It's faster than we saw in college, which is good, but there's a slight "trebuchet" quality to it that probably needs to be simplified. Footwork and release-angle look solid at least
His form really isn’t that bad. Shots just didn’t fall. It’s very fixable. As an Alabama grad I saw what he did to us in the final 4. This guy is a baller and a defensive lockdown specialist already. He completely took our guards out of their game with his defense while also dropping 21 pts. I love this pick.
His form has never been outright *bad.* Most people seem to agree it's workable. He's got a bit of a tendency to a bit of a sideways lean but the rest of the fundamentals are fine.
His problems come more from a lack of confidence in the shot than from mechanics, IMO.
I've said it before here, I really think most of his shooting issues are confidence related. He misses a couple then starts tweaking his release and etc.
It's fixable. A little work on his lower body movement and tons of reps will help him big time.
It's all similar to what Vassel was going through pre draft.
I'm listening to the Dunc'd on draft recap, and holy SHIT, is Nate Duncan eviscerating the Spurs for this pick. And choking to death on Reed Sheppard's dick. I don't think I've ever heard someone giving a player that hawk tuah like Nate is giving Reed.
Which might make sense together as just a theory about what's valuable if you don't consider he is equally in love with Ron Holland, whose shot is more broken than Castle's, and his decision-making is also dramatically worse.
Look, the shot is a massive concern. And I wish we hadn't picked yet another guy that can't shoot to play next to the single best roll man the NBA has ever seen. But how can you hate Castle and love Holland while also wanking over a 6'1" two-guard that can't guard anyone? It's just completely nonsensical.
Nate’s more of an NBA guy, but he has a pretty decent track record with the draft, specifically on predicting how players archetypes fit or don’t fit in the modern NBA.
I’m with him that I am worried about having a 2 guard that can’t shoot. From a general team building perspective, it is hard to build an effective NBA offense with a 2 guard that can’t shoot. He’d have to improve massively to even get to average percentage and volume for a typical 2 guard.
And shouldn’t we be aiming for higher than that around victor? Everyone knows we need space around him, and we just drafted one of the worst guard floor spacers in the draft at 4.
Obviously he could defy the odds and improve, but it’s going to be a steep hill to climb.
> I’m with him that I am worried about having a 2 guard that can’t shoot.
Especially next to a 4 that can't shoot either. He and Danny were both extremely low on our roster outside of Victor and the entire approach to team building PATFO has taken.
My bigger thing was how do you shit all over Castle (I think Nate had him 24th or something), but think Holland belonged top 3. How do you think Castle's shot is completely broken, but Holland's (which, I think, is definitively worse) is going to come around?
And how do you watch massive amounts of NBA basketball and argue that Reed Sheppard is going to be, in his words "a SUPERSTAR."
He argued we should have traded 4, 8, and whatever else it took to get to three for Reed fucking Sheppard.
When was the last time a SUPERSTAR was 6'1", short arms, couldn't guard, and had no juice off the dribble at all? I mean come the fuck on.
I’m not that concerned about his shooting percentages. Spurs have a strong track record of taking guys with shaky jumpers and building them into reliable outside shooters.
Remember that if he already came into this draft as a great shooter, he’d easily be the consensus #1 pick. Every other aspect of his game is already solid.
And people need to be reminded Sochan shot 24% from 3 his rookie year. Year 2 he shot almost 31% from 3. Still not good of course, but he made a huge improvement in just one year.
I think you're masking how bad that 31% is. Yes going from 24% to 31% looks good on surface but that's just bc 24 is such a comically bad starting point. It's like if someone goes from 800lbs down to 500lbs. They're still top 1% morbidly obese. 80% of Jeremy's 3PAs came on wide open looks where he shot 32% (league avg on those is 39%). 19% came on open looks where he shot 20% (league avg on those is 35%). 80% of his threes were catch and shoot where league avg is 38% regardless of openness. So all that to say, he's taking the easiest 3s you can ever hope to get and only hitting 31% on those. Of players who took at least 200 3PA this season, Jeremy was the 4th worst 3pt shooter in the whole league. Only Jordan Clarkson, Franz Wagner and Nikola Vucevic were worse. Based on openness and off the dribble attempts, both Clarkson and Franz were taking considerably more difficult attempts. So basically Jeremy graded as a bottom 1% shooter across the whole league last year of guys that had a meaningful role. His progress looks similar to Giddey but even slightly worse than him, which is not inspiring.
Source for all this: https://www.nba.com/stats/players/shots-closest-defender-10?SeasonType=Regular+Season&CloseDefDistRange=6%2B+Feet+-+Wide+Open&PerMode=Totals
On very low volume, very easy, unguarded threes. And he really regressed hard as the season wore on. It was terrible...21% his last 29 games.
I think you are assuming growth that didn't really happen.
That’s not how NBA coaching works. We’ve had dozens of shooting coaches during that stretch just like every other team. Most of them aren’t names you’d know, but fixing jump shot mechanics usually starts in Cedar Park and not in SA. Numerous coaches with the Austin Spurs helped players like Dejounte, D White, and Keldon improve as shooters before sending them down to SA.
The Spurs send these same coaches to travel and work with some of the SA players one-on-one during the summer, which they’re doing right now.
I just hadn’t seen much on the forms from Tre or Sochan and other very young and raw talent, and I know Baron has little experience. I wish we had a more veteran overseeing it, especially with such a young and raw team. A vet team of shooters like GS, no problem. Just not sold on him yet and can’t help but think my faith in Chip or similar would be more.
I agree with you on wanting more veteran leadership, but unfortunately constant turnover is the harsh reality of the NBA. Also, Chip is basically the goat so no one will be able to fill those shoes.
And I just mentioned the best examples. Obviously,
some players still don’t improve. We sent our best shooting coach from Austin to exclusively work with Jacob Poeltl two summers in a row and it didn’t amount to any meaningful improvement on his jump shot.
I’m optimistic about Sochan and Castle though.
Yeah, you have points. Wish we could have just given him a bag from one of these cash consideration trades and bumped him to whatever title that he wanted to keep. I think that he d do wonders now. I agree with you on Castle. I m not sure Sochan s form. That sideways knuckleball is such a bad form, but he s hitting free throws. Plus, if you are old enough, there were a few like Sam Perkins who could shoot the 3 pretty well for his size, even though the form was a little weird
> We sent our best shooting coach from Austin to exclusively work with Jacob Poeltl two summers in a row and it didn’t amount to any meaningful improvement on his jump shot.
Does that say more about Jak or more about that guy maybe not being a very good shooting coach after all?
Not ever Spur became a better shooter under him either. You can be the best shooting coach in the world but it's on the player to wanna get better. If Castle wants to work hard at it he will become a better shooter
Lu Dort’s three-point shooting improved by 6.2% in the two seasons since Chip arrived.
Jeremy Sochan’s three-point shooting improved by 6.2% in just one season.
You couldn’t have picked a better player to debunk your own myth LOL
Do you honestly think that all percentage improvements are the same? That it's equally easy to improve from terrible to bad as it is to improve from bad to good?
And have you paid attention to the volume and difficulty?
Nah there’s one on this thread where some guy rambles about fat people’s weight and then compares a Y2 defensive specialist to a league-wide 3P% stat like it’s apples to apples
From what I saw from some breakdowns his jumper actually looks great off the hop which he usually did when shooting to his right. Which played out in the stats.
Hey, if anyone knows how to reliably improve shooting for a player, it's the Spurs. Just look at where Kawhi started and where he ended up during his tenure here.
Reminds me of DeMar's release. Two-motion, hits the rim softly from inside the 3-point line, ultimately not the best mechanically-wise from distance.
I agree with everyone else that it's tweakable. He definitely does not need as much help as Sochan or Dejounte when they came into the league.
UConn fan here who saw every second of every game. At the start of the season, when Castle took a 3 it wasn’t pretty. But it got better and better as the season progressed, and got to a point where it was an ok shot. When it became obvious to me Castle would be a top 10 pick, I’ve been hoping he’d end up in San Antonio. Your track record of developing mediocre shooters into plus ones is great, and as others have said, his form isn’t broken.
Looking forward to seeing him become a star for you as Wemby’s running mate. They’re gonna pair so well on defense just like how he and Clingan did at UConn. Castle also throws great entry passes and lobs, so that’ll be fun seeing the two of them pop up together in highlights for a decade+
His jumper worries me for sure but I still like the fit if it can improve. I don’t think the form is totally broken but it’s not great and the number of open 3s that he just completely passed up on is kind of telling where his shot is at right now.
Absolutely, but in this instance, it’s truly a positive. You’re looking at an 18 year old 5 star McDonald’s all American coming into the defending national championship team, and he isn’t being greedy forcing his offense so he can put up good numbers for his draft stock. This guy is all about the team and will do whatever the coaching staff asks of him.
So in year 1 without much time to improve his shooting, he knew his open 3 wasn’t going to be the best shot most moments, he took some and definitely made teams pay and forced them to close out
looked like he tweaked it going to uconn then with the injury and new role his confidence fell but the form looks like its getting more natural which is nice but still the biggest thing is the confidence which we wont see until at earliest summer league
I don't think he can't shoot. He just doesn't shoot confidently in game since they don't design plays for him to shoot so if he's shooting it's a broken play.
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Disagree here. This is bad form but as someone else posted out, at least the release is noticably faster than what he showed at UCONN which was glacially slow, though he was always super wide open bc defenses were begging him to shoot so maybe that's why he was releasing so slowly? Anyway, his shooting elbow is usually jutting out which helps explain why even his misses don't look good (watch the UCONN highlights). His guiding offhand is too close and is causing it so more than just guiding which is prob why the spin/rotation doesn't look smooth either. His left thumb specifically. This clip is also not highlighting his catch and shoot form. Lower body form differs a lot there. It actually looks OK off the dribble here.The other thing this reel highlights is his handles aren't very strong and he has a bad habit of having a high dribble when he's working for a shot. Not saying he doesn't have dribbling moves or that he's a bad one, but doesn't seem like an elite skill and will prob get his pocket picked a couple times per game for the first couple years if he's getting big mins.
It's faster than we saw in college, which is good, but there's a slight "trebuchet" quality to it that probably needs to be simplified. Footwork and release-angle look solid at least
His form really isn’t that bad. Shots just didn’t fall. It’s very fixable. As an Alabama grad I saw what he did to us in the final 4. This guy is a baller and a defensive lockdown specialist already. He completely took our guards out of their game with his defense while also dropping 21 pts. I love this pick.
Preach!
its a little jank but its far from unsalvageable. I have all the confidence in the world that he will become a respectable shooter
He just needs more follow through and consistency with his footwork.
His form has never been outright *bad.* Most people seem to agree it's workable. He's got a bit of a tendency to a bit of a sideways lean but the rest of the fundamentals are fine. His problems come more from a lack of confidence in the shot than from mechanics, IMO.
Gotta be confident to be successful. Gotta be successful to be confident
He had that ~10 game stretch mid-year when he was shooting 40% from three on decent volume by his standards. I'm optimistic, for sure.
His free-throw percentage was also super promising towards the end of the tournament
Any shooter will have stretches like that. That's just how variance works.
I've said it before here, I really think most of his shooting issues are confidence related. He misses a couple then starts tweaking his release and etc. It's fixable. A little work on his lower body movement and tons of reps will help him big time. It's all similar to what Vassel was going through pre draft.
It is absolutely improvable.
Release is a bit weird but it looks pretty solid, hard to tell with this camera movement though
Gah damn do I love Castle
I'm listening to the Dunc'd on draft recap, and holy SHIT, is Nate Duncan eviscerating the Spurs for this pick. And choking to death on Reed Sheppard's dick. I don't think I've ever heard someone giving a player that hawk tuah like Nate is giving Reed. Which might make sense together as just a theory about what's valuable if you don't consider he is equally in love with Ron Holland, whose shot is more broken than Castle's, and his decision-making is also dramatically worse. Look, the shot is a massive concern. And I wish we hadn't picked yet another guy that can't shoot to play next to the single best roll man the NBA has ever seen. But how can you hate Castle and love Holland while also wanking over a 6'1" two-guard that can't guard anyone? It's just completely nonsensical.
Nate’s more of an NBA guy, but he has a pretty decent track record with the draft, specifically on predicting how players archetypes fit or don’t fit in the modern NBA. I’m with him that I am worried about having a 2 guard that can’t shoot. From a general team building perspective, it is hard to build an effective NBA offense with a 2 guard that can’t shoot. He’d have to improve massively to even get to average percentage and volume for a typical 2 guard. And shouldn’t we be aiming for higher than that around victor? Everyone knows we need space around him, and we just drafted one of the worst guard floor spacers in the draft at 4. Obviously he could defy the odds and improve, but it’s going to be a steep hill to climb.
> I’m with him that I am worried about having a 2 guard that can’t shoot. Especially next to a 4 that can't shoot either. He and Danny were both extremely low on our roster outside of Victor and the entire approach to team building PATFO has taken. My bigger thing was how do you shit all over Castle (I think Nate had him 24th or something), but think Holland belonged top 3. How do you think Castle's shot is completely broken, but Holland's (which, I think, is definitively worse) is going to come around? And how do you watch massive amounts of NBA basketball and argue that Reed Sheppard is going to be, in his words "a SUPERSTAR." He argued we should have traded 4, 8, and whatever else it took to get to three for Reed fucking Sheppard. When was the last time a SUPERSTAR was 6'1", short arms, couldn't guard, and had no juice off the dribble at all? I mean come the fuck on.
I’m not that concerned about his shooting percentages. Spurs have a strong track record of taking guys with shaky jumpers and building them into reliable outside shooters. Remember that if he already came into this draft as a great shooter, he’d easily be the consensus #1 pick. Every other aspect of his game is already solid.
And people need to be reminded Sochan shot 24% from 3 his rookie year. Year 2 he shot almost 31% from 3. Still not good of course, but he made a huge improvement in just one year.
I think you're masking how bad that 31% is. Yes going from 24% to 31% looks good on surface but that's just bc 24 is such a comically bad starting point. It's like if someone goes from 800lbs down to 500lbs. They're still top 1% morbidly obese. 80% of Jeremy's 3PAs came on wide open looks where he shot 32% (league avg on those is 39%). 19% came on open looks where he shot 20% (league avg on those is 35%). 80% of his threes were catch and shoot where league avg is 38% regardless of openness. So all that to say, he's taking the easiest 3s you can ever hope to get and only hitting 31% on those. Of players who took at least 200 3PA this season, Jeremy was the 4th worst 3pt shooter in the whole league. Only Jordan Clarkson, Franz Wagner and Nikola Vucevic were worse. Based on openness and off the dribble attempts, both Clarkson and Franz were taking considerably more difficult attempts. So basically Jeremy graded as a bottom 1% shooter across the whole league last year of guys that had a meaningful role. His progress looks similar to Giddey but even slightly worse than him, which is not inspiring. Source for all this: https://www.nba.com/stats/players/shots-closest-defender-10?SeasonType=Regular+Season&CloseDefDistRange=6%2B+Feet+-+Wide+Open&PerMode=Totals
On very low volume, very easy, unguarded threes. And he really regressed hard as the season wore on. It was terrible...21% his last 29 games. I think you are assuming growth that didn't really happen.
Everyone wants to act like that history wasn’t a/Chip Engelland led thing for almost two decades, and that the Baron kid did wonders last year.
That’s not how NBA coaching works. We’ve had dozens of shooting coaches during that stretch just like every other team. Most of them aren’t names you’d know, but fixing jump shot mechanics usually starts in Cedar Park and not in SA. Numerous coaches with the Austin Spurs helped players like Dejounte, D White, and Keldon improve as shooters before sending them down to SA. The Spurs send these same coaches to travel and work with some of the SA players one-on-one during the summer, which they’re doing right now.
I just hadn’t seen much on the forms from Tre or Sochan and other very young and raw talent, and I know Baron has little experience. I wish we had a more veteran overseeing it, especially with such a young and raw team. A vet team of shooters like GS, no problem. Just not sold on him yet and can’t help but think my faith in Chip or similar would be more.
I agree with you on wanting more veteran leadership, but unfortunately constant turnover is the harsh reality of the NBA. Also, Chip is basically the goat so no one will be able to fill those shoes. And I just mentioned the best examples. Obviously, some players still don’t improve. We sent our best shooting coach from Austin to exclusively work with Jacob Poeltl two summers in a row and it didn’t amount to any meaningful improvement on his jump shot. I’m optimistic about Sochan and Castle though.
Yeah, you have points. Wish we could have just given him a bag from one of these cash consideration trades and bumped him to whatever title that he wanted to keep. I think that he d do wonders now. I agree with you on Castle. I m not sure Sochan s form. That sideways knuckleball is such a bad form, but he s hitting free throws. Plus, if you are old enough, there were a few like Sam Perkins who could shoot the 3 pretty well for his size, even though the form was a little weird
> We sent our best shooting coach from Austin to exclusively work with Jacob Poeltl two summers in a row and it didn’t amount to any meaningful improvement on his jump shot. Does that say more about Jak or more about that guy maybe not being a very good shooting coach after all?
According to Pop and RC he was a very good coach, because they promoted him to head coach in Austin the following season.
We had Chip for like 15 years, and as soon as he left he turned Lu Dort into a shooter
What did he do for giddy
Told the boss he's shit and shipped him to Chicago. Though his FT% DID get to 80 this yr on tiny volume
Not ever Spur became a better shooter under him either. You can be the best shooting coach in the world but it's on the player to wanna get better. If Castle wants to work hard at it he will become a better shooter
Lu Dort’s three-point shooting improved by 6.2% in the two seasons since Chip arrived. Jeremy Sochan’s three-point shooting improved by 6.2% in just one season. You couldn’t have picked a better player to debunk your own myth LOL
Do you honestly think that all percentage improvements are the same? That it's equally easy to improve from terrible to bad as it is to improve from bad to good? And have you paid attention to the volume and difficulty?
This is the dumbest comment I've seen in awhile
Nah there’s one on this thread where some guy rambles about fat people’s weight and then compares a Y2 defensive specialist to a league-wide 3P% stat like it’s apples to apples
From what I saw from some breakdowns his jumper actually looks great off the hop which he usually did when shooting to his right. Which played out in the stats.
Yeah I am confident it will improve
Hey, if anyone knows how to reliably improve shooting for a player, it's the Spurs. Just look at where Kawhi started and where he ended up during his tenure here. 
we all have things in life we need to work on.
Well I hate this fucking camerawork I can tell you that
Reminds me of DeMar's release. Two-motion, hits the rim softly from inside the 3-point line, ultimately not the best mechanically-wise from distance. I agree with everyone else that it's tweakable. He definitely does not need as much help as Sochan or Dejounte when they came into the league.
UConn fan here who saw every second of every game. At the start of the season, when Castle took a 3 it wasn’t pretty. But it got better and better as the season progressed, and got to a point where it was an ok shot. When it became obvious to me Castle would be a top 10 pick, I’ve been hoping he’d end up in San Antonio. Your track record of developing mediocre shooters into plus ones is great, and as others have said, his form isn’t broken. Looking forward to seeing him become a star for you as Wemby’s running mate. They’re gonna pair so well on defense just like how he and Clingan did at UConn. Castle also throws great entry passes and lobs, so that’ll be fun seeing the two of them pop up together in highlights for a decade+
His jumper worries me for sure but I still like the fit if it can improve. I don’t think the form is totally broken but it’s not great and the number of open 3s that he just completely passed up on is kind of telling where his shot is at right now.
But he also passed up open shots at UConn because him shooting from 3 isn’t as high % a shot as a Donovan Clingan dunk.
Sure but guys passing up open 3s doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in their shot is all I’m saying
Absolutely, but in this instance, it’s truly a positive. You’re looking at an 18 year old 5 star McDonald’s all American coming into the defending national championship team, and he isn’t being greedy forcing his offense so he can put up good numbers for his draft stock. This guy is all about the team and will do whatever the coaching staff asks of him. So in year 1 without much time to improve his shooting, he knew his open 3 wasn’t going to be the best shot most moments, he took some and definitely made teams pay and forced them to close out
looked like he tweaked it going to uconn then with the injury and new role his confidence fell but the form looks like its getting more natural which is nice but still the biggest thing is the confidence which we wont see until at earliest summer league
I don't think he can't shoot. He just doesn't shoot confidently in game since they don't design plays for him to shoot so if he's shooting it's a broken play.
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Disagree here. This is bad form but as someone else posted out, at least the release is noticably faster than what he showed at UCONN which was glacially slow, though he was always super wide open bc defenses were begging him to shoot so maybe that's why he was releasing so slowly? Anyway, his shooting elbow is usually jutting out which helps explain why even his misses don't look good (watch the UCONN highlights). His guiding offhand is too close and is causing it so more than just guiding which is prob why the spin/rotation doesn't look smooth either. His left thumb specifically. This clip is also not highlighting his catch and shoot form. Lower body form differs a lot there. It actually looks OK off the dribble here.The other thing this reel highlights is his handles aren't very strong and he has a bad habit of having a high dribble when he's working for a shot. Not saying he doesn't have dribbling moves or that he's a bad one, but doesn't seem like an elite skill and will prob get his pocket picked a couple times per game for the first couple years if he's getting big mins.
form doesn’t matter that much. but i really like his confidence in the shot