Sometimes you're just going to catch a team that is playing lights out. Pop just saw that there is nothing you can do to disrupt a team when they playing the way the Knicks did tonight. Take the loss and move onto the next game.
If you look at the recent Celtics/Lakers championship, HCA has been vital, critical, really, really important etc.
And I got a feeling that it's going to be a tight race for HCA this year, and again it'll be very important.
We're not a perfect team by far, so we'll need to claw and scratch for every advantage we can.
You never know until you try, that's what bugs me about quitting. Perhaps it's likely that we would have lost even if we kept trying, but we'll never know.
So you put up all that energy to win and you don't. The next night you go as a defeated team into an arena where the opposition is ready to rip your heart out. OR... you pull the plug and let the team know that sometimes the other team just shoots the damn ball like crazy and you tell them to tighten the D, but everything else was pretty damn good.
It's really easy say that from your desk. If you had to board a plane and get ready for the defending Eastern champs, you would probably see it as time to lay it down as well.
[QUOTE=Kori Ellis;4872928]All season long, I have been telling timvp that this Spurs team is tallying a lot of wins, but a lot of fluke wins. They have had a bunch of lucky comeback victories. They have caught a lot of teams shorthanded. I jokingly (maybe not) call this team the Fluke Spurs.
To stop being the Fluke Spurs, they need to get a lot better on D. Pop might have pulled the plug early, but it's for the best. What good would a fluke comeback have done? It would have put another W on the board, but the Spurs would continue to still have an inflated sense of how good they are.
They aren't good enough to do any damage in the playoffs. And I know... playoffs aren't in January, yada, yada, yada. But to get hungry, they have to stop winning all the time.I know it sounds stupid. And you can say they are professionals, they don't get complacent, etc. However, when you have the best record in the league, you aren't hungry.
I hope they go on a four-game skid.[/QUOTE]
While I'm happily surprised by the Spurs good start, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is a long season andI expect the Spurs to fall back into the pack as the season progresses and be in a fight to get one of the top seeds in the West.
Their skid may have started tonight. I expect them to lose in a hard fought battle tomorrow night against the Celtics.
I think most of us knew the Spurs had a lot of work to do. Lets just see how they progress throughout the year.
Every team has bad games, you just don't want to see the same glaring problems over and over again.
Ahh, the old "you're not a player/coach, so how could you know" card. AKA the most fallacious card in the deck.
Is it any easier or harder from your desk to express your opinion?
It isn't, and it's not about me or you - it's about the matter at hand.
Ad hominem:Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
ppl just dont' get it..
the knicks were on fire.. they don't just start missin' shots 3 mins left to go in the game..
Buck Harvey: Popovich’s message — forget the record
Buck Harvey
NEW YORK — We’re riding in a freight elevator after the game, with equipment piled on carts next to us, and Manu Ginobili acts like a man ready to unpack everything.
If he could have pushed a button and returned to the appropriate Madison Square Garden floor for a rematch, he would have.
Instead, he’d been pulled. With more than three minutes left, with the Spurs trailing by 11 points and Tony Parker at the free-throw line, Ginobili and the other starters went to the bench.
“Of course,” Ginobili said in the freight elevator, “that upset me.”
But he’s been around long enough to know how Gregg Popovich works in these moments, and how he sends messages. Popovich doesn’t mind upsetting his guys, especially after watching them defend as they did.
This time, though, Popovich likely had an additional message.
Keep Reading...
What exactly is the larger point? If you don't put out the proper effort, I'm going to force you to quit?Popovich instead reacted again as maybe no other NBA coach does. He dismissed the slight chance of a comeback to make a larger point.
You missed the point. It was about sending a message, particularly to the top players. Obviously, there was a slight chance of still winning the game, but that was irrelevant at that point.
I have to say, I liked it. The defense was beyond deplorable and because of that, they didn't deserve a chance to see if they could still win the game. Also, you know they couldn't have liked it, so hopefully they stewed over it and don't have this "we were due to lose, you can't win 'em all" mentality.
This was a predictable outcome. The past few seasons, every time this team has put together an excellent stretch defensively, it's always short lived. They had dropped below 100 in defensive efficiency, so I knew they were going to have a game like this, so they can fall right back around 101, where they always seem to end up. I wasn't the least bit convinced that they had reached a new level defensively.
Kori, "they aren't good enough to do any damage in the playoffs"? Even if you don't think highly of the team, look around. At worst, they're one of the four teams most likely to win the championship.
I'll take Phil's trolling over Pop's quitting any ing day.
If say, the Spurs were ahead by 20 pts at the 5 minute mark, and by the 3 minute mark the Knicks or whoever had closed the gap to 11, would Pop quit in order to send a message?
If not, why is it OK to quit when we're down?
Rascal you make it so easy. Now I know that every loss this year can be attributed to the Spurs lacking "one quality big". Thanks for the insight.
There was nothing good going to come from that game. tbh a win down the stretch might have been worse for this team. They need to realize the defense needs major improvements and human nature is losing=more hard work.
you all know pop is a quirky guy. he pulled the plug just because it's tuesday. (saw someone's sig)
A lot of times, it's not. But it depends on the situation. This was an embarrassing "effort" defensively and as such, Pop saw fit to send a message. It wasn't about "quitting" or "resting guys". It was about them not being good enough in this game and that mattering, despite the fact that they have a ridiculous record.
With the rotation they're playing, at least in the regular season (because of the limited minutes to some of their best defenders), they are what they are defensively. They've been right around where they are now for the last few seasons. They've constantly talked about it and they have a high IQ, hard working, committed team. Yet it hasn't mattered. So to think there's some significant improvement coming would be naive at this point.
A lot of people seem to think it's just effort related. That if they just "play hard" every game, they'll magically be a top five defensive team. It doesn't work that way, though. It's not so much about effort as it is personnel. It's partially the rotation they're using, but it's also the personnel in general.
The whole team defended like a bunch of incontinent old maids.
Perhaps I'm giving them too much credit.
Incontinence would at least offer some deterance from constant penetration.
No biggie.
Pops more of a mind master than most think. Usually people think of the "zen master" as the guy who plays mind games, when mostly its just talking about everyone including his own team.
Pop knows how to get his mental message across.
I live in NYC and already there's a lot of chest thumping from the players and the media (OK, mostly the media. NY media and NY'ers can be so full of themselves) about what a great win this was for the Knicks (See this Chris Sheridan article: http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/n...ris&id=5990262). I'm so nauseated already.
Expected. Its the Knicks. They won thier regular season championship tonight.
your argument is "let the team know the other team just shot well." okay?
there's no harm in keeping the guys in for a minute and a half longer to try to take the game away. The Spurs have shown all year long that they can turn the tide quickly--at New Olreans, at Phoenix, at Charlotte, vs. the Magic, at Minny. One of the reasons for doing so is because we're tops in 3-point shooting. run a 3 3-point plays. get Neal and Bonner those shots. do that successfully and get two stops and it's a one possession game and the Spurs have experience on their side to pull away at the end.
a minute and half more wouldn't have hurt. It's not like they sat out a whole quarter (ie. at Magic). Pop gave up merely to give up and that's why i don't agree with it. that extra minute of rest won't mean anything tomorrow. they'll be just as exhausted.
In 82 nights there will be a few where you just don't feel it. Tonight and Clippers games were two of those.
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