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guy suffered a stroke. while the game had somewhat passed him by, obviously he was nothing like this early in the season when he was on the benchPop did not look good. We all get old but man
I'll never get over how much Mitch looks like Pennywise from It tbh.
guy suffered a stroke. while the game had somewhat passed him by, obviously he was nothing like this early in the season when he was on the benchPop did not look good. We all get old but man
On the coaching thing. Today we saw a great coach completely losing any sense and singlehandedly losing an important playoff game for his team. What Daigneault did was worse than any bad decision Mitch has done all season long. Doesn't make him a bad coach.
Point is, Mitch deserves a chance and even if you thought there were better coaches to be had he still doesn't deserve being piled on for the first mistake he makes next season. Which will happen.
I have never been a Greg pop fan. But I will refrain from saying anything negative at this time after seeing such a sick man. Hope he improves to full capacity.
at this point we just gotta hope Mitch steps up to the occasion and proves he belongs. I hope that lights a fire under him. The main thing I want to see from our coach is the hunger to win by all means neccessary and we need to get back to having a system that makes players excel.
That would be a problem if the entire defense is just wemby and it falls apart without him. Even when healthy he plays 30 mins a game.
Does anyone remember when Pop took over? I think the players really liked Pop and wanted him to be the coach back then. It seems that they players really like Mitch more than I thought based on what we've heard since Pop stepped down and Mitch got the job. Maybe it could turn out much better than some of us are thinking? Pop's first season was filled with injuries and he took over midway through, Mitch has had to do something similar. The team didn't have the level of injuries the Spurs had when Pop took over, but also Pop's team without injuries was expected to make the playoffs and go deep, whereas the team Mitch took over, was only expected to fight for the play-in, so really, couldn't afford any injuries. I'm now starting to believe in Mitch a lot more and am excited to see what he can do next season with hopefully a much better and fully healthy team. He also needs time to implement his stuff during the off-season and I hope he does lots of changes defensively and implements his stuff on offense.
Only Bob Weiss had a lower win percentage than Johnson, who has coached over 40 games in Spurs history. I am not optimistic.
I remember Weiss was there waiting for David to finish his Navy time and that explains his record. As for Mitch, he is smart, has the team behind him and I think he will be just fine. Hoping he get some great assistants too.
Great comparison. Never really thought of it that way.
It was a while back but I thought there were rumours that the players didn’t like hill Abe wanted him gone. The fans hated the move though and accused pop threw hill under the bus. The 99 season the spurs stated off shaky and rumour was pop would be canned if they lost to Houston that night they were like 6-8 at that point. The players knew and won that game. They ripped off 9 straight and 31-5 the rest of the season, then went 15-2 (was a post season record then before the shaqobe lakers went 15-1 and the warriors went 16-1.
Larry Brown was the coach waiting for DRob.
Should have Kawhi hitting him with the bo staff tbh
Brown lost more in his first season than Weiss did the year before iirc.
Back to Mitch. He has a lot of positive traits. But as superficial as it sounds, having a commanding presence is important with so many alpha males, and that's my concern with Mitch, he might be too nice.
This may be true, but I can't think of any current coach right now that has a commanding presence in the NBA. You could say Thibs with the Knicks but outside of him I can't think of anybody. Mike Malone was the only coach that really had that type of presence.
malone may have been to alpha for his own good as it is supposedly one of the reasons for his getting fired; it wasn't working with the older players anymore. pop was able to master that fine line between a father figure and a hard ass coach.
Yea the days of the Pat Riley disciplinarian style coaches are gone, these filthy rich players are gonna tune that out quick/move on. Today’s league requires a literal psychology degree to manage personalities and motivate each individual in a manner specific to them.
Underrated point, tbh. I'm hoping the Spurs go hard on quality assistants to help Mitch. I don't love Brett Brown being the only experienced mentor on the bench. Might even be good to get a sharp former player with championship experience to join the staff. Would love if that were Manu, but it's clear he isn't interested in that. But... the next Ime or Kerr would be a nice addition to the staff.
Perhaps the one aspect that i like about this hiring is that the Spurs get to reduce the generational gap in age between their Coach and their best player (s)..Wemby (21), Castle (20), Fox (27) and Mitch Johnson (38) are only separated by 18 and 11 years respectively, which seems like the right balance for a mentor-understudy rapport. Pop was simply too old (school) for those guys.. Even someone like Budenholzer or Snyder (in their late 50s) would have been a bit old at this point. Mitch is the at same age when Spo took over Miami in 2008 after an equally long stint as assistant/video coordinator..
Last edited by spursistan; 1 Hour Ago at 01:59 PM.
I'm not expecting or suggesting anything ridiculous. Nor am I saying he can't evolve into a strong leader. Nor am I saying he should be an asshole. He has most of the traits needed. I'm just saying he needs to be an asshole, so to speak, when needed, and can't only be the smart quiet guy. Just my opinion. I mean, is he going to yell at Victor the way Pop would yell at Tim? It sounds like a stupid detail but to me it's important.
Tbh, the culture is set by the best players. If Wemby and Fox lead by example, others will fall in line, especially since Spurs try to avoid having idiots on the roster.
would love to have a defensive coach on the staff tbh. Our defense has sucked ever since Ime left.
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