- Spurs teammates say Charles Bassey is in good spirits despite suffering a season-ending ACL tear, according to Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio Express-News. “He is resilient,” Collins said. “He has come back from stuff before. He is a very positive guy. But we are going to miss him.”
The Spurs have abandoned two experiments related to the development of No. 1 pick Victor Wembanyama, writes Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports. San Antonio began the season by starting Zach Collins at center and Wembanyama at power forward so the 18-year-old wouldn’t have to battle with other NBA big men. However, Collins’ unexpected struggles with outside shooting — he’s connecting at just 28.4% from three-point range after hitting 37.4% last season — caused coach Gregg Popovich to move him to the bench after 20 games.
“I think if we were shooting it a little bit better, I think it would have worked better,” Collins said. “The negative right now is spacing, so that’s a big reason why we went back to one big out there starting the game instead of two.”
Popovich has also stopped using Jeremy Sochan as his primary point guard, Fischer adds. Sochan is a versatile forward with a gift for passing, but he had never played point guard before Popovich decided to try him at the position in training camp. Fischer notes that instead of having a designated ball-handler, any of the Spurs’ starters are free to lead the break after grabbing a defensive rebound.
Even though the Spurs are losing at unexpected levels, dropping their 18th straight game last night, Wembanyama’s performance is providing hope for the future. He had 30 points, 13 rebounds, three steals and six blocks against the Lakers on Wednesday, and Fischer believes he’ll be a perennial candidate for Defensive Player of the Year.
There’s more from San Antonio:
- The Spurs may consider moving Keldon Johnson before the trade deadline (video link), Marc J. Spears of Andscape said on the latest Hoop Collective podcast (hat tip to RealGM). San Antonio has a surplus of wing players on its roster, and sources tell Spears that Johnson isn’t viewed as a good fit with the rest of the starting lineup.
- Wembanyama’s first meeting with LeBron James didn’t happen Wednesday because the Lakers‘ star sat out the second game of a back-to-back with calf soreness, but the French rookie was excited about matching up with Anthony Davis, per Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio Express-News. “He’s somebody I’ve studied a little bit in the past and a great player of course,” Wembanyama said, “and I’m glad I’m going to be able to play so much more times against him.”
- While Wembanyama has been outstanding, the Spurs don’t have the foundation they were hoping to build by having lottery picks in the previous three drafts, McDonald adds. Joshua Primo, their 2021 pick, is already off the roster. Sochan (2022) has been struggling, possibly because of the attempted position change, and Devin Vassell (2020) has cooled off in December after a strong start to the season.
The Warriors remain the NBA’s most valuable team, according to Kurt Badenhausen of Sportico (subscription required), who unveiled the website’s updated NBA franchise valuations for 2023 on Wednesday.
Badenhausen projects the Warriors’ value at $8.28 billion, making them one of three teams to surpass the $7 billion mark this year. The Knicks have a projected worth of $7.43 billion, while the Lakers come in at $7.34 billion, per Sportico.
As Badenhausen details, Sportico spoke to more than 30 team executives, owners, investors, bankers, consultants, and lawyers in compiling their latest NBA franchise valuations. According to Sportico, the average value of an NBA team is up 33% from a year ago and 70% from when the site first started publishing valuations three years ago.
A combination of factors are contributing to the soaring value of NBA franchises, says Baudenhausen. Those factors include national media deals, international opportunities, scarcity (ie. only 30 teams are available), and an equal 1/30th stake in the league.
In the past, we’ve used Forbes as our primary source for NBA franchise valuations, but with Badenhausen making the move from Forbes to Sportico in recent years and the outlet establishing itself as a go-to resource for sports business news, we’re highlighting Sportico’s projections in 2023.
Of course, it’s worth noting that figures from Sportico, Forbes, or any other media outlet are just estimates and often don’t quite match up with the sale prices for franchises that change hands. But thse projections are usually in the right ballpark and remain useful for getting a sense of the league’s most and least valuable teams.
Here’s Sportico’s full list of NBA franchise valuations for 2023:
- Golden State Warriors: $8.28 billion
- New York Knicks: $7.43 billion
- Los Angeles Lakers: $7.34 billion
- Boston Celtics: $5.12 billion
- Chicago Bulls: $4.83 billion
- Los Angeles Clippers: $4.56 billion
- Miami Heat: $4.17 billion
- Philadelphia 76ers: $4.13 billion
- Toronto Raptors: $4.11 billion
- Houston Rockets: $4.05 billion
- Dallas Mavericks: $4.03 billion
- Phoenix Suns: $4 billion
- Brooklyn Nets: $3.98 billion
- Sacramento Kings: $3.46 billion
- Denver Nuggets: $3.4 billion
- Atlanta Hawks: $3.35 billion
- Washington Wizards: $3.33 billion
- San Antonio Spurs: $3.29 billion
- Portland Trail Blazers: $3.28 billion
- Indiana Pacers: $3.27 billion
- Utah Jazz: $3.24 billion
- Cleveland Cavaliers: $3.22 billion
- Milwaukee Bucks: $3.2 billion
- Orlando Magic: $3.12 billion
- Detroit Pistons: $3.1 billion
- Oklahoma City Thunder: $3.08 billion
- Charlotte Hornets: $3 billion
- Minnesota Timberwolves: $2.94 billion
- Memphis Grizzlies: $2.82 billion
- New Orleans Pelicans: $2.72 billion
For the most part, the most significant valuation increases (by percentage) within the last year belonged to the teams on the bottom half of this list. Besides the Bucks, whose projection rose by 32%, every franchise in the bottom 10 received at least a 50% bump from Sportico’s 2022 valuations.
The Nuggets, who cracked the top half of this list following their 2023 championship, were another big riser — their valuation increased by 60% and they moved up six spots.
It’s worth noting that the Mavericks‘ reported valuation in Mark Cuban‘s sale to the Adelson and Dumont families reportedly came in around $3.5 billion, well below Sportico’s valuation.
However, more recent reporting has suggested the final valuation will be closer to $4 billion when the transaction closes. That was also a unique situation since Cuban is retaining control of basketball operations as part of the sale agreement, despite surrendering majority control of the business. He’ll hang onto about 25% of the franchise, according to Sportico.
- The Spurs’ lack of a lead ball-handler was apparent once again in their 17th consecutive loss on Monday. They shot 5-for-41 from the field in the 93-82 loss to Houston and their point total was the lowest for any NBA team this season. Kelly Iko of The Athletic notes that former starting point guard Tre Jones logged just 16 minutes. “He’s definitely the floor general,” Keldon Johnson said. “He gets them (the second unit) into sets.”
Spurs big man Charles Bassey has a torn left ACL and will miss the remainder of the season, ESPN’s Andrew Lopez tweets.
Bassey suffered the injury on Sunday while playing for San Antonio’s G League affiliate, the Austin Spurs. Bassey was averaging 3.3 points and 4.0 rebounds in 10.8 minutes per game with the NBA club in 19 appearances this season.
Bassey had been sent to the G League to get more playing time. His last NBA outing was Dec. 1, a 19-minute stint against New Orleans.
This isn’t the first major injury he’s suffered since joining the Spurs. His 2022/23 season was cut short in mid-March due to a non-displaced patella fracture.
Bassey, who played with Philadelphia in his rookie season, signed a four-year, $10.2MM contract with San Antonio in February. However, the final two years of the contract are not guaranteed. He’s making $2.6MM this season in the second year of the deal.
Bassey’s latest injury could open up more playing time for fellow reserve center Sandro Mamukelashvili.
Entering Monday’s action, the longest current winning streak in the league belonged to the Timberwolves with six straight victories. No other team had an ongoing streak longer than four games.
As for losing streaks, well that’s a different story. In terms of futility, the Pistons and Spurs are on record-setting runs.
Detroit was supposed to show significant improvement with the return of Cade Cunningham, who missed most of last season with a shin injury. Instead, the Pistons have fallen into a bottomless abyss. They’ve lost 19 straight, easily surpassing their previous single-season losing streak of 14 games.
The Spurs’ franchise was revitalized by winning the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes in the draft lottery. Wembanyama mania was prevalent during the offseason and during camp.
However, San Antonio is only making news now by going 5 ½ weeks without a victory. The Spurs have dropped 16 straight, tying their franchise mark.
Both teams are in action tonight, with Detroit hosting the in-season tournament runners-up Pacers and San Antonio visiting much-improved Houston.
The remainder of the Pistons’ schedule before Christmas looks like this: a home-and-home with Philadelphia, at Milwaukee, at Atlanta, home vs. Utah, and at Brooklyn.
San Antonio’s remaining pre-Christmas schedule goes like this: two home games vs. the Lakers, home vs. New Orleans, at Milwaukee, at Chicago, at Dallas.
That brings us to our topic of the day: Will the Pistons and/or Spurs end their lengthy losing streaks before Christmas? If so, which opponent will they defeat to end their slides?
Please take to the comments section to weigh on this topic. We look forward to your input.
After starting the first 20 games of the season for the Spurs, center Zach Collins came off the bench for the first time this fall in Friday’s loss to Chicago. While many players would view it as a demotion to be removed from the starting lineup, Collins says he understands why head coach Gregg Popovich made the move and suggested he’s on board with it, per Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio Express-News (subscription required).
“Having more firepower coming off the bench is always going to help us take some relief off the starters,” Collins said. “Hopefully this spacing-wise will work a little better.”
Popovich said after the game that he “absolutely” intends to stick with this lineup change at least in the short term, so Collins will have to get used to playing with the second unit. After a strong showing on Friday that saw him put up 12 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists in 23 minutes of action, the big man told reporters that it’s just a matter of adjusting mentally to the new role.
“I always said when you come off the bench, you don’t have the luxury of starting the game and getting into it fast, getting your body going, getting your mind into the game,” he said. “So you have to stay locked in even though you’re not in the game.”
Here’s more on the Spurs:
- Victor Wembanyama had a monster night in his first start at center, becoming the youngest player in NBA history to record at least 20 points and 20 rebounds in a game (he had 21 and 20, respectively), according to Andrew Lopez of ESPN. Unfortunately for the Spurs, it wasn’t enough to prevent their 16th consecutive loss.
- Jeremy Sochan came off the bench for the first time this season on Wednesday before being reinserted into the starting lineup on Friday. Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express-News says Sochan’s confidence appeared to be shaken after Wednesday’s contest, with the 20-year-old deferring to the coaching staff when asked if he learned something from his time at point guard and whether he wants to keep playing there. Prior to Friday’s game, Popovich said there “is really no point guard” in San Antonio’s starting five, according to Lopez, who notes that Sochan shared ball-handling responsibilities during that game.
- Reserve center Sandro Mamukelashvili – who hasn’t played much for San Antonio this season, logging 55 total minutes across seven appearances – took advantage of an assignment to the G League this week, McDonald writes. In his NBAGL season debut with Austin on Friday, Mamukelashvili racked up 34 points, 22 rebounds, four assists, and two blocked shots. Mamukelashvili and Charles Bassey are expected to be sent to the G League more frequently to make sure they’re getting regular minutes, per McDonald.
- Despite the Spurs’ frequent lineup changes (eight players have started at least one game), Tre Jones has been unable to crack the starting five this season after making 65 starts a year ago. That doesn’t mean the team is down on Jones though, according to McDonald (Twitter link), who says the Spurs “really, really like” the 23-year-old as a second-unit point guard for both the present and the future.
Veteran big man Gorgui Dieng never formally announced his retirement as a player, but it sounds as if he has moved onto the next stage of his career. As Jeff McDonald details for The San Antonio Express-News (subscription required), Dieng is working with the Spurs as a basketball operations representative, a title the team created for him.
According to McDonald, Dieng splits his time between the front office and coaching staff, working with general manager Brian Wright in addition to mentoring young big men like Victor Wembanyama and Charles Bassey.
“I’m very free on what I’m doing,” Dieng said. “I’m in the front office learning and doing stuff. When they start practice, I come here and help the team. I’m here just to be around them and help.”
Dieng, who will turn 34 in January, appeared in a total of 628 regular season NBA games from 2013-23, averaging 7.3 points and 5.6 rebounds in 20.1 minutes per night for the Timberwolves, Grizzlies, Spurs, and Hawks. In 2022/23, he played in 31 games for San Antonio, providing some veteran frontcourt depth and serving as a leader in the locker room.
“Everyone around me knew I wanted to play 10 years and that was it,” Dieng said. “I always said that. When I reached 10, I said I’ve reached my goal. It was time to stop and try different stuff.”
Despite his stated desire to play just 10 years, Dieng was open to contract offers this past offseason, but didn’t generate much interest on the free agent market, McDonald reports.
The Senegalese forward/center, who has a house in San Antonio and spent some time at the team’s practice facility during the summer, approached Wright about joining the organization as an intern, according to McDonald, who says the team insisted on giving Dieng a formal position and a salary. Head coach Gregg Popovich and the Spurs’ players are happy to have him around.
“He’s a wonderful human being,” Popovich said. “He’s one of the all-time favorite teammates of everybody. He’s a great source of experience in the league, and anybody can talk to him.”
“He’s someone you can always talk to at any time,” Spurs guard Tre Jones agreed. “He is always open. I think just having that personal connection to everybody and having such good relationships with people, that’s what makes him who he is.”
For his part, Dieng says he’s “learning a lot of stuff” in his new role and that he’s especially enjoyed the work he’s doing in the Spurs’ front office. According to McDonald, Dieng said he can imagine himself one day becoming a team’s top basketball operations executive, but for now he’s happy to play a far more modest role in San Antonio and perhaps work his way up the ladder.
“The front office, it takes talent,” Dieng said. “It takes hard work. Us (players), we just play and go home. They put everything together.”
- The Spurs‘ game at Minnesota tonight gave them an up-close look at a team they may want to emulate in the rebuilding process, notes Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express-News. The Timberwolves were patient in amassing young talent, and they seem ready to compete with the NBA’s elite teams after a 16-4 start. “You have definitely seen them rebuild by starting over and getting a bunch of young guys together and getting them playing on the same page, and now they are the No. 1 seed and winning a lot,” Tre Jones said. “Memphis was the same way for the past couple of years. They have injuries and a lot of guys out right now, but they were at the bottom of the league and then got a couple of draft picks and got some new guys in there and they started winning a lot.”
Appearing on SiriusXM NBA Radio on Tuesday, NBA commissioner Adam Silver confirmed that the league intends to seriously weigh the possibility of expansion once it completes its next media rights deal.
“Our current national deals with ABC, ESPN, and TNT go through the end of next season. And the reason we wanted to get those deals done, no secret, is we want to have a better understanding of what the economics would be going forward,” Silver explained (Twitter link via Keith Smith of Spotrac). “If you’re dividing up your national or international television money by 30 teams, that’s one check that you’re writing the teams. If it’s by – let’s say we expand by two teams – 32 teams, that’s a different one. And so you want to understand what the economics are you’d be delivering to new teams that came into the league.
“We’ll see what the timing is on those national television agreements. We don’t have to wait until the end of (next) season to get those done, but once we do, we’ll turn back to expansion.”
Silver has put off the topic of expansion for years in the hopes of finalizing a new Collective Bargaining Agreement – which got done earlier this year – and a new media rights deal. He also admitted that he feels more comfortable about the level of talent around the league now — and more confident that adding new teams to the mix wouldn’t dilute the level of competition.
“I think that had we expanded back a number of years ago, I think we may have seen more dilution,” Silver said. “I think now when you think of the global pool of players – as we move towards 30% of NBA players who were born outside the United States, including obviously some of our very best players in the league – I think that the timing will work out when we’re done with our media deals and we start looking to expand. I think we could potentially add two more teams to this league that could be very competitive.”
As for which cities might be the frontrunners to get expansion teams? Silver didn’t explicitly identify Las Vegas and Seattle as the favorites, but he did confirm they’ll be among the markets that receive serious consideration from the NBA.
“I made no secret out of it, Las Vegas is one of those markets we’re going to look to. I know that the fans in Seattle have wanted us to get back there forever,” Silver said. “No commitments to anyone, but we’ll certainly be looking at those two markets.”
Here’s more from Silver’s SiriusXM appearance:
- After a report last month stated that the NBA is mulling turning its annual draft into a two-day event, Silver confirmed on Tuesday that the idea is under serious consideration, adding that the league just needs to work through the specifics with its broadcast partners and the players’ union (Twitter video link). “The talent goes so deep now and the interest is so great (that), to me, both rounds deserve prime time,” Silver said. “… To me it essentially seems like a no-brainer. … I’m hoping to get there, actually, for this season, for this June, and move the second round to its own night.”
- Assuming the NBA does add a second night to the draft, Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press (Twitter link) believes the event would take place on a Wednesday and Thursday, rather than a Thursday and Friday.
- Asked about the incident in which Gregg Popovich grabbed a microphone during a Spurs game to ask the home crowd to stop booing Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard, Silver called it a “unique” situation that didn’t require any action or response from the league, per Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express-News (subscription required).
- Silver doesn’t want to draw any conclusions about the league’s first in-season tournament until after this week’s final four in Las Vegas, but has been encouraged by what he’s seen so far from the event. “So far, so good,” he said (Twitter video link).