Pop had countless coaching moves that I disagreed with. His rotation was lunacy at its finest. It was literally like he had a hat with every player's name in it and he would just randomly pick names out of the hat to form his lineup. Neither rhyme nor reason were with Pop on this night. Here are some problems I had with his coaching:
1) Mason goes off for 17 in the first half after getting off to a hot start at shooting guard and using that momentum to score off of pick-and-rolls when it was his time to play point guard. So what does Pop do in the second half? He brings Mason off the bench. He runs almost no plays for him in the second half and when it's time for Parker to rest, he puts Vaughn on the court instead of playing Mason at point. Oh, but come the fourth quarter, he suddenly expects Mason to be able to run the show to begin the stanza.
2) The Spurs are rolling late with Duncan and Thomas beating up the Warriors. Instead of doing something silly like try to win the game, he puts Finley in for Thomas. Not surprisingly, the Warriors then go on a 6-0 run to take the lead with under a half a minute remaining.
3) All year Pop has been begging Hill to be aggressive. He even stated that he's fine with Hill making mistakes as long as he's aggressive. Hill enters the game and plays aggressive basketball. After a few mistakes, the rookie is sent to the bench, never to be seen again.
4) If you are going to go with Vaughn as the backup point guard in the second half, just go ahead and follow through with that plan. Pop putting in Vaughn for two minutes and then seemingly changing his mind made little sense.
5) I actually liked the strategy of sitting Duncan all but five minutes in the first half. Pop was obviously trying to see if he could get an easy win while keeping Duncan in his back pocket. But to actually succeed in that plan, Pop has to use a rotation that would actually allow his team to gain some sort of cohesion and try to build a lead. For some reason, Pop was trying to win easily to rest Duncan but at the same time he junked his rotation. The result was Duncan being forced to come back into the game in the fourth and put even more wear and tear on his body.
Bottomline is that Pop obviously doesn't care much if the Spurs win. The Spurs winning or losing is secondary to his tinkering at the moment. Hopefully he knows what he's doing and the experimenting is about to come to an end because right now it is maddening to watch.
Rant Over.
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