Dang, all this time I thought it was him being frozen out by other players. Never guessed it was because we're blowing out so many teams and can afford to rest players.
Made it a whole two posts before some playerfan had to come in and all over it, tbh.![]()
Because he cant, Kiwi could die probably reaching the 29 point mark so dont force him.
Pop is probably one of the few coaches in all of sports that can give answers like that and still keep his job. "Just Pop being Pop".
"Dean Smith [was] the only man who could hold Michael Jordan to 20 points.”
Lol Pop's answer is amazing.
it's funny that somebody asked him that, tbh, must be a Spurstalk poster..
I cant believe how more players would not want to play for an organization that keeps tabs on players minutes. I mean do you think Manu or Duncan would have such long careers if they were playing for say a team like okc. Where theyn could have averaged 35mpg easy for years and had their careers cut short through overuse and injury. If Kawai is smart and he seems to be he should be grateful that due to pop watching minutes ultimately extends careers. I wonder how kevin durant feels about this right about now.
Players care more about numbers, tbh..
People blame coaches too much for minutes IMO..most star players can control their playing time..while Pop deserves credit, the players deserve just as much credit for sacrificing their numbers, etc..
no doubt players deserve credit for sacraficing career numbers but through longevity their numbers could be better like kd for instance his hay day may be over all to sacrafice getting big numbers early in his career.
Some always will care about counting stats, but as contracts begin to be rewarded based on advanced metrics / efficiency, they might appreciate being in a system that lets them thrive.
If the goal is to make the HOF, you are just as likely to get there by being a key contributor on le teams as being a big PPG scorer.
Pop's just deflecting away from the real truth that Enrique is a cancer who freezes out Kawhi out of jealousy. Unlike lesser coaches, he keeps like that in-house.
Same reason Duncan's career scoring AVG has plummeted the last 5 years..
You can tell that Pop was in a good mood because otherwise he would have given the journalist the evil stare (i.e. next question) ...
Pop underlying message, "Because I am an antagonist, just like I am about to antagonize your ass."
In the past, the single biggest correlation to salary has been scoring average, just pure points per game. Rebounds per game is important for big men. But no advanced stat, or even a basic one like FG% had nearly as big of an effect.
This is finally starting to change, which is actually bad for a smart FO like the Spurs. It has been nice to have many dumb GMs giving out big contracts to guys like Joe Johnson, meaning more luxury tax payments to the Spurs and weaker teams to beat up on.
Teams are getting much smarter, and the dumb ones will be bailed out by the rising cap (or get into even more cap , depending on how you look at it). That's why I'm glad Green is a free agent this summer. He's going to get paid a lot more than he would have in the past relative to other guys, but there not as much cash to go around yet.
Truth: "What, let him pad stats so his agent can lay that on the desk during contract negotiations? No."
Yes, locking up Green (and hopefully Kawhi) long-term this summer would be great. Depending on what Tim and Manu do, getting another good-to-decent FA (Millsap?) locked up for 3-4 years would be nice too.
The cap rise will only benefit bad GMs for a year or two, though. They'll spend all that new cap money on bad contracts and be back to where they started.
"Top 10 player" is going to need a 5th season to finally reach that 30+![]()
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