Long time lurker here, some of y'all might remember me for blowing up Jabari Young as Kawhi's mouthpiece on reddit and even putting his reddit burner accounts on blast.
Since it's basically impossible to criticize PATFO on reddit I just wanted to point out the mistakes that have been made since the 2014 championship. Kind of like a collection. As great as Pop and RC are, it seems like they have lost their touch and been ing up plenty recently. With that being said I have watched about every game since 2014. I might've missed a combined 5 games in that time span.
2014/2015:
- Drafting Kyle Anderson instead of Nikola Jokic
- Overplaying an injured Tony Parker who couldn't make a jump shot against the Clippers while Patty Mills was on fire
2015/2016:
- Drafting Nikola Milutinov instead of Larry Nance, Cedi Osman, etc.
- Playing Boris Diaw and David West together all year so they can get outrebounded instead of staggering them with Duncan/Aldridge
- Cutting Rasual Butler (R.I.P.) instead of Matt Bonner, cause Matt Bonner makes better sandwiches (which didn't have an effect on the results of that season at all to be fair)
- Playing Kyle Anderson before Jonathon Simmons when Simmons was clearly the better player because of military pecking order
2016/2017:
- Playing Kyle Anderson before Jonathon Simmons when Simmons was clearly the better player because this is the military and not an NBA team (luckily by the time the Playoffs came around, Pop figured this out)
- signing Bryn Forbes
- Not letting Dedmon shoot jump shots, so the offense gets clogged up when he made every bail out jumper and even shot 3s at the same rate as Pau Gasol the year after when he went to the Hawks
- Saying Kawhi gets paid to do everything, so he has to play lockdown defense and score 25 when this team was clearly too dependent on Kawhi and it was kind of insulting when he wasn't even the highest paid player. I bet that didn't sit well with him/his camp
2017/2018:
- Having Pau Gasol opt out to get a free agent who nobody knows about, because as reports said the Spurs were not interested in signing Chris Paul (So who did he opt out for? Paul George?)
- Thinking Paul George would come to the Spurs
- Resiging Patty Mills and Pau Gasol for a combined salary of 29 million (for that year) but letting Simmons and Dedmon walk when they could've been signed for 12 million combined
- Saying we have to get more athletic in 2016 and then letting your 2 most athletic players walk for nothing in 2017
- Resiging Patty Mills for 50 million (!!!!!) for 4 years (!!!!!!!)
- Resigning Pau Gasol for 16.3 million (!!!!!)
- Publicly criticizing Kawhi which has not only destroyed the relationship between Kawhi and the Spurs, but also contributed to a big media circus around the situation. You don't speak on issues publicly. This has also put the Spurs in a bad light, they should've kept it in house. Kawhi though.
- not trading Kawhi at midseason to Boston for Tatum & Brown
- not playing Derrick White when he's clearly a better player than Patty Mills & Bryn Forbes
- playing Mills, Parker and Forbes at the same time
2017/2018
- trading Danny Green instead of Mills or Gasol and getting Jacob Poetl back instead of Anonouby or Siakam ( the Raptors pick, I wouldve even thrown in another Spurs pick to get OG)
- signing Dante Cunningham
- signing Quincy Pondexter
- playing Mills and Forbes at the same time
- not signing any defenders
add to that the usual Popovich antics like:
- still using all-bench line ups when the team has been more top heavy and less deep for years
- make playing in the NBA feel like a job (remember reports saying Kawhi wants Pop to lighten up in practice? Remember J Simmons saying first thing Pop taught him was Basketball is your job? Who would want that? It's still supposed to be fun)
- have a military pecking order which allows young players with more talent to go play in the G League and have worse players get consistent minutes because they been here longer and playing a rookie over them wouldn't be fair
- trying to unload Danny Green when he's at least a good defender while Patty Mills can't do anything elite and earns 150% of the money Danny earns cause Mills is his guy
- I hate to say it, but I agree with Stephen Jackson that Pop has his guys and won't even play better players because he likes their personality more
- pulling young guys after one mistake to mess with their confidence (Bertans)
Bottom line is, they had all the tools and enough assets to contend for another 5 years minimum, but messed it up and are stuck in mediocrity now. I just hope the youth movement gets us back to contender status
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