Buford is CEO of Spurs Sports & Entertainment, not just the Spurs Basketball Club. It is perfectly valid to wonder how involved he is in roster moves. How involved do you think he was, for example, when the Spurs picked up Cedi Osman? My guess was it was something along the lines of "Hey RC, we are making a 3 team trade, we're going to pick up a bunch of SRPs and some small contract guys, Lamar Stevens and Cedi Osman" and RC said "okay!"
That's a fairly insignificant trade, as far as the CEO of large enterprise that involves more than just the on-the-court activities of a basketball team, goes. But it's a fairly significant trade in the rebuilding of the club, considering Cedi is a pretty important part of the rotation. What's Pop's role in moves like these? Whatever RC's role these days, it is undoubtedly less significant than it was in 2001. Would RC and Pop be involved in something like a Trae trade? Yeah probably, but largely only to the degree of signing off - they wouldn't have been involved in putting together the scouting to justify the move, or have been involved in the diligence on competing moves that could be made etc. Even if we count 2001 as a major rebuild for the Spurs (which I wouldn't), none of the people who did the leg work back then are doing the leg work now.
Glad to see you back here, arguing for the sake of arguing, though.