Pop can't coach backup point guards

[Bruno]

His stats on the Grizzlies would have been fine on the Spurs. So no, he wasn't done.

Memphis won 22 games last year. Putting stats with a 22 win team isn't exactly the same than putting stats with a 56 win team.
Even Jason Hart had solid stats with a crappy Bobcats team in 04-05.

I don't disagree that Stoudamire was done but using Kerr as your proof? Which of Kerr's moves tells you he knows what he's doing?

I remember a poster whose name start by tim and end by vp calling Kerr's two biggest trades (the trade for Shaq and the trade for Jason Richardson) good trades...

And like I said, you can make excuses for each individual case but when they all follow a similar pattern, then there might be something more to it than "LOL they suck".

Well they sucked. It's quite hard to put the failure of a player on a coach when the player sucks. And, as I said before, the reason why so much backup PG have failed is because Spurs never put the money to get a decent one and when they have invested a low first round pick, it was on Beno.

Pop has been the coach since 1997. Cherry-picking a time frame doesn't make sense since I'm talking about Pop's coaching on the whole. If you want to play the contract card, how do you explain Kerr, Porter and AD? All three were backup point guards making a good chunk of cash.

Porter and AD are good example that your theory is wrong. I don't know why you bring these names.

So limited that Hart and Carter are still in the NBA a half decade later . . .

Vaughn has played 12 seasons in the NBA. I guess he isn't limited...
Hart has had one good year with a crappy team.
Carter has started to be somewhat decent 3 years after he left Spurs.

Both players were brought in during the season. Both players saw their production slip by about half. How can they suddenly be "done" once they sign with the Spurs?

I can buy the done argument if these players were signed at the beginning of a season and they had just aged too much during the offseason. But they were signed during the middle of a season. They both played well to begin their Spurs careers. They both ended up playing worse and worse for Pop until they were in street clothes.

They were "done" because they both basically had to end their NBA career after having played for Spurs.
Both played well for bad/average teams but weren't able to play well for a contender.
And Stoudamire played well two games before sucking. What a great proof that he wasn't done...

[El Jefe]

His stats on the Grizzlies would have been fine on the Spurs. So no, he wasn't done.

I'll generally agree with your point. Pop does seem especially hard on his back up point, and Stoudamire did look good for a small sample size before being given the cringe worthy instruction of "Shoot more, pass less"....

But I don't buy the "His stats on the Grizz would have been fine" line. Putting up good numbers on a bad team is a well known phenomenon. Just because he was posting numbers on the Grizz does not prove that he still had any gas left in the tank.

I tend to think that's the case with several of these guys. They put up good numbers on a bad team before coming here (Stoudamire), or they put up good numbers on a bad team after leaving here (Beno). Guys like this are capable of getting theirs when there are plenty of shots going around, but they do nothing to further the cause of winning, and thus they are more than expendable to the Spurs.

You are onto something though Timvp, Pop is harder on his PG than pretty much anyone else on the roster. Wasn't he a PG in his playing days? Is it true that coaches are harder on their old position than anyone else?

[Horse]

You know I've often questioned Pop, I was made as when Parker took antonio daniels job, And just as made when he let stephen jackson get away. But just look at Parker and jackson's replacement Ginobili now. We just have to trust in Pop it's just that simple.

[mookie2001]

i always liked jason hart, shouldve kept him

[Obstructed_View]

Not just point guards, see Rasho and Nazr, 2006 playoffs, under the heading "smallball". Speaking as someone that thinks the Spurs have had a legitimate chance at the le virtually every season since 2002, the Spurs' coaching staff misses the forest for the trees far too often for my comfort, and I now get a familiar sourness in the pit of my stomach when I see Finley getting so many minutes, so many tiny lineups on the floor, and seeing Roger Mason running the point as a 13 point lead turns into a 2 point deficit.

[LaMarcus Bryant]

I agree for the most part, but not for NVE. That guy was flat out washed out when he got here, end of story. His defense made Beno's look like Bowen's.

There isn't a more obvious example than Chuck Ward and Damon Stoudemire. You seriously can mark, by the day, or moment, when DS started playing like this. It was the day after Pop told him he wanted to be more aggressive. It was like clockwork. And it was disgusting, because by just being himself, he helped us edge out a few RRT wins. Chuck Ward's stroke and 3pt % was destroyed by Pop.

The more and more I dwell on this RMJ at PG strategy, I like it less and less. From Hill's one man stop of a fast break alley oop on Friday, to his complete pwnage of a 2 time MVP in crunch time, this kid IS our spark off the bench right now.

Not even giving him a chance is an insult and shoots this team's chances to improve right in the foot.

[mabrignani]

speedy claxton

[Capt Bringdown]

Not just point guards, see Rasho and Nazr, 2006 playoffs, under the heading "smallball". Speaking as someone that thinks the Spurs have had a legitimate chance at the le virtually every season since 2002, the Spurs' coaching staff misses the forest for the trees far too often for my comfort, and I now get a familiar sourness in the pit of my stomach when I see Finley getting so many minutes, so many tiny lineups on the floor, and seeing Roger Mason running the point as a 13 point lead turns into a 2 point deficit.

+1.
You start to see patterns that cannot be attributed entirely to the personnel - coaching definitely has a bearing on these things.

For the tough love proponents, where's the tough love with Finley? The dude can take entire games, or even months off, but Pop's patience with him is bottomless.

[K-State Spur]

Not just point guards, see Rasho and Nazr, 2006 playoffs, under the heading "smallball". Speaking as someone that thinks the Spurs have had a legitimate chance at the le virtually every season since 2002, the Spurs' coaching staff misses the forest for the trees far too often for my comfort, and I now get a familiar sourness in the pit of my stomach when I see Finley getting so many minutes, so many tiny lineups on the floor, and seeing Roger Mason running the point as a 13 point lead turns into a 2 point deficit.

Controversial subject on here I know, but the staff was actually right about small ball being the way to beat that Mavs team. Unfortunately we didn't have the hybrid 3/4 player that we really needed to make it work.

Since the Spurs got beat, we all would have much rather gone down playing with the traditional line-up. But the Warriors showed the next year how you susceptible the Mavs were to the small ball approach.

[GSH]

Memphis won 22 games last year. Putting stats with a 22 win team isn't exactly the same than putting stats with a 56 win team.
Even Jason Hart had solid stats with a crappy Bobcats team in 04-05.

Putting up points or boards on a crappy team is one thing. Putting up assists is another. Putting up almost 7 assists with a very good AST/TO ratio while on a crappy team is something else entirely. A crappy backup PG can't do that. Period. I know you know the game well enough. You're just not prepared to think of Jason Hart as a decent backup PG. And it's because of what happened when he played here. And that's what TimVP is talking about.

Hart's AST/TO ratio in 04/05 was about 3.5. Look at which PG's have 5+ AST/G and an AST/TO ratios above 3.0 this season: Calderon, Paul, Kidd, Fisher, Rondo, D. Williams. Billups would usually be on the list, but not in Denver. The closest comparisons to Hart's numbers would be last year's numbers for Sebastian Telfair (Seattle) or Earl Watson (Minnesota). Neither one of them are top tier PG's, obviously. But neither one are scrubs that you wouldn't want coming off your bench. And Hart is 6-3, and a better defender than either of them.

[Obstructed_View]

Controversial subject on here I know, but the staff was actually right about small ball being the way to beat that Mavs team. Unfortunately we didn't have the hybrid 3/4 player that we really needed to make it work.

Since the Spurs got beat, we all would have much rather gone down playing with the traditional line-up. But the Warriors showed the next year how you susceptible the Mavs were to the small ball approach.

The Spurs won 63 games with the traditional lineup, and made the change to the smallball lineup during the Sacramento series, so any suggestion that it was a Dallas strategy is just wrong. They were under .500 in the playoffs with the small lineup and lost in overtime of game seven against the Mavericks because it took them three games just to adjust to having to try to outscore the opponent due to the sudden and complete lack of interior defense. You never make adjustments to your own team in order to deal with a team that's inferior to you. Not coincidentally, that's exactly what AJ did with the Mavericks against Golden State.

If you decide smallball is the way to beat a team, then you start using it six months beforehand and only use it when it's working rather than claiming it as the new team philosophy two games into the playoffs, especially when one of those games was a 45 point blowout win. The refusal to put either of the centers in at any point is not justifiable. To emphasise the point, when Horry and Duncan were in foul trouble in one game during the Dallas series, Pop put Oberto on the floor, who was a rookie at the time and had no idea how to play with the Spurs. Going small is one thing, but completely removing both centers from the rotation even though they're completely healthy against a team that had a center rotation of Diop and Dampier playing alongside Nowitzki? Any argument that he wasn't punishing Rasho and Nazr for some reason goes out the window at exactly that moment.

[Bruno]

Putting up points or boards on a crappy team is one thing. Putting up assists is another. Putting up almost 7 assists with a very good AST/TO ratio while on a crappy team is something else entirely. A crappy backup PG can't do that. Period. I know you know the game well enough. You're just not prepared to think of Jason Hart as a decent backup PG. And it's because of what happened when he played here. And that's what TimVP is talking about.

First, it was 5 apg.

Second, you have a very strange way to see things by looking only at 04-05. Jason Hart has continued to play after his year in Charlotte and he hasn't been a decent backup PG.

[ducks]

speedy claxton

was not that great

[picnroll]

Only having read the firs post:

Ward sucked sucked and was washed up.
Stoudemire sucked and was washed up.
Van Exel sucked Pop went with him way too long.
My gerbil has bigger balls and more heart than Beno. He even proved that in Europe before he came to the states.
Pop went with and trusted Claxton in the playoffs even though he missed most of the season.
Pop went with Daniels and he sucked against the Lakers in the playoffs and then the next season he told Pop he didn't want to play PG. Enter TP.
Kerr? He was caught in a numbers game. Pop probably could have used him more.

Hill needs to get more aggressive. Maybe cutting his playing time will get him more aggressive. If it doesn't he's too fragile anyways. Timvp you frequently talk about good PGs needing to be supremely confident. If Hill is so fragile and needs to be coddled why do you think he'll be any good?

[GSH]

First, it was 5 apg.

Second, you have a very strange way to see things by looking only at 04-05. Jason Hart has continued to play after his year in Charlotte and he hasn't been a decent backup PG.

First - you're wrong.
Second - now you're being a .

I said as a starter, getting starter's minutes. (It wouldn't be fair to compare the per-game numbers of a backup to a starter, now would it?) As a starter, he put up 6.9 AST/G with an AST/TO ratio of 3.49. Feel free to look it up.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/...ja01&year=2005
When somebody who knows what they are talking about is that certain, you should probably stop and think before firing off your response.

Since then he had some injuries. But in 06-07, he put up 9 PPG, 4.2 AST, and 3.6 RBS as a starter, with a very respectable 2.7 AST/TO ratio. His per-36 numbers have always been solid. When his number has been called, and he got to put in respectable minutes, he has stepped up.

You don't like him? Fine. The Bobcats paid him $1.4 Million. The Kings/Clippers paid him $1.54 Million. Utah paid him $2.3 Million. Don't you wish you sucked that badly at PG? I think he could have been a solid backup here. You don't, we disagree... leave it at that.

[Solid D]

Hill isn't scoring enough, yet, to be a productive offensive threat. So, Pop has been using George for defense lately and then on offense... pairing him with a scorer in the backcourt (Parker or Mason) in order to hold leads. I think Pop wants perfection and that puts pressure on players trying to learn to play on this team. Sometimes it sterilizes and lobotomizes but he wants them to become hardened...to become strong men. He likes players to figure out where they can be productive and in what situations.

So now, George finds himself watching Parker while Jacque Vaughn whispers in his ear and his coach, well...he doesn't exactly whisper.

There is a stark contrast in the way Beno Udrih and George Hill have handled the same "assignment" from Gregg Popovich. That assignment: pick up the opposing ball-handler in a 40 defense (full-court) and make them waste clock, bother them, make them uncomfortable.

Beno was a reluctant defender and basically played a 30 defense...picking up his man at 3/4 court. It infuriated Pop.

George has been different in that, like Parker and Jacque Vaughn and Avery Johnson, he will pressure the ball when he is asked to do so. His pressure on Steve Nash was exactly what Pop asked him to do.

George may make it through Pop's meat-grinder....if he learns how to finish off a dribble-drive. Pop's guards must defend first, then score. They have to figure it out or get blown out the tailpipe. That's just the way it is.

[The Truth #6]

Disagree.

Spurs have struggled at the backup PG spot for years but you try to explain that by a wild theory (Pop being a good coach except for backup PG spot ) while in fact the explanation is as simple as it can be.

The last time Spurs had a good backup PG was in 03 with Speedy. Since that, Spurs never spend more than $1.5M per year on a backup PG. The less money you spend, the harder it is to find a good player. Spurs never made the investment to get a good backup PG. You can regret it but when you had a limited amount of money, you had to make choices.

I don't see how a strict monetary argument makes any sense at all when a good number of these point guards were on rookie contracts - AD, Beno, and now Hill, to name a few. The first two are making decent money right now. You can't say they can't play. Marbury makes a ton of money and is a point guard - does that mean he's a great player? Of course not. We had backups with potential, but many of them failed in trying to figure out how to please the boss.

Players have done well when Pop is forced to play them and they know they'll get minutes - Hill in the earlier part of the season and Bonner earlier in the season when KT looked like toast.

I don't see how one can take Pop out of this equation. He always preaches for players to get over themselves. Has anyone ever asked him to do the same? His whimsical, experimental lineup changes might suggest some grand master plan, but sometimes it appears if he's either bored, using losing as a motivational tactic, or something else altogether.

His system/structure has gotten us great results, no doubt about it, but there are moments that are real head scratchers that don't seem to make sense. The Spurs system is all about sharing and teamwork and yet some players on the second unit are instructed to jack it up. It's like the system falls apart when the bench is out there.

[Brutalis]

I don't think Pop is giving up on Hill. I think we are a championship contending team working a rookie point guard into an easy small town but intense ruled system. A successful one.

I agree with most everything else.

Also the problem may lay in other places. Perhaps how there aren't too often defensive minded point guards that can bring the ball down the court Spurs' style. Damon was always a selfish player. Maybe a couple seasons with Portland he played team ball because there were better scorers and quite frankly several of them.

Nick Van Exel was a sharp tongued asshole at the peak of his career. No way he ever could wear a Spur uniform under Pops' command with his at ude problems.

AD was a decent player. To me he was like the runt that made it. His game looks completely awkward yet he produces off the bench from time to time. Or he did anyways for a couple seasons east. Faster systems he rotated in for a while, nothing like the much slower pace of the Spurs. So when his time did come with us, he usually was cold.

Beno was trash. That's my opinion and no random useless knowledge of mine can argue an opinion. I just think he isn't good, and what he learned here he took to a crap team is disarray in Sacramento and did quite well with nothing expected of him while they lose more games.

My whole thing is that these players had personalities and skill not compatible with Spurs Basketball. Mainly Pops system. And this system no matter if we can't find a good backup point has won multiple les. We are a team that stays in the shadow, and everybody knows we are there. Every team even to the minute I type this that plays in the NBA knows we will curb stomp their ass if they are not ready to play. So much so that this system will play any style of ball if we have to, and beat you at it. Even to the point of breaking you down throughout the game and snatching the air in your lungs in the last few minutes. Not one team can say the same in the last how many years now?

We are respected and damn good and always better than our own fans care to realize sometimes. All this under Pop and his way of taking a superstar and giving him the chance to become a legend. His way of coaching and achieving talent, even talent we didn't get to see play for us.

We pay the price for being small market and make the most of it. Our point guards over the years have done a better job than I expected and am content thus far and think Hill will have a bright future with us. And I sort of ranted myself, but I'm still a pimp.

[GSH]

Pop has also made it more clear than ever that they have 3 stars on the team, and everyone else has to fill a gap in the system. He's not looking for any skills in those positions, other than the ability and willingness to fill that gap. Think about it: Don Nelson will look at any group of 5 guys, figure out what he has, and fit them into a scheme. Pop's style is almost the exact opposite. A player who brings "something extra" doesn't add value, because something extra means something different. Pop will accept a guy with lesser (or aging) skills, if he believes that player executes the system more precisely. Under Pop, a backup PG is not a subs ute star - they Spurs have exactly 3 of those.

This quote from the article about Bowen and Hill is exactly what I was talking about:

Bowen sees Hill's potential to affect games with his unique set of defensive gifts.

“I just hope he understands what he has, as far as his ability to affect the game at times with his length,” Bowen said of a perimeter player with the wingspan of a forward. “I hope he doesn't misconstrue why he is out there, and start doing things they're not looking for.”

You can bet that Bruce didn't just make that up, or mention it for no reason. That was a message.

[The Truth #6]

This quote from the article about Bowen and Hill is exactly what I was talking about:

Bowen sees Hill's potential to affect games with his unique set of defensive gifts.

“I just hope he understands what he has, as far as his ability to affect the game at times with his length,” Bowen said of a perimeter player with the wingspan of a forward. “I hope he doesn't misconstrue why he is out there, and start doing things they're not looking for.”

You can bet that Bruce didn't just make that up, or mention it for no reason. That was a message.

Yet Hill's minutes go down when he isn't scoring? Give or take some bad games, sure, but Hill has played solid D for the most part. It seems it's his poor offense that gets him in trouble.

He's taking a slow approach to being a PG by not trying to take risks on offense, while taking solid risks on D because he can back it up. One would think this would be the wise approach to take if one is looking for slow, steady improvement, i.e. pounding the rock. However, in doing so Hill seems to be penalized. I think it gets down to whether or not Pop will let Hill make mistakes.

As usual for the last few years, the early part of the season is/was the time to let players find themselves before the rotation gets tightened. What seems to be happening now is not so much a tightening of the rotation but a last second re-invention with the coaches playing the oldest players at every position just "because", which puts a greater burden, as always, on the Big 3, or for the moment, 2.

[coachmac87]

Ok I really think this thread is getting out of hand....Pop cant coach backup PG's???

Tony Parker should be on the floor for 35mpg. Period. You can say all you want about not finding a true back up pg...But same can be said for a Big next to TD. We can afford to plug in players here and there because TD and TP are the best players.

For one Hill is NOT a Pg. Dude is the PERFECT definition of a combo guard. He can guard multiple positions and has attributes of both positons. He will never be a true PG. You cant label him as a PG or SG..

Hill is a COMBO GUARD!!!

When will people realize this??? He is not going to be strictly TP back uP....

[coachmac87]

And people saying the Hill benching is due to lack of scoring...Its not "scoring"..Its aggressivness. Hill does not need to score to stay on the court. But he still needs to attack and play with confidence. If he is not going to play with confidence WHY THE should Pop keep him on the court?

If you lack confidence the opponent will see that and will force you to make plays....Which then things start to look bad.

[phyzik]

I Think TimVP is over-exagurating on this topic. Granted, we havnt had much success in the backup point position, but to say Pop cant coach a backup point is just wrong. I think its more along the lines of a backup point's ego cant accept the coaching that Pop provides.

Hill looks like he can accept it.

And I invented the term BAMA as the HOYA counterpart to describe Ghost Writer and his disciples.

Oh and HOYA won. We won. Three les in five years. There was no need to trade Parker for Payton or Manu for Sprewell as BAMA wanted to do. The Spurs had the core pieces, they just needed to find the right surrounding role players ... like us HOYANS said.

Missions Accomplished.©

Apologies Accepted.

I think your straying from the path TimVP.

You dissapoint me.

[roycrikside]

re Timvp rant:

I'm reading what you're saying, and I usually rip Pop as much as the next guy, but I think this time you're panicking prematurely, for many reasons.

1) Like many people have already said, it's not like Hill was going to have a big role this playoffs anyway. Tony is in his prime and will probably play 38-42 minutes in close playoff games. Even if he was the backup point, Hill wouldn't get more than six or eight minutes, unless it was garbage time.

2) Once Manu and Gooden come back, the team is going to be really deep. How deep? Vaughn and Hairston will be wearing suits and Fab, our starting center the last time we won it all, will be the 12th man. Manu will be the 6th man, with Gooden and Thomas 7th and 8th and Bruce 9th. Hill's competing for the 10th man role with Udoka, and most good playoff teams don't play 10 guys very deep into the playoffs.

3) No matter how much Pop preaches defense, the '08-09 Spurs have been an offensive club, especially from the standpoint of jump shooting, whether it's threes or long twos. Who on the team has a shakier jumper than Hill? I trust Duncan and all the other bigs with a 17-footer more than I trust Hill from that distance. Bruce is the one guy who you can argue has a worse shot than Hill, but he only shoots from the corners, where he's pretty decent. I don't think Pop is gonna play anybody if they can't hit an open jumper.

4) You have to remember the whole Hill as point guard thing was kind of an experiment anyway. He was more of a shooting guard in college and Pop might think the team is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole there.

5) Just because he might not be in the rotation down the stretch, it doesn't mean Hill won't have a role. Pop could bring him in as a defense/energy guy the way he did against the Suns. He would still be guarding opposing points, but me more of a two on offense, dribbling it up and passing it to a play-making two (usually Manu, maybe Roger).

I agree it's kinda sad what Pop's doing to Hill, but I just don't think it's realistic to expect him to hand the keys of the offense to a rookie in a playoff game, even if it's for a minute or two. Those games are too important. I think your memory might be playing tricks on you. Even in '04-05, Beno's rookie year, when he was having a relatively decent playoffs til the Finals, it's not like Pop actually let him do anything. It was Manu's show when Beno was in there and Udrih was pretty much just a spot up shooter.

No matter who the backup point is, if Manu is going to play with him, he's not going to get to be the classic point, because when Tony rests, it's Manu's time to put up some shots and also be the playmaker. Hill struggles playing with Manu because he can't shoot as well as some others can.

[SpursFanNphx]

I remember Tony being treated the same way at the beginning of his career. I think Pop knows exactly what he is doing.