Zach LaVine Free Agency Options: San Antonio Spurs
Would LaVine flee Chicago to form a backcourt duo with Dejounte Murray in San Antonio?
In our first entry in the Zach LaVine free agency series, we broke down what options LaVine would have if he forced a sign-and-trade to the Los Angeles Lakers. Today at Bulls Confidential we will be tackling one of the more realistic options on the table, and that is LaVine walking to join the San Antonio Spurs. Of course, we don’t see Zach leaving for the Spurs. The San Antonio option is realistic because they have cap space, a great coach and a close friend of LaVine’s in All-Star guard Dejounte Murray. But would Zach actually flee Chicago to join a young squad in the West? Let’s dig a bit deeper…
The Spurs are coming off of a 34–48 season, suffering a 10-point loss to the New Orleans Pelicans in the NBA Play-In Tournament. The Spurs have a very well-known, strong infastructure that starts with Gregg Popovich.
LaVine received a fair share of praise for his defense during his Team USA stint, this coming while Popovich was head coach. Of course, LaVine’s impressive defense during his time with Team USA was more about the elite personnel he played with than Popvich’s coaching, but it was obvious that Pop’s coaching certainly got through to LaVine nonetheless.
There are two sides to LaVine possibly wanting to play with Dejounte Murray and the Spurs. First LaVine is known to be good friends with Murray, the fellow Pacific Northwest native. Murray even shared a photoshopped image of LaVine in a Spurs jersey to stir the pot before eventually deleting the image.
If LaVine joined the Spurs, he would provide a huge jolt to their 17th ranked offense but the same questions would persist as to if he would damage a San Antonio defense that was also middle-of-the-pack in 2022. That being said, the advanatges of a LaVine-Murray partnership are quite clear and that is why the second part of this scenario must be brought up: Klutch Sports.
LaVine and Murray are both backed by Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports Group. In 2019 the Spurs inked Murray to a four-year, $64 million contract extension that possibly seemed fait with Murray coming off a big injury but is certainly a team-friendly deal with Murray’s current development into an All-Star player.
Klutch Sports wants to do the best they can for their clients, even more so if it can benefit another client within reasonable means. While on his current deal, playing with a big-time scorer like LaVine would allow Murray’s game to shine even more. LaVine would certainly get a big contract and his game would likely continue to flourish.
Murray potentially provides even more defensive upside than an elite player like Alex Caruso, simply because of his length. With Murray taking on the majority of the ballhandling duties on offense and guarding the best perimeter player on defense, LaVine would dominate as a drive-and-kick player and catch-and-shoot player with an extra reserve of energy available in crunch time.
The Spurs (ranked 25th in 3PA) were similar to the Bulls on offense due to the severe lack of 3-point attempts on the season. A player like LaVine would help raise the Spurs 3-point attempt rate and the singular attention he draws in isolation would help create more open looks for Keldon Johnson (39% 3PT), Doug McDermott (42% 3PT) and Devin Vassell (36% 3PT).
San Antonio’s squad is intriguing and a true rim protector like Jakob Poeltl (1.7 blocks per game in 2022) would provide LaVine with a greater margin for error on perimeter defense.
Despite the aura of Popovich and the potential, dynamic on-court chemisty of a LaVine-Murray partnership, it’s hard to see LaVine leaving the Bulls for the Spurs.
Even if the LaVine-Murray duo was to provide more upside than a LaVine-DeRozan one, the key question would be can the San Antonio do better than Chicago in free agency?
Knowing you can attract the key pieces— whether it be other All-Star or role players — to surround LaVine is without a doubt the first thing a front office has to consider before investing max-contract money in him. LaVine knows Chicago can do this, with the recent DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic acquisitions representing this ability.
As the current core stands, I don’t believe we can say we know the Spurs can provide LaVine with a better roster, though we know that they have a willingness to shake things up more than usual (see: Derrick White-Josh Richardson trade).
If Zach LaVine signs with the San Antonio Spurs, it would be extremely shocking. It would be one of the bigger free agent acquisitions in franchise history for a team that usually builds with homegrown talent. The move would also show just powerful the influence of the Klutch Sports Group is. LaVine to the San Antonio Spurs is an unlikely move, but one that Bulls Nation needs to keep an eye on.
If Zach signed with the Spurs, I’d be surprised to hear that he’d want go to San Antonio just to play ball with his friend on a team that’s rebuilding when he has good friends on the Bulls already. Plus, he loves Chicago and would get paid significantly more here.
