Quite frankly, the only player I want to keep at this point is Wemby. I have been higher on Keldon than most but at this point the at ude they have that its OK to lose is just really turning me off. This team really lacks fight and they lose concentration so ing much. Part of it is the piss poor schemes that Pop is running out right now. Its insane how much helping this team does defensively that inevitable leaves shooters open and that's either the players being incredibly poorly coached (or dumb) or just a really bad scheme.
We have a serious lack of talent but its also really difficult to be THIS bad. We were HISTORICALLY bad on defense last year and even by running it back we should have seen some improvement this year - especially when adding Wemby, but our net rating is even worse and defensive rating is only marginally better.
Any other coach in the NBA and there would be alarm bells going off and they would be firmly on the hot seat but all we here about Pop is how great he is.
Pop seems to be OK with losing. I miss the Pop who used to flip out at Tony Parker and Danny Green when they ed up and made them into really good players. Not that I expect this to be a winning team when they're so light on talent outside Victor but JFC you should be able to win some games with defensive effort and right now seems like we're seeing none outside of Victor.
Exactly man, I don't expect Pop to have the same fire he had 10-20 years ago - well all mellow with age - but sometimes this team just does that would have led to Danny on the bench for a month and nothing happens. This team's players are OK with doing dumb and overall with losing and it shows. That's a big issue. This team desperately needs a Mario Ellie type of presence. I don't think anyone expected this team to be good by any stretch but I sure AF did not expect us to beat the losing streak record they set last year. This team hasn't won in over a month and you can't tell me that's good for a young team.
Kind of wonder if Victor must be disappointed as to play for Pop right now, in a never meet your heroes kind of way. When he was drafted he sounded like he wanted that Pop who yelled at players when they made mistakes and who demanded effort, concentration, and steady improvement or you could go off to the bench.
Yeah it's a pretty penny to pay to watch your team lose game after game. Yeah I was a bonehead as well and it took awhile to realize we aren't trying to win.
I do, that's his job and he's well paid for it. If he didn't want to coach the team he should have retired instead of quiet quitting.
He’s a force on defense, with a Drtg of 110. He’s currently a zero on offense, with an Ortg of 95.
Chinook can attest to this, but Danny would make several great plays in a row, make one mistake, and pop would bench him for it
pop was also known for coaching everybody the same. yeah he would give danny a hard time. or white. lonnie. but he would also yell at timmy. was notoriously hard on parker. where the is that pop when wemby jacks up 30 foot 3 pointers with 16 on the shot clock? or when there is obvious lack of hustle. still see so many of these guys jogging, or maybe lightly running on transition D. no, you have to be sprinting. pop of old would do a hockey shift rotation if he saw the starting 5 jog in transition
his Ortg is because he's been sabotaged by being forced to play most of his minutes without a point guard
But we’re not tanking…
sabotaging the development of our young guys for a better pick in a year with no one clear prize. brilliant
tanking is generally a roster construction thing. we already did that during the offseason. now we're just ing guys over by letting them continue playing with bad habits and in a directionless offense
let me be clear. i dont think theres a magic button pop can push to turn this roster, this year, into a winning club that would be fighting for a playoff spot. but you act like there is no line between being a playoff team and setting a franchise record for consecutive losses. its a ing joke. the spurs have a net rating of +25 with the 3 man lineup of Wemby/Vassell/Tre on the floor. but there are more Wemby/Sochan/Branham minutes than that lineup even though they have a -29 net rtg. its a disgrace
or a rather obvious one, the 5 man lineup of Wemby/Sochan/Keldon/Vassell/Tre... the starting lineup that a lot of people here were suggesting all offseason... has a net rating of +41. they have 21 minutes together. there's a ing Champagnie lineup with more minutes than that one
if you look at our top 5 man lineups (that have played at least 10 minutes together), 7 of the top 8 feature Tre and Wemby together. you might say the team having 7 wins instead of 3 would be catastrophic for us, but id say its valuable experience for wemby to learn the ins and outs of playing with a point guard, learning how to run effective pick and rolls, etc
to emphasize again, i dont think theres any magic button to make this team a playoff team that pop simply isnt pushing, and those net rtgs arent sustainable. but its just obvious that we arent seeing to the detriment of the development of the players. whether we pick #3 or #7 is much less important than if wemby develops well vs does not
Last edited by spurraider21; 12-12-2023 at 09:14 PM.
I don’t think the lack of a point guard is why he often looks like Bambi on roller skates, or why he’s so weak he ends up getting pushed out halfway to the three-point line when he tries to post up.
he's a 19 year old rookie. im not expecting him to be the best player on a good team. but what you are describing, his weakness in scoring in post ups, or isos... is exactly why he could use the benefit of a point guard who can set the table for him to get more easy finishes.
nobody confuses deandre jordan for an offensive dynamo but he was scoring 13 ppg because chris paul would set him up for easy to convert, high percentage shots. imagine wemby had 6-7 of those types of looks per game, rather than 1-2
Just one exception I take here, and it is with this. We aren’t losing in the same way. Last year, Pop had to sit guys who got up on the wrong side of the bed, and do weird 4th quarter rotations to squander leads.
This year, we’ve been pretty healthy, our generational talent has played in all but one game, and we are mostly losing in the 3rd quarter with a regular rotation in place. Whereas last year’s team almost had to try and lose as many games, this year’s team is doing it effortlessly.
Manny and BB make great points about the apparent lack of concern with losing amongst most of the players.
What this team really needs is a GM willing to make a move that gets the players and coaching staff shook. A Billy Bean type move - getting rid of Art Howe’s pet cats to force him into embracing the plan Billy wanted to execute. Something to the effect of trading Vassell, or Sochan, or Keldon. Do those sound like drastic moves? Yeah, they do… but that’s what it takes for the players and coaching staff to take notice.
Unfortunately, or FO isn’t structured like that in that the GM reports to the Head Coach, who is the President of Basketball Operations. Thus, any accountability has been removed.
The Holts could make Pop do anything they wanted, or force him out. Yet, they don't.
If anything, the rotation is weirder this year. I don't think we ever ran a zero PG set for anything but a minute or two last year. This year, only the bench unit gets a PG, and it's Tre, who can't shoot, and who's flaws are exposed and magnified by playing off the bench.
I think the Holts stay out of the basketball side and just trust Pop. I think the whole organization trusts Pop. Even if he doesn’t have the same fire as a coach, they’re going to ride with him until the wheels fall off.
The only caveat would be if Wembanyama forced a change. Obviously a 19-year-old who is still learning won’t do that.
The Spurs said they wanted to use this season to see what they have, to understand how players fit around Wembanyama. Less than two months in, they have some answers: “nothing” and “they don’t.” So the rest of the season feels pointless and hopeless.
Pop isn’t a bad coach. He’s just not as good as he used to be, because he doesn’t appear to hold players accountable in the same way.
New England appears to be ready to jettison multiple SB winning coach Bill Bellichek. Icons do get fired, and this is really their FIRST bad season. We're in the middle of our second, and nary a peep from ownership.
Rich people don't like losing, and have very little patience, as a group. Why not even a whisper of discontent?
This notion that Popped not holding players accountable is some new thing.
He's had his pets all along. Michael Finley could play like dog . When he and Pop were dating he would NEVER get pulled or scolded. We're talking 2009 2010 in particular. Ya ya we won in 2007 after choking off 2006 with the most stacked team in the NBA.
Manu GNob 2013 Finals Game 6. Watch the game but not thru Spurs Homer glasses. That 8 turnover game was far far beyond pathetic. Asshat never got pulled and a Duncan Chip and MVP Finals was robbed.
Timmy Dunks covered over Pops deficiancies. He could stand there and signal 4 Down and then give pompous lines in post game interviews.
Long, long gone. Check the record since Duncan and then Prime Kahwi went down.
So ing what? Is your argument that Pop is somehow doing a good job because the Holt's won't fire him? I don't need some stupid metric of what the Holts are doing in order to evaluate Pop's coaching and the fact that THIS is your defense is telling.
Yeah I’m not exactly sure what point exstatic is trying to make - maybe that the Holts are along for the plan?
Either way, I’m fine with also saying that the Holts are failing as owners. They’re the only ones who can hold Pop (as head of Basketball Ops, not as HC) accountable to a higher standard, and they don’t.
You can combat that with saying there is nothing to hold Pop accountable for, since he is doing the plan just how they want… in which case, they still suck since they seem content with putting out this product when they had the fanbase in the palm of their hands after getting Wemby. They could have gotten anything they want out of this city and fanbase, and instead they just decided to all over all of us.
So… either they suck for not holding Pop to a higher standard, or they suck for being okay with this being the standard.
Yeah I mean I don't get the point here but its hard to find a defense that the organization is doing ANYTHING right when you're approaching 20 losses in a row! Like this is completely indefensible. This is not tanking this is being historically bad. Not many teams in the history of the game have had streaks this poor much less two years in a row. Its really hard to oversell how bad this team is right now. This is no longer about tanking but about whether or not we're going to set more records that are not of the good sort.
Yes the owners are failing, Pop is failing, everyone on the organization is failing. They're failing so hard they set themselves up to get a generational talent and jump start a rebuild that would otherwise have taken a decade probably. What a failure. Now what would have been a middling season at best (though unlikely, as they were set to win 20 or so games before the season started), is the only opportunity they have left to tank and get a top tier talent with a top 3 and top 10 pick. What a terrible strategy (see KD's Sonics first season record).
I love the whiners on here that offer no solutions and think Spurs are in a terrible situation, where other teams who've had multiple bad years with good talent aren't even close to being as set up for success as the Spurs are. How long was Embiid on the Sixers for before they became good? When were the pistons ever good with their multiple terrible years? Butthurt fans are still yapping about Pop's mic moment and are unable to see the bigger picture. IDK if you noticed but the Big 3 aren't here anymore. This isn't the late 90's team with vets ready to compete that a 21.5 year old Timmy came to. This is the young inexperienced team that Wemby came to. You're 5 years too early to be calling for Pop's head dummies. Only Pop can remove Pop. He should just give himself an extension so ST can commit a mass Hara-kiri.
Manny, never change. You’re like Wind In His Hair from Dances with Wolves. First you are angry, always.
I’m saying the Holts are OK with the 2nd tank, and no, they’re not coping.
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