30 NBA Players in 30 Days: Joshua Primo
Day 12 of our countdown to the 2022–2023 NBA season brings us to San Antonio, where we will focus on one of the most intriguing prospects, and a player who I am excited to watch more, Josh Primo. The young guard out of Alabama will have a lot of opportunity with Dejounte Murray being traded to Atlanta, and the Spurs are a team that are most likely going to be tanking (or as much as Pop will allow) in order to get a high draft pick for the 2023 Draft. Their new lottery pick Jeremy Sochan and their other featured players like Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell don’t share the same position as Primo, so he won’t be competing for minutes at the guard spot. The Spurs have two other guards I’m sure they will be interested in seeing what they have in Malaki Branham and Blake Wesley, but the only person that can stop Primo from getting more playing time is himself, as Pop will make sure to only play him if he is doing all the right things in his eyes. With a season already under his belt, he has the upper hand amongst the other two young guards.
Now if you have not heard of Josh Primo and you look up some video of him right now, you might think it’s a taller Kyrie Irving playing on the Spurs. He may not be the electric ball handler and scorer that Irving was early on, but the semi-grown afro, the #11 on his jersey, and the shooting release can make him look like Irving. In his rookie year, Primo played 50 games with about 19.7 MPG and posted 5.8 PPG, 2.3 RPG, 1.6 APG, 37 FG%, and 30.7 FG3%. These aren’t good stats to project how good he can be considering some of his season was played in the G League, and he was fighting for minutes on a bad team coached by Gregg Popovich. The sneaky part of his stat averages is that he had 0.8 SPG, and 0.9 BPG. Primo is 6’6 with a 6’9 wingspan and can move pretty fluidly, so the defensive potential is there. The eye test on offense is probably what makes him very tantalizing as a prospect. Any guard with that size with solid ball handling capabilities and a smooth shooting stroke will always catch the eyes of scouts, and that is probably why he was picked by the Spurs as high as the 12th spot. That selection at that point of the lottery was a huge surprise as most draft experts picked him to go later in the 1st round. With 30 games played for Alabama during his freshman year, Primo scored 8.1 PPG on 43 FG% and 38.1 FG3%, so there is still plenty of room to grow.
Since we have not seen a lot of Primo as of yet, all we can do is project how he can turn out as a player in the NBA. He will undoubtedly have an up and down year on a bad team, but there has to be a reason a well run organization like the Spurs would select him at 12th when there were plenty of other solid guards with a higher draft stock there to take. I expect him to play a lot given his effort on the defensive end and overall basketball IQ. All we can do now is to see what he can do in his highly anticipated sophomore season.
