Entering the season, it would have been difficult to imagine just how much of a non-factor San Antonio Spurs forward Jeremy Sochan would be this year. His offseason injury, which caused him to miss EuroBasket, the NBA preseason, and the first few games of the regular season, didn’t do him any favors. <\/p>\n
And after just a few games back, he quickly found himself out of the rotation. While he is now playing spot minutes, it’s hard to see a path forward for Sochan in San Antonio. <\/p>\n
That is exactly why 29 other NBA teams should be calling the Spurs up. Although he hasn’t carved out a big role with the Spurs despite being a former ninth overall pick, his situation is unique in that it’s less about his lack of talent and more about fit. <\/p>\n
He just doesn’t fit well on this team. He can’t space the floor, which essentially shoehorns him into playing center, but he is too short at 6’8″ to play that position full-time. <\/p>\n
Also, Victor Wembanyama and Luke Kornet have that position spoken for. That leaves power forward. But with options such as Harrison Barnes\u2014although he has apparently forgotten how to play basketball\u2014and Julian Champagnie, both there to provide spacing, he just can’t compete.<\/p>\n
29 other teams should be calling the Spurs on Jeremy Sochan now<\/p>\n
At the moment, Sochan probably doesn’t have much, if any, trade value, which is precisely why he should be on every team’s radar. He can still defend multiple positions, rebound, and finish in the paint. <\/p>\n
If his next team has enough shooting, particularly in the backcourt or at center, to cover up his lack of spacing, then he could thrive as a defensive pest. Hopefully several teams will register interest with the Spurs, possibly getting a team to pony up enough to make trading Sochan worthwhile. <\/p>\n
To be clear, unless he’s packaged with a first-round pick<\/a>, which, as Zach Lowe recently stated, could very well happen, he probably isn’t going to fetch a key rotation player or more than a decent second-round pick. But, assuming that he is packaged with the Atlanta Hawks pick swap, what could he fetch? <\/p>\n What can the Spurs expect in a trade for Jeremy Sochan?<\/p>\n Well, if the New Orleans Pelicans weren’t such player haters, that might have been the basis of a trade for Herb Jones or Trey Murphy III. Remember, San Antonio needs forward help, preferably someone who can defend threes and fours, shoot, and is big enough to play power forward. <\/p>\n As we all know, that is the easiest player type in the NBA to find, with dozens of them just waiting to find a good home on a playoff team. Seriously though, there really isn’t another available player that fits that bill. <\/p>\n Instead, the Spurs may go after lesser but still capable options such as Gary Trent Jr. or Royce O’Neale, who is actually having a terrific season. That probably won’t cost San Antonio the Hawk pick. However, it could cost them Sochan and a second or two, but that could be worth it. <\/p>\n San Antonio could turn Sochan into a better-fitting rotation player, while Sochan could get a fresh start elsewhere. At this point, that is the best that the Spurs can hope for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering the season, it would have been difficult to imagine just how much of a non-factor San Antonio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534],"class_list":{"0":"post-542684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-spurs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115910415749601016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}