Charles Bassey signed a cheap 4 year deal this past season after showing a decent amount of promise.
Now admittedly I had forgotten about Bassey due to his injury, and after seeing a post about him doing some community work decided to look at his numbers.
Now depends where you look he is listed between 6-9 and 6-11, I’d say he is around the lower end of the height but has a monster 7-3 wingspan and is built like a tank! He shows lots of promise on the defensive end but is certainly foul prone.
For Wemby to develop the best he can I think it’s fairly well accepted we need a defensive 5 and/ or a stretch 5. And I feel like Bassey fits the defensive 5 mould quite well, he led the team in block % last season before injury (5.4%). (For reference Anthony Davis had a block % of 5.1). Obviously he isn’t the AD of defence and there is much more to defence than block % , but it’s not a bad indicator of what he might be able to do. (Incredibly biased take obviously)
If we look at Charles per 36 numbers he looks to have some potential, being a low minute player he benefits a lot from this but again, allow my spurs bias to take over.
I’m 14.4 minutes he averaged 5.7 pts/ 5.5 rebounds / 1.3 assists.
Per 36 his stats are 14.1 pts/ 13.7 rebounds / 3.3 assists (and to him being fouls prone would have 5.2 fouls)
The numbers in real life with additional minutes do not move linearly , but as a back up if he can average 8/8 with decent defence I’m not mad at all!
To the idea of a stretch 5, Bassey hasn’t shown much. PTR did an end of season review for Bassey and mentions how in Austin he shot 1.6 3pt a game at 37.5% the volume isn’t there so it’s not something I’ll read into (the first instance of not being biased) but if he can shoot at a decent rate and he has to be respected from 3 he could be so good as a back up. (Yes this is an incredibly generic statement)
Big men typically take a while longer to adjust to the NBA, mainly due to not being the biggest on the floor anymore, so hopefully this can apply to Charles too.
Anyway , Thank you for reading let me know what you think! I hope I didn’t make you vomit with a big dose of spurs bias.
by radicalcamel
6 Comments
He’s injured
I think Collins/Bassey is a perfectly acceptable Center rotation to try and grow. The problem is both of those guys have an injury history and we need to have guys capable of keeping Wemby from guarding the Steven Adams of the world every game. A third capable Center seems like it needs to be a priority. But I think our FO actually is very optimistic about this Center duo long term and that’s why we are going after someone like Valanciunas who provides reliable rotation minutes rather than a bigger younger name.
I honestly have no clue what to expect from bassey
From highly touted extremely talented high school super prospect to draft afterthought to having real bursts of promise to looking extremely out of his depth at times. His character arc of player development the last 4 years has been about as wild and uneven as you will see with the guy his age
The talents there, but he definitely seems like the kind of guy who probably doesn’t process the game incredibly quickly. Which means he’s probably not going to do well in a bit roll where he’s not able to get into a groove and start getting some consistency going
Performing early and earning himself a spot in the rotation I think will be pretty important for him Do have a good chance of breaking out next year. Even pop touched on it when he was commenting on his injury saying it was such a shame because he was just starting to have things slow down and was really just learning how to play after not being able to get consistent minutes throughout the year
I could see him turning into one of the better backup bigs in the league by the end of the year or being completely out of the rotation by the all-star break.
He’s just a hard guy to predict. The talents there. The jumper, the ball handling, the athleticism. He frankly has all the basic tools to be a top 20/ top 15 center in the league
We just have to hope he could earn his opportunity to show it
As spurs fans we got a bad deal with the current roster. Bassey was solid. Bates-Diop had 2 amazing seasons.
In context. The spurs fielded a pretty much garbage roster the past 2 seasons. These players are not capstones to build upon. Thankfully, The Spurs did a great job (as they always do) of maximizing and showcasing talent for players that probably wouldn’t matter on other nba rosters.
I’m super high on Bassey. I think he could be one of the more valuable players on our roster moving forward. However I don’t think we’re real contenders with him as our second string center, even in a few years. I think he’d be contributing a consistent and efficient 10-15 minutes per game on a championship team. I do think he’s perfect off the bench for the next couple years though, and I’m really hoping he consistently gets to see at least 20 minutes per game this season.
Bassey was an absolute monster in the G League so I think he could do well if he continues to develop