. The Spurs will win 50 games in a regular NBA season. Otherwise, life is full of uncertainties and unknowns. And with Tim Dunc… I promised I wouldn’t cry… With Tim Duncan’s departure… promise broken… Maybe the certainty of the Spurs is starting to slowly unravel. Are we prepared for this world? LaMarcus Aldridge is not. And he’s making it know.
The Spurs are a system. And no one ranks in that system higher than Gregg Popovich. He got enough people paid in the NBA he can build a small village. He has successfully developed and kept in San Antonio the most transcending talent of his generation. He has a knack for combing through other people’s discarded trash and turning that trash into productive NBA talent (what’s that Cleveland putting into their Recycling Bin? Is that a Danny Green? Quickly, get him!). He has not lost more than 32 games in a regular season since before Ty Lawson could legally order alcohol. The point is, if Pop were to walk into the San Antonio front office tomorrow and say that he is going to trade LaMarcus Aldridge for Marcelo Huertas and and the script to Luke Walton’s un-produced buddy-dude comedy R.C. wouldn’t bat an eye. What I’m saying is, watch who you square off against LaMarcus.
Showing displeasure at the system is the best way to get a one way ticket out of town. I am not sure if that’s what LMA is trying to do, because the only other solution is that Pop locks him somewhere in a HEB basement until he changes his tune. So, LaMarcus Aldridge may be traded this season. You read that right, this may be his last year as a Spur after one year. Pause. That sound you hear is Shea Serrano running around his house, arms raised, high-fiving every inanimate object in sight.
But while it’s easy to just say, “let’s get rid of this guy,” when you’re paying someone who can’t be trusted in a crisis close to $20mil per year, you are yourself in a crisis. And you have one less person to trust. The good news is that LMA is still a very good player. Perhaps he’s just not a good player for a winning system. He may just be one of those “good player on a bad team” lifers. He is coming off his worst season in ages but he still managed to put up 19 and 8 with 1 block per game. On a team that isn’t as invested in sharp, spring loaded ball movement, he can be the lumbering post and high-post scorer he was always meant to be. The bad news is, the league knows he’s unhappy so the Spurs lost one thing Pop loves more than when reporters don’t ask him any interview questions. Leverage.
Pause. That sound you hear is Cam feverishly looking up mind-control dark voodoo magic rituals that can bend the world to his will for the 15 minutes it would take for this trade to happen.
The Spurs and Hawks have an obvious connection outside of the Hawks being the Bootleg Spurs of the Eastern Conference. They have the 5 degree of separation from Pop rule in coaching and the front office is not opposed to reshuffling. When you don’t win a single conference finals game in multiple years of Playoff contention, questions will be asked. Will LaMarcus Aldridge answer them? Probably not, but you might as well try.
This could be a chance to pair LMA with Dwight in the same attempt that failed when he was in free agency a year ago. Dwight is always better with a complementary big who can step out and free up space in the post and the high/low game could thrive. It could also wheel off into a “we’ve seen this before” episode of Jerry Springer where Dwight complains for not having enough touches, which can’t possibly have anything to do with his inability to develop any sort of go-to post move in his many years in the League. Having Howard in the post helps cover up for the fact that LaMarcus Aldridge plays NBA defense the same way I would play NBA anything, quite poorly.
For the Spurs, they receive the Swiss Army Knife that is Paul Millsap. A player ready to slide across multiple positions on both offense and defense, a skill we all discovered when he gave Miami-Era LeBron buckets at the three while still with Utah. Millsap is the Pop type of “just put me in coach and I’ll do what you need me to” dude. He’s a very good passer and a capable defender who’s a much better fit into the Spurs rapid-fire ball movement system than LMA could ever hope to be.
Phoenix were reportedly the second closest team to signing LaMarcus Aldridge, despite their logic that Tyson Chandler was still somehow the magnetic missing piece to make Arizona a worthwhile destination for literally anyone who doesn’t like stifling heat. Why not try again? In a true Phoenix move of the last few years, they have another log-jam at point guard, assuming that they all selectively chose to forget that this is a team that thought Isaiah Thomas II, Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe was a good idea. The emergence of Booker makes Knight somewhat expendable (drafting Tyler Ulis doesn’t help the situation). They also drafted Dragan Bender, thus resetting the “nurturing a European behemoth who could very well leave the NBA to ransack a small village into a player” Alex Len experiment.
In Aldridge, the Suns get the post scorer they couldn’t meticulously chisel out of a combination of the Morris-twins and Alex Len. He can slide in well next to Chandler, an offensive non-factor who will back him up on defense. Alternatively, they can use the Aldridge/Bender match-up depending how Dragan develops. He has the kind of ambiguous Mystique-like skill-set that modern NBA scouts covet despite hardly being able to articulate what it is (and if you’re picking up on the fact that I’m having trouble articulating the “do-it-all” ambiguous requirement for NBA bigs, here’s a gold star).
The Spurs will get a combo guard capable of scoring and handling the ball when Parker’s aging French hands give up. I get it, Knight doesn’t seem like a Spurs player, but he’s a good ball-handler and an underrated passer who got passed over by teams in lieu of someone else. He gives the Spurs more speed on the perimeter and another player who can put the ball on the floor and move it quickly when necessary. He also gives them the option to go ultra-small (Parker-Knight-Green-Kawhi-Pau) to deal with teams such as Golden State. Alex Len has had flashes of becoming a productive NBA five but has been consistently stumped by introduction of guys like Chandler who guzzled away his playing minutes. Also, stop me if you heard this before, a multi-skill set player who has shown flashes of NBA potential, but who’s team has given up on him a little bit too fast and decided he’s not worth the trouble gets used as a throwaway trade chip to the Spurs… At least it’s better than Spurs picking him up on waivers for free.
What Will Really Happen
In the end this is all very much pointless because Pop will pull out an unpredictable move. He will offer LMA to a team we least expect (Kings? Because they’re one big away from being able to form some sort of antiquated basketball Voltron apparently) for some pieces and three second round picks who will each turn into some sort of modern version of Manu, Tony and Boris that we’ve never heard off and we will all be wondering why GM still pick up calls from R.C. Probably because they’re afraid Pop knows where they live.
