This is NOT easy...

What the Spurs have pulled off here warrants a much closer look. Well, there's been some noise recently about Jadon Quaintance, the Spurs' top pick in the 2026 draft, and how one Bleacher Report analyst seems to indicate that, well, he's not coming back any sooner at all than expected. There is a deeper meaning about this for the San Antonio Spurs, how they have built the team, and what they're about to pull off around Quaintance, about Terrace Reed, and a whole lot more. But not just that, combine all of that with the fact that the San Antonio Spurs have built one of the most dangerous landscapes in the rest of the NBA heading into this season, and we got a graphic to back it, including some insane Wemby and maybe surprising Cornet stats to go along with it. All of that coming up on this episode. Little vague, little... So there's some very interesting stuff coming up on this episode. And Quaintance is a guy that I'm really excited for, to be fair. We're going to talk a little bit more about him later. And this article that we're going to talk about from Bleacher Report was a little while ago, but it flew under my radar, and I saw it pop up back on X today. And so we're going to talk about those quotes later, but I want to start with the landscape, because I don't know if I did a good job of actually explaining what I was about to talk about in that intro. I'm sleepy. It is almost midnight where I am recording this right now. So shout out to me for being up, and shout out to you for watching the channel. This comes from MBA University. 2026-27 San Antonio Spurs impact landscape. So up on the y-axis is greater defensive impact. To the right on the x-axis is greater offensive impact. This squad winning the chip, I'm going to answer that for you. Yeah, but we're going to make a good push for it. This team is looking unbelievable. I should turn this music down. This team is looking unbelievable, right? But keep in mind, up is better on defense. This way, I guess. To the right is better on offense. So if you're up here, you're really good at offense and defense. If you're down here, you're really bad at both. Let's take a look at what the Spurs landscape looks like. Now, MBA University has been posting this for a bunch of different teams, but yeah, these colors are a little interesting, right? They're kind of just warped to fit Wembley. But what I find interesting is the Luke Cornette stature. Luke Cornette ranking as a very high defensive box plus minus, or impact, I guess we could say. Very, very high. I'm very happy with where Luke Cornette is, because there were some questions, and it's a question that I've raised in videos before, about do the Spurs maybe need some better bench defense? And I think that the big man defense has never been a problem. But what I would point out to you, is that a lot of the key bench players from last season, actually ranked rather poorly in defensive impact. You'll see guys like Kelvin Johnson, actually had the worst defensive impact on the team. According to this, the only this from Basketball University, Harrison Barnes was a net negative as well. Carter Bryant, surprisingly a net negative, but I do believe that to have a lot to do with him being a rookie, and a small sample size. Jordan McLaughlin, whatever. But even like Steph Castle and De'Aaron Fox, to be fair, Castle being about the same spot as Fox, in terms of offensive and defensive impact, already kind of has me questioning this graphic. But then again, Wembley all the way up there has me believing, well, clearly something's right. So I find it interesting, that Castle is just not ranked that highly in terms of defensive impact. Really, it's Champagny. If you look at overall offensive, plus defensive impact, Wembley, Cornet, and then really Champagny and Vassell, Fox, Castle, Harper, Harris. It's the exact group of eight players, I guess, that you would probably be playing in clutch playoff moments, this upcoming year. They're all in the positives, even if Cornet is technically a negative offensively, which I think we can all agree on. I find it very interesting. Who right there is the biggest surprise to you? To me, it's Castle being solo defensively, and maybe even Carter Bryant. But does this reignite the question of bench defense for you? Now, to be fair, there are eight players there that are, you know, a positive. One of them is Dylan Harper, good positive defensively. One of them is newcomer Tobias Harris, which means either him or Champagny or Vassell, or one of them is going to come off the bench for some games. So it's not as big of an issue, I think, but seeing Keldon, seeing Bryant, seeing, again, I don't think the Bryant thing is real, and seeing Harris and Barnes, it's maybe a bit concerning, but anyway, I'll leave that to you. But we want to move on to Jadon Quaintance. So I saw this tweet from Sleeper Spurs, and I went to search out the original source. NBA draft analyst Jonathan Wasserman believes Spurs fans shouldn't expect to see Jadon Quaintance during the 26-27 season, and then the quote that they put in their tweet said, Quaintance is still recovering from his ACL tear and underwent another procedure this summer, but San Antonio expected to take his recovery extremely slow. And I'm not going to say this is misleading, because I don't think it is. What I will say is that this quote makes it sound like he had another procedure that we didn't know about. As far as I can tell, that's not true. The another simply just means since Kentucky. So just that we're talking about the procedure we had this summer. This article that I found this original quote in, because I saw this pop up on my feed today, you can go check. I'm pretty sure it's from like a month ago. However, it slipped under my radar. I've been quoting this we'll see him until 2027 thing for a while, kind of holding out some hope that Jadon Quaintance might be able to play in the second half of the season, maybe after the all-star break, but all sources seem to indicate and again, there is another part of the article that does say, hey, he's probably not going to play in 2026-27. And I think that's okay. I mean, I know that's okay, because that's kind of what I expected when we drafted him. It was more so I was given a little bit of hope and then it kind of got taken away. The college stats are nothing to really look at. What you should look at are some of those, some of those individual games when he was healthy, 18-7 with two assists, two steals and a block, or 10-8 with two blocks versus St. John's. Jadon Quaintance, every time I watch his footage, it's also insane that he was born in 2007. Like is that, I don't know. I think that just means I'm getting old. Like this man was not around when Andrea Bargnani was the first overall pick. I don't know why he's the one I focused on there. 2006 NBA draft. Shout out Il Mago, Primo, Pasta, and Sos, legendary Italian player. Um, that was a bit of a deep cut reference. I don't know if anyone's going to understand that, but if you understand that Primo, Pasta, and Sos, Andrea Bargnani reference, I don't know what to tell you. You probably watch, consume, consume way too much basketball content just like me. But Quaintance, I should probably get back to the point. I'm all over the place. I apologize. I'm very excited for him, but what the Spurs have pulled off here, I think is unbelievably scary for the rest of the league because like you watch his workouts and they are absolutely terrifying for a guy that had one leg that was working basically. One, excuse me. Blue season is no joke. Why is it in August? I swear I haven't had a cold in like two years and it's just kicking my ass. All right, Jaden Quaintance. Let him rest. Let him cook on the sidelines. Let him heal up fully. I know we've talked about this a lot before, but you can afford it. You can look at this rotation. He's just sitting there at the end. And I think now like with my brain set on him not playing this year, I've kind of switched that. Flipped that switch in my head. I now have convinced myself he's not playing this year. Now I'm just looking for towards 27, 28. We can win a title this season. I think this team is worthy of winning a title. And then you're going to inject one of the most freakish athletic defensive big men, young big men in the league. That's my opinion. That's what I think he's going to do. Not to mention this guy, Terrace Reed. I'm going to keep bringing his name up because when training camp starts, we're going to hear him a lot. He's going to be big. He's going to be physical. He's 23 years old. Turned 23 a few weeks ago. Shout out to him. Shout out to Terrace Reed. 15-9 at UConn in college. This guy is ready to make a huge impact. And when I say huge, I don't necessarily mean with big minutes. I mean with his big body. He's going to bang down low. He's going to get some rebounds. He's going to get some blocks. He's going to get some dunks. He's going to have some finesse. He's going to be able to solidify the big man rotation. Now, my big question though is, what do we do when Reed and Quaintance are both willing to share the floor next year with Cornette and Wembley? Wembley at the four is still not really a thing. We've seen that with Team France. I think we're going to get into some interesting stuff. And that is where Mitch Johnson comes in. This season is not going to be easy. Mitch Johnson is going to have some unbelievably difficult tasks with how to balance not only the minutes to maximize your team's effectiveness and winning, but also personalities. Guys are going to want to play. Guys are going to want to get more minutes to win. Thankfully, San Antonio has developed a culture where the guys seem to want to win above everything else. And that starts with Victor Wembenyama taking less money, maybe someone's playing less, whatever. Everyone asking him to play more. So as long as the players are okay with it, which it seems like they are, I think Mitch Johnson's going to have a little bit of leeway from the players, but you're going to want results. He had 62 wins last year. You're going to want to get some more. And with adding these extra players, these young talents, guys developing like Carter Bryant, it's not going to be easy, but it's going to be one of the most exciting things in the league. And honestly, how they pulled this off, this team just keeps getting better and better and better and better and better. And we're not even looking to lose anyone soon, like at all. The only guy is Kelton Johnson, basically. Harrison Barnes, maybe, but we just sent him to a one-year deal. So he's kind of not in my long-term plans anyway. It's just Kelton. Other than him, like, Castle's going to get his extension, and then everyone else is locked up until at least 2029. It's kind of an insane spot, but listen, that'll do it for this video. Thank you for tuning in every single day, even when I'm sick, even when it's late at night. You guys are showing up, supporting. I appreciate every single one of you. I've been your host, Josh Goss, and I'll catch y'all in the next one.