Manu20
05-05-2005, 05:21 PM
(for Thursday May 5, 2005 -- posted at 3:30 p.m.)
http://slamonline.com/links/05022005/
Lang is still crazy busy at work, but last night he watched the Spurs knock out the Nuggets, and took time to reflect…
David Stern has to hate the San Antonio Spurs. They’re boring, they aren’t flashy, they aren’t marketable and their biggest star is easily confused with a robot, for goodness sakes.
The new issue of SLAM hits newsstands today or tomorrow, and it has two covers. A large chunk of the country gets Ben Wallace looking hard, doing the normal SLAM staredown while flossing his championship ring for the camera. The other chunk gets Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. But instead of the ice grills, they’re all smiling, which dovetails with the cover line Ryan Jones slapped on there: “Smiling All The Way To The Chip.” We did them smiling not only to switch up the normal straight-faced thing, but also because they aren’t really that type of team. The Spurs don’t win by intimidation, they win by execution and consistency.
I wrote the Spurs cover story, but there really wasn’t much writing involved. Instead, I went to San Antonio for a few days and interviewed pretty much everyone involved with the team—didn’t get Nesterovic because he was making himself scarce, and I didn’t get Nazr Muhammad because they’d traded for him two weeks before and he still didn’t really understand the Spurs system. I also spent time with Gregg Popovich, who was mad cool, and Spurs GM R.C. Buford, who invited me into his office and entertained me for a good fifteen minutes. (And I don’t know if he knew it or not, but there was a list of last names of draft picks on the blackboard behind him. I won’t reveal what order they were listed in, although I bet Chad Ford would pay me for this info.) I took all of the quotes I gathered (about 7,000 words worth) and cut and pasted and screwed and chopped them into something like a biography.
Going in to the story, the angle we wanted to take was simple: Why are the Spurs always so good? Building a good team in the NBA is hard enough, much less when you’re a playoff team every single year. The nature of the League is cyclical—you assemble a good team and win as many games as you can before the salary cap or age catches up with you. But somehow, the Spurs have managed to be competive nearly every year, and they’ve taken two of the last six championships.
(Before we go any further, a large part of what has made the Spurs great is luck. In the last two decades, the team has twice found itself on the brink of decline, and both times they won the NBA Draft Lottery. The results? Tim Duncan and David Robinson. As Buford told me, “One explanation for our success is that we’ve been lucky when we needed to be.”)
In the SLAM story, we break it down into a couple of facets that combine to make the Spurs so great. Without giving up too much of the SLAM story—available on newstands soon!—one part is definitely the city of San Antonio. It’s one of the NBA’s smallest market, but the Spurs are the only major pro team in town, and the people of the city are crazy about the team. “Basketball-wise, people here know you because this is the only thing here besides the rodeo,” Robert Horry told me. “When I was in Houston there were the Texans and the Astros, in LA you had Denzel, Jack, the Angels, Dodgers, the Clippers, a lot of stuff going on. But here, people know you because the only entertainment is us.”
I was in San Antonio for a Wednesday night game against the hapless Raptors, and the place was sold out. In fact, they sold 99-percent of their tickets this season. “It’s a small town but it’s a community that really embraces their team, not only what guys do on the floor but also off the court,” Brent Barry said. “Guys are not only revered but respected for who they are, and everybody kinda is an individual off the floor here. I don’t know…it’s really kind of a nicely kept secret. People don’t really talk about the city of San Antonio too much or the franchise too much until it comes playoff time and San Antonio is in the thick of things, and I think that’s the way San Antonio likes it. We’re a blue collar group that just goes about our business and tries to enjoy each step of the way.”
Another cog in their success has been their management. Pop and Buford have been in place for what seems like ages in this current age of “fire ‘em if you don’t win now.” They’ve had a chance to hone their skills, and to experiment a bit and see what the best way to do things is. They do an almost perfect job of bringing in free agents (Brent Barry, Bruce Bowen, Tony Massenberg, Robert Horry, even Nesterovic, to a lesser degree) that can contribute at a high level. And look at the way they dealt with the trade deadline this year, going out and stealing Nazr from the Knicks.
Even Glenn Robinson. The guy couldn’t get off the bench in Philly all year—he can’t even bend over at the waist!—and then the Spurs bring him in and he hit several big shots last night. As Bruce Bowen told me: “It’s funny how when guys come here, they can change to conform to what the organization wants, and not, Oh, this my style, this is how I’ma do it! Case in point, look at Stephen Jackson. He was great for us. There had been words said about his attitude before he got here, and he fit in with us just right. Now, look at everyone else when they come here, they see the work ethic that a lot of guys exemplifies and they understand that in order to be on the same page, they have to get like that.”
Also, think about their Drafts. The Nuggets have built a strong team, but Carmelo Anthony and Francisco Elson are the only two guys on the roster that they actually drafted, and Melo was a no-brainer. For the most part, the Spurs pick at or near the bottom of the first round every year, and yet they’ve come up with above-average guys like Tony Parker, Beno Udrih and Manu Ginobili, who were each the 28th pick.
And they all like each other. When the Spurs lost Game One at home, Pop slid Ginobili—an All-Star, remember—out of the starting line-up and onto the bench. And that was OK. All they did was go out and bust the team with the best record in the NBA during the second half of the season.
But the thing that really stood out to me about the Spurs is their system. Pop wouldn’t really give up much about their main principles, but as Duncan explained, “Consistency. That is the system. We just want to do things consistently, methodically, just do them over and over again, just wear people down. That’s defensively, that’s offensively, and that is the system in its basic form.”
What Duncan described is exactly what the Spurs did last night. They run the same two plays, over and over and over: a high pick-and-roll and a low isolation for Duncan.
They win because they always get the right guys for their system, players who can do what is asked of them. For instance, one key to their system is that they don’t want to allow opponents to penetrate the middle of the floor. So many coaches preach, “Don’t give up the baseline,” but Pop’s system is completely the opposite; they don’t mind giving up the baseline, as long as players can guard the center of the court. I’m not going to mention any names, but there was one guy (there’s your hint) the Spurs had recently who consistently gave up the middle. And he’s no longer on the team.
Defensively, what sets them apart is that they have two players who are defensive player of the year candidates—Bowen and Duncan. So whenever they face a team with a good perimeter and good post player, the Spurs can handle it, and handle it well.
But what’s really amazing is that the Spurs have done all this without busting the bank. This year they had the 24th-highest salary cap number (out of 30 teams). Put it this way: the Clippers spent more on salary this year than the Spurs. That’ll change a bit next year, when Tony Parker’s new contract kicks in, but of their starters and key reserves, everyone is locked up for the forseeable future. (Robert Horry’s contract is up this summer, but he has an option to re-up, and odds are he will.)
Last year, we adopted the Jazz as the official team of The Links, because they always played hard, always played well, and were consistently overlooked. And in a strange way, the Spurs are exactly the same. No one cares about them—when was the last time ESPN did a feature on them or Tim Duncan was on the cover of Sports Illustrated?—but they just do what they do. And they win. A lot.
As I studied them the last few months while working on the story, they became my favorite team to watch. Everyone knows what they’re going to do, but they just do it anyway and dare you to stop them. And for the most part, nobody does.
That’s why I picked San Antonio to win it all. They’re deep, they’re solid, they know their roles, they don’t get nervous, and they match-up well with every team in the playoffs. Besides all that, as I mentioned the other day, I’m a basketball nerd. I love watching games not so much for scoring and dunks and stuff, but for match-ups, adjustments, plays. And the Spurs never disappoint me there.
If your team is out of the Playoffs, I say come and jump on the Spurs bandwagon with me.
Also, am I the only one who gets kinda creeped out by those commercials with Dr. J as a “Love Doctor” radio DJ? Anyone who’s been involved in, well, stuff like he’s been involved with probably should steer clear of doing anything like that. Next thing you know, Kwame Brown will be doing an ad for mentoring.
Great news is here.
That’s all I got…Here’s Sam…
http://slamonline.com/links/05022005/
Lang is still crazy busy at work, but last night he watched the Spurs knock out the Nuggets, and took time to reflect…
David Stern has to hate the San Antonio Spurs. They’re boring, they aren’t flashy, they aren’t marketable and their biggest star is easily confused with a robot, for goodness sakes.
The new issue of SLAM hits newsstands today or tomorrow, and it has two covers. A large chunk of the country gets Ben Wallace looking hard, doing the normal SLAM staredown while flossing his championship ring for the camera. The other chunk gets Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. But instead of the ice grills, they’re all smiling, which dovetails with the cover line Ryan Jones slapped on there: “Smiling All The Way To The Chip.” We did them smiling not only to switch up the normal straight-faced thing, but also because they aren’t really that type of team. The Spurs don’t win by intimidation, they win by execution and consistency.
I wrote the Spurs cover story, but there really wasn’t much writing involved. Instead, I went to San Antonio for a few days and interviewed pretty much everyone involved with the team—didn’t get Nesterovic because he was making himself scarce, and I didn’t get Nazr Muhammad because they’d traded for him two weeks before and he still didn’t really understand the Spurs system. I also spent time with Gregg Popovich, who was mad cool, and Spurs GM R.C. Buford, who invited me into his office and entertained me for a good fifteen minutes. (And I don’t know if he knew it or not, but there was a list of last names of draft picks on the blackboard behind him. I won’t reveal what order they were listed in, although I bet Chad Ford would pay me for this info.) I took all of the quotes I gathered (about 7,000 words worth) and cut and pasted and screwed and chopped them into something like a biography.
Going in to the story, the angle we wanted to take was simple: Why are the Spurs always so good? Building a good team in the NBA is hard enough, much less when you’re a playoff team every single year. The nature of the League is cyclical—you assemble a good team and win as many games as you can before the salary cap or age catches up with you. But somehow, the Spurs have managed to be competive nearly every year, and they’ve taken two of the last six championships.
(Before we go any further, a large part of what has made the Spurs great is luck. In the last two decades, the team has twice found itself on the brink of decline, and both times they won the NBA Draft Lottery. The results? Tim Duncan and David Robinson. As Buford told me, “One explanation for our success is that we’ve been lucky when we needed to be.”)
In the SLAM story, we break it down into a couple of facets that combine to make the Spurs so great. Without giving up too much of the SLAM story—available on newstands soon!—one part is definitely the city of San Antonio. It’s one of the NBA’s smallest market, but the Spurs are the only major pro team in town, and the people of the city are crazy about the team. “Basketball-wise, people here know you because this is the only thing here besides the rodeo,” Robert Horry told me. “When I was in Houston there were the Texans and the Astros, in LA you had Denzel, Jack, the Angels, Dodgers, the Clippers, a lot of stuff going on. But here, people know you because the only entertainment is us.”
I was in San Antonio for a Wednesday night game against the hapless Raptors, and the place was sold out. In fact, they sold 99-percent of their tickets this season. “It’s a small town but it’s a community that really embraces their team, not only what guys do on the floor but also off the court,” Brent Barry said. “Guys are not only revered but respected for who they are, and everybody kinda is an individual off the floor here. I don’t know…it’s really kind of a nicely kept secret. People don’t really talk about the city of San Antonio too much or the franchise too much until it comes playoff time and San Antonio is in the thick of things, and I think that’s the way San Antonio likes it. We’re a blue collar group that just goes about our business and tries to enjoy each step of the way.”
Another cog in their success has been their management. Pop and Buford have been in place for what seems like ages in this current age of “fire ‘em if you don’t win now.” They’ve had a chance to hone their skills, and to experiment a bit and see what the best way to do things is. They do an almost perfect job of bringing in free agents (Brent Barry, Bruce Bowen, Tony Massenberg, Robert Horry, even Nesterovic, to a lesser degree) that can contribute at a high level. And look at the way they dealt with the trade deadline this year, going out and stealing Nazr from the Knicks.
Even Glenn Robinson. The guy couldn’t get off the bench in Philly all year—he can’t even bend over at the waist!—and then the Spurs bring him in and he hit several big shots last night. As Bruce Bowen told me: “It’s funny how when guys come here, they can change to conform to what the organization wants, and not, Oh, this my style, this is how I’ma do it! Case in point, look at Stephen Jackson. He was great for us. There had been words said about his attitude before he got here, and he fit in with us just right. Now, look at everyone else when they come here, they see the work ethic that a lot of guys exemplifies and they understand that in order to be on the same page, they have to get like that.”
Also, think about their Drafts. The Nuggets have built a strong team, but Carmelo Anthony and Francisco Elson are the only two guys on the roster that they actually drafted, and Melo was a no-brainer. For the most part, the Spurs pick at or near the bottom of the first round every year, and yet they’ve come up with above-average guys like Tony Parker, Beno Udrih and Manu Ginobili, who were each the 28th pick.
And they all like each other. When the Spurs lost Game One at home, Pop slid Ginobili—an All-Star, remember—out of the starting line-up and onto the bench. And that was OK. All they did was go out and bust the team with the best record in the NBA during the second half of the season.
But the thing that really stood out to me about the Spurs is their system. Pop wouldn’t really give up much about their main principles, but as Duncan explained, “Consistency. That is the system. We just want to do things consistently, methodically, just do them over and over again, just wear people down. That’s defensively, that’s offensively, and that is the system in its basic form.”
What Duncan described is exactly what the Spurs did last night. They run the same two plays, over and over and over: a high pick-and-roll and a low isolation for Duncan.
They win because they always get the right guys for their system, players who can do what is asked of them. For instance, one key to their system is that they don’t want to allow opponents to penetrate the middle of the floor. So many coaches preach, “Don’t give up the baseline,” but Pop’s system is completely the opposite; they don’t mind giving up the baseline, as long as players can guard the center of the court. I’m not going to mention any names, but there was one guy (there’s your hint) the Spurs had recently who consistently gave up the middle. And he’s no longer on the team.
Defensively, what sets them apart is that they have two players who are defensive player of the year candidates—Bowen and Duncan. So whenever they face a team with a good perimeter and good post player, the Spurs can handle it, and handle it well.
But what’s really amazing is that the Spurs have done all this without busting the bank. This year they had the 24th-highest salary cap number (out of 30 teams). Put it this way: the Clippers spent more on salary this year than the Spurs. That’ll change a bit next year, when Tony Parker’s new contract kicks in, but of their starters and key reserves, everyone is locked up for the forseeable future. (Robert Horry’s contract is up this summer, but he has an option to re-up, and odds are he will.)
Last year, we adopted the Jazz as the official team of The Links, because they always played hard, always played well, and were consistently overlooked. And in a strange way, the Spurs are exactly the same. No one cares about them—when was the last time ESPN did a feature on them or Tim Duncan was on the cover of Sports Illustrated?—but they just do what they do. And they win. A lot.
As I studied them the last few months while working on the story, they became my favorite team to watch. Everyone knows what they’re going to do, but they just do it anyway and dare you to stop them. And for the most part, nobody does.
That’s why I picked San Antonio to win it all. They’re deep, they’re solid, they know their roles, they don’t get nervous, and they match-up well with every team in the playoffs. Besides all that, as I mentioned the other day, I’m a basketball nerd. I love watching games not so much for scoring and dunks and stuff, but for match-ups, adjustments, plays. And the Spurs never disappoint me there.
If your team is out of the Playoffs, I say come and jump on the Spurs bandwagon with me.
Also, am I the only one who gets kinda creeped out by those commercials with Dr. J as a “Love Doctor” radio DJ? Anyone who’s been involved in, well, stuff like he’s been involved with probably should steer clear of doing anything like that. Next thing you know, Kwame Brown will be doing an ad for mentoring.
Great news is here.
That’s all I got…Here’s Sam…