Marco Belinelli‘s journey around the NBA continues with the next stop coming with the San Antonio Spurs.
Officially signing his new two-year, approximately $6 million deal Thursday, Belinelli will soon find that San Antonio’s style of play fits right in with what he’s known to do: Drain the 3-pointer.
Turning down bigger offers from non-contending teams, Belinelli chose to sign with the Spurs for a shot at the title and for the way they value their international players as well.
San Antonio, known for its successful scouting of foreign talent, currently has nine foreign players on their roster and are fresh off drafting French forward Livio Jean-Charles in last month’s draft. Belinelli must have seen the team’s openness to the players’ interest in playing overseas in the summer and saw it as another advantage.
The positives of this signing are that he’s a great shooter that can sometimes create a shot on his own, he’s taller than Gary Neal and makes him more suited for the shooting guard spot and he’s also a better defender. In addition, Belinelli also carries a clutch factor that is crucial for teams like the Spurs that continue to grind it out in May and June.
In his one and only season with the Chicago Bulls, Belinelli averaged 9.6 points and two assists per game on 39.5 percent field-goal shooting. With former league MVP Derrick Rose out for the season, opposing defenses found it much easier to match up against Chicago’s offense and this caused Belinelli’s stats to take a slight decrease with the increased attention he was given.
However, in San Antonio’s offense that has huge threats with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard and Manu Ginobili, Marco will find his open opportunities much easier than he did before. In the same offense that opened up Danny Green and Gary Neal for career nights from beyond the arc in the NBA Finals, Marco can be seen having similar success.
Now with Belinelli on deck, it’s safe to assume that the Spurs have decided to part ways with Neal. Marco plays the same position as him and will most likely play the same role, being given a few more minutes with the expected regular-season rest given to Ginobili.
Along with the signing of forward Jeff Pendergraph, it seems that the Spurs are done making deals this summer, barring a trade. Though they didn’t get significantly better, Belinelli can be enough of an upgrade to help San Antonio make back-to-back Finals appearances.
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