GQ: The San Antonio Super-Villains: Why Gregg Popovich Is an Evil Genius

[Spur|n|Austin]

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/gregg-popovich-san-antonio-spurs-nba-basketball-nights-off.jpg

"Nights off" is what Spurs announcer Sean Elliott likes to call them. Put that way, it sounds so benign, so humane. San Antonio, an aging team bracing itself for a deep playoff run, is doing what any rational enterprise would do: Conserve resources in an effort to realize a long-term goal. The Spurs, in their infinite wisdom, continue to innovate. The sport marches on as we all look on in awe. Gregg Popovich has struck again.

Except these "nights off"—shrewd as they may be for the Spurs' self-interest—put the organization in an awkward position. When the Spurs don't show up, it tampers with the basic law of sports: That both teams will play hard and produce a meaningful outcome. The outcome will be entered into the record, which will in turn paint a complete picture of the regular season. That picture will be used to determine which teams will make the playoffs and who they will play against. Oh, and as collateral damage, it fucks over ticket-buyers and cable subscribers who want to get the best product for their money.

The question is, should any of this bother Gregg Popovich? On the surface, he's certainly not violating any rule or neglecting his responsibilities as head coach of the Spurs. He's trying to win. The Spurs will win enough to make the playoffs and maybe even push late for a top seed. If Pop were to rest players too much, the Spurs would be compromised and the entire strategy would backfire. Compare what he's doing to tanking, that other great scourge upon the NBA's competitive landscape: Under the current system, a bad team is (in theory) rewarded for losing games with a higher draft position. The Spurs must constantly balance the need to rest with the need to win a certain amount.

What Popovich is doing is almost certainly helping his team. What suffers, though, is every other team. There's a case to be made that Popovich is trolling other contenders, or the NBA, or the networks that end up broadcasting meaningless Spurs games. Some have even suggested that he's trolling no one in particular, that he just can't help himself. One could argue that the Spurs are playing possum, hiding themselves in plain sight until it's time to crank it up for the playoffs. None of this quite gets at the problem, though, which is that the Spurs destabilize the entire NBA. They become a randomizing force, letting their personal schedule dictate the way the season plays out.

Imagine a perfect NBA where every player gives it his all for 82 games. Good teams deserve to win, even against other good teams. Bad teams deserve to lose, which is why the draft exists to help balance things out. The Spurs will rest against good teams, they'll rest against bad team, they'll rest if it's a big game or a game of zero consequence. If the Spurs-at-rest lose to another good team, they inflate that team's record, which can have implications for the playoffs; if they lose to a team on the cusp of the playoffs, it comes at the expense of other teams fighting for a chance to make the postseason. If they lose to a bad team, they distract them from their long journey toward the bottom of the standings.
If it seems like I'm overstating the consequences here, think about how many playoff matchups are decided by a game or two, or how often lottery odds come down to a few final games. It's like the Spurs are perpetuating the opposite of tanking—they're making teams better than they're supposed to be, which in turn handicaps all those around them. Ironically, none of this really affects the Spurs. They are almost guaranteed to make the playoffs and have a funny way of being completely immune to match-ups. The fate of other teams are far more contingent. The Spurs don't have the same problems as these mere mortals and thus need not conduct themselves accordingly.

This is the dark side of Popovich and the Spurs. What's best for them isn't always best for the league; the same intelligence that earns him acclaim can also cause structural problems for the league as a whole. That's not to say that Popovich is two-faced or conflicted. Quite the opposite: He knows what he needs to do for his team and, Hobbes-like, could care less what happens to anyone else. That's a strange reversal of the common perception of the Spurs as the Good Guys, upholders of the Right Way gospel who stood for something more honorable, more reputable than the rest of the league. We even saw some of this during these past Finals, when San Antonio's style was praised for its effortless (and devastatingly effective) team play.

The truth is, the Spurs have never really been the league's moral compass. The Right Way to do basketball was never about saving the world—it was about saving themselves. We were never right to view them as some kind of hardwood mega-church; all along, the Spurs have in fact worked more like a cutting-edge corporation, trying to find ways to do basketball better than anyone else without ever running afoul of the rules. In this case, there's nothing being broken. What we're realizing, though, is that the Spurs aren't above a little bending.


http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2014/11/san-antonio-super-villains-why-gregg-popovich-is-an-evil-genius.html

[Mr. Body]

This verges on the interesting, as if the author was getting to a grander point but failed.

[vander]

Shorten the meaningless regular season or reduce playoff teams. It's that simple. I hope pop rests as many guys for as many games as possible

[weeks]

Awesome article. One pet peeve tho. How you gonna write for GQ and still say could care less?

[BG_Spurs_Fan]

This verges on the interesting, as if the author was getting to a grander point but failed.

Failed miserably indeed, as it seems to suggest the Spurs always lose shorthanded games and skew the standings, but their record when resting players has been quite good actually. It also fails to even mention the notion that an increased role for, say Beli or Patty, in a certain game could be more impactful than playing a 37 year old injury prone and tired Manu.

[Spur|n|Austin]

Awesome article. One pet peeve tho. How you gonna write for GQ and still say could care less?

He also misspelled Sean Elliott's name but I corrected it.

Edit - I believe you're thinking "couldn't care less"..

[Dex]

He also misspelled Sean Elliott's name but I corrected it.

Edit - I believe you're thinking "couldn't care less"..

"Couldn't care less" is the correct usage.

"Could care less" implies you do care, at least a little.

8Gv0H-vPoDc

[Splits]

:lol that was a turrible article

[boutons_deux]

total bullshit.

82 games is too many

B2Bs are an abomination cheating the game, the players, the fans.

29 teams is too many, not enough playing/coaching talent. EC can't even get 8 worthy teams to the playoffs, usually only 4 have a .500 season.

none of the above is caused by Pop, whose job is to win Championships, not bust his players for 82 games.

Shoals and his/her article suck.

[UZER]

He also misspelled Sean Elliott's name but I corrected it.

Edit - I believe you're thinking "couldn't care less"..

Was waiting for Sean luckthefakers

[ajh18]

This article loses a lot of credibility based on the Spurs finishing with the top record in the league last year. You could easily make the point that based on that, Pop's strategy produces a better basketball product than any other team, and that the others are "cheating" the league by overworking their players, risking injury, and not giving potential contributors an opportunity to grow.

Even if the author is correct in the (big) assumption that the Spurs would win more if they didn't rest players, all that would equate to is an even bigger advantage in the standings. Not sure what the argument really is, except maybe that it's more "fair" for the Spurs to dominate every team in the league to an equal degree, rather than simply dominating them?

[Chris]

:lol that was a turrible article

Butthurt editorial from a GQ hack :lol


great scourge upon the NBA's competitive landscape

The Spurs are destroying the NBA :cry

[Spur|n|Austin]

I don't understand how the Spurs resting players is any different than a baseball manager rotating pitchers. You have a known, finite resource (pitch count/minutes played) per day. You ration the use of that resource to maximize your overall success in a season. No one hates on a baseball manager who starts his fourth pitcher in the rotation over his ace on two days rest. Does it give the team the absolute best chance of winning that day? Of course not. Does it give them a much better chance of winning when the ace starts again?

Ultimately people will have to accept that spurs basketball is about the entirety of resource management. We are betting that the depth of our team will outplay the depth of any other team. And I mean depth of roster as well as depth of individual physical reserves. No one is 100% come playoffs but of we are healthier amd fresher it's not our fault you didn't manage your resources as efficiently.

[PÒÓCH]

I get all my insightful, thought provoking and meaningful sports takes from a fashion magazine.

[Ice009]

I like Tony Parker's idea the best. Shorten the pre-season and start the season at least two weeks earlier so that there is less back to backs.

[Aztecfan03]

Awesome article. One pet peeve tho. How you gonna write for GQ and still say could care less?
:lol It's not like GQ is some pinacle of journalism.

[Aztecfan03]

I don't understand how the Spurs resting players is any different than a baseball manager rotating pitchers. You have a known, finite resource (pitch count/minutes played) per day. You ration the use of that resource to maximize your overall success in a season. No one hates on a baseball manager who starts his fourth pitcher in the rotation over his ace on two days rest. Does it give the team the absolute best chance of winning that day? Of course not. Does it give them a much better chance of winning when the ace starts again?

Ultimately people will have to accept that spurs basketball is about the entirety of resource management. We are betting that the depth of our team will outplay the depth of any other team. And I mean depth of roster as well as depth of individual physical reserves. No one is 100% come playoffs but of we are healthier amd fresher it's not our fault you didn't manage your resources as efficiently.

Well, actually the ace on two days rest would probably be worse than the fourth starter. But I get your point and agree.

[TampaDude]

Awesome article. One pet peeve tho. How you gonna write for GQ and still say could care less?

Not only that...


The Spurs will rest against good teams, they'll rest against bad team, they'll rest if it's a big game or a game of zero consequence.

Who the fuck is your editor, GQ? Fire him!

[Phenomanul]

The author also misses the point that Pop uses rest days to give younger players minutes they normally would not receive. He thrusts them into pressure situations and expects them to perform at the same level as his aging starters... Doing so accelerates their development such that they can be counted on whenever their number is called.

[howbouthemspurs]

Well that was a waste of time!

[xmas1997]

Great article, a little verbose, but still interesting once you get through it.

[EVAY]

This verges on the interesting, as if the author was getting to a grander point but failed.

Well said, but I think you were too kind. It didn't quite verge on getting to a grander point. It kind of teased that it was going to do so, but in the words of T.S. Eliot, it "ended not with a bang but with a whimper".

[ulosturedge]

Yeah that article was all over the place without getting to the point. Pop isn't trolling anybody. He's got more important things to do then to be trolling teams. To me Pop uses the regular season to experiment with new things. Always trying to add new things to the Spurs repertoire. They can play slow and they can play fast. Spurs basketball is always evolving. Teams are already trying to copy the share the ball philosophy. The Spurs are already looking for new ways to do things.

It was epic the way the Spurs dismantled teams in the playoffs especially the Heat. When teams shrink down their rotation and play the Stars heavy minutes the Spurs did the exact opposite. They used the full depth of their roster to wear out the opposing teams for doing that. Parker running off screens all over the court just to wear out his defender if nothing else was pure genius. Having Spurs players playing a shorter amount of minutes, but with maximum effort eventually would take a toll on opposing teams playing tighter rotations. I remember thinking in the finals "wear those fuckers out!" especially Lebron. It looked like as the series went on the more of a toll they took. The ball movement on the offense was the obvious added element last year, but everything else I spoke of was the more subtle things that were going on. That's how I saw it anyways.

[bigfan]

The author needs to stick with reviewing mens skivvies or whatever.

[SnakeBoy]

Well that was a waste of time!

[Spur|n|Austin]

The author needs to stick with reviewing mens skivvies or whatever.

Also wingtips with no socks.

[Dingle Barry]

Pretty fucking sad that someone (and likely at least two people) whose livelihood depends on the ability to write publishes "could care less."

[Splits]

Great article, a little verbose, but still interesting once you get through it.

Jesus Christ Allah Akbar you are fucking retarded.

[Mnky]

Didn't the Spurs have a pretty good record ...last yearr?? Didn't help out too many bad teams wwith their records. ...

[100%duncan]

Was about to read, but then read the thread first.


Thanks guys :lol

[DMC]

What you should take from the article is that someone outside of SA knows who the Spurs are and couldn't get an interview with Kobe.

Also, he's talking about a paradigm shift, where the Spurs aren't Rocky Balboa, but Ivan Drago... trained to kill ruthlessly and effortlessly, while giving the impression they are cuddly and cute (unlike Drago)

[DMC]

Didn't the Spurs have a pretty good record ...last yearr?? Didn't help out too many bad teams wwith their records. ...

That wasn't the point. 1 or 2 games that the Spurs should have won had they not rested starters (probably would have) but at the same time it could have meant they don't make a deep playoff run because of the Kobe effect of having to play 40 minutes a night to appease the rhinestone ball cap wearing celebs who never look up from their PDAs anyhow.

Teams should do what's required to win. As Spurs fans we not only approve of it, we demand it. When Manu hurt his arm in a meaningless last game of the season, that was stupid, and we all wanted him to sit but he could have done it in the 1st game of the playoffs as well.

Fuck the rest of the league, who cares what they think or how it impacts them? You have superteams with over half the total NBA titles ever won, the lion's share of the talent year in and year out and somehow a small market team like SA is supposed to give a shit and be a Washington Generals team? No thanks. The Spurs should be the favorite team of anyone who hates status quo and corporate scams like some sports seem to be, however oddly enough the Spurs status quo is a playoff appearance and lately deep runs into the playoffs.

[Mr Bones]

Pop's strategy has so many more benefits then most analysts give him credit for. #1, it gives bench players starts/minutes. That's important. It gets them ready for big moments down the road. Patty Mills played with incredible confidence in the playoffs last year, because he was in familiar territory. The other thing it does is a brilliant psychological play... if the Spurs lose, everyone thinks, well, big deal, of course they lost, their best players weren't out there... but if they win, or even compete in a close game, it makes the other team think that the Spurs' system is so good that it can beat you even when the stars are sitting. Pop has specifically mentioned a regular season game against the Heat where he sat guys and experimented with Diaw guarding LeBron. It worked better than he expected, and that paid off later when Diaw became the starter in the finals...

[Mnky]

That wasn't the point.

....

[G-Nob]

1. No lottery team has ever said, "if only the Spurs wouldn't have rested their big three in that game in Dec." and 2. I question the author's motive. It sounds like he's trying to praise Pop for his season long strategy but falls flat on the effect it has on the rest of the league. He must've bought tix to a "rest game" recently.

[hyhy]

So we are the bad guys now?

[ddjeffries]

Good read. Although this is why I like the how english football (and all other football leagues) work. The regular season is the playoffs. You win (or draw) the most games in the season, you win the league based on points. Now NBA will never have ties but your could do the same thing. Also, this would help Adam Silver add more midseason tournaments like he said he wanted to do last year and maybe make the game truly international. I just hate the idea that you can be the best team through 82 games and get one bad match up in the playoffs and get knocked out.

[#2!]

Shorten the meaningless regular season or reduce playoff teams. It's that simple. I hope pop rests as many guys for as many games as possible

I've prescribed to the "shorten the season" idea before as well, but I now find it to be untenable. History is what keeps me from wanting to see the league to drop the regular season down to 67 games or so. While the hypothetical reduction in wear on players would be nice, it would reset existing stat records to zero. Players' production from anytime before any significant change in the number or length of games would be disregarded completely.

[Ed Helicopter Jones]

Whatever. The author says himself that the Spurs are operating within the rules. Every team tends to coast a bit during stretches of the regular season because it's so freaking long. The Spurs just are more obvious because Pop sits guys rather than have them jog around lifeless on the court.

The league is still making money with their 82 game schedule. If they want to improve the product on the floor the league should shorten the season to 45 games and cut the 30 teams down to 20. It's all about making money, not about putting the best possible regular season effort and match-ups on the floor every night. Pop's dealing with the ridiculousness of putting guys through a 100 game basketball season.

[ajh18]

Someone in another of the "tanking" threads mentioned the idea of a tournament for the non-playoff teams that either determines - or at least impacts - the lottery position.

On the one hand, you could have a playoff for the non-playoff teams where team's finishing order determines their draft position. Teams would be less likely to tank because it would affect their home court advantage in the lottery playoff.

Another, more complicated option would be to keep the current lottery system based on record, but have it supplemented through a playoff system. So theoretically, 50% of the "lottery points" would be based on record, with 50% being based on lottery playoff performance. Tanking would/could still occur, but it wouldn't be as blatant (since it could negatively impact lottery-playoff position) and the overall payoff for the worst records would be less. Under that kind of system, the 12th-worst team could have an equal chance in the draft if they win the lottery playoff as the worst team in the league that finishes last in the lottery playoff.

[vander]

I've prescribed to the "shorten the season" idea before as well, but I now find it to be untenable. History is what keeps me from wanting to see the league to drop the regular season down to 67 games or so. While the hypothetical reduction in wear on players would be nice, it would reset existing stat records to zero. Players' production from anytime before any significant change in the number or length of games would be disregarded completely.
In my opinion, career stats don't matter that much in basketball, who cares that Karl Malone and Kobe scored that many points, per-game stats are the stats of relevance.

but an 82 game season with only 12 teams making the playoffs would still be a lot more meaningful, NBA should start with that

[littlecoyotecoin]

A better article on the matter...

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--david-stern-stumbles-again-in-his-failed-culture-war-against-the-spurs-194828970.html

[exstatic]

A better article on the matter...

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--david-stern-stumbles-again-in-his-failed-culture-war-against-the-spurs-194828970.html

That may have been Woj's greatest article, ever. I wonder if he lost any kind of league/team access after that. He not only cut off Stern's balls, he shoved them in his mouth.