The San Antonio Spurs are elbowing their way into NBA trade season Goliath-style. Beyond possessing top-10 efficiency marks on both ends of the floor—the historic markings of a full-fledged title contender—they’re also the only club to tally two wins (in two tries!) over the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. There’s a non-zero chance we’re already talking about the team to beat in this year’s title race.
That is, in a sense, why the Spurs are seemingly snoozing through the Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes. Why shorten a championship window that’s already wide open? The thing is, the Spurs don’t have to choose between loading up for a championship push and leaving a long runway ahead of them. In fact, this (admittedly aggressive) theoretical trade with the Portland Trail Blazers would see the Spurs snag a star who both fills a pressing need and perfectly fits the timeline.
If Spurs fans could stomach the sticker shock, they might see merits in this move.
Look, I’m not a resident of the Lone Star State, so maybe that emboldens me to suggest a Castle trade. You can’t get run out of a town you don’t live in, after all.
Trading the reigning Rookie of the Year would be all kinds of painful. Some will deem it wholly unnecessary. San Antonio has masterfully balanced the floor time and touches between Castle, Dylan Harper and De’Aaron Fox. The on-paper fit might look funky between three ball-dominant guards with questionable range, but it’s been all-caps AWESOME in practice.
During the 214 minutes Fox and Castle have shared, San Antonio has roughed up opponents by 8.7 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com. In the 107 minutes that Harper and Castle have played together, that net rating climbs to a comical plus-23 points per 100 possessions.
In other words, a trade involving any of the three might not be needed. And yet, it still might help balance out the roster to deal from its surplus of guards to add an impact player on the wing.
Want to cushion the blow of even considering a Castle deal? Shift all of your focus onto Avdija. He’s the kind of top-shelf talent that would be unavailable in 99 out of 100 trade scenarios. Maybe this is the exception, though, provided there are big enough Castle fans in Portland’s front office.
Avdija, who turns just 25 next month, is both an all-purpose stopper on defense and just as versatile on the offensive end. He’s one of only three players averaging at least 25 points, seven rebounds, six assists, and two three-pointers, per StatHead Basketball. The other two players in this uber-exclusive club: Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic.
Avdija is a game-changer—or rather, he would be if he had the right level of support around him. He doesn’t in Portland, but he clearly would in San Antonio. And since his skill tree branches out to include everything from primary creation and featured scoring to disruptive defense, catch-and-shoot marksmanship, and savvy off-ball cutting, he could make his mark on the Spurs without stepping on anyone else’s toes.
Again, the Spurs might sense this is still too rich for their appetite. And they would have understandable rationale behind them. Yet, the bar to win a title sits so impossibly high that the Spurs could wager their best bet is doing everything in their power to leave nothing to chance.
Their centerpiece big man is spectacular. Their guard group is among the Association’s very best. Their wing rotation, though, is less than stellar, and they have enough trade artillery that they only have to live with that shortcoming if they chose to. If they’d rather shore it up, this would be a fascinating, perhaps championship-deciding way of doing it.