The hiring of the Bryn Forbes of coaches is totally in line with Pop's "pounding the rock" philosophy of persistence. Maybe this is also part of the plan to pick AJ Dybantsa in the next draft.
What exactly didn't yall like about Coach Mitch? He was thrown in the fire, had to run Pop's system all year. Best player goes down with an injury so we had to tank. The players love him and they played hard for him considering everything that went on off the court. I'm looking forward to seeing how he fills out his staff, tho.
We didn't like that he didn't have the authority to sit CP3 in those few games he and Fox played together.
We didn't like that Castle played less than 20 minutes in a lot of games even though it made no sense.
We didn't like all the Sochan experiments yet again. He's not a backup big, if he's not good enough to play as a wing, then DNP and trade him.
There were some positives, but these next few seasons are the most important in the past 30 years and giving the job to someone who's been mediocre at best isn't encouraging.
We simply can't this up. No more excuses.
If he were a narcissist, he’d have announced this last week, stepped all over Steph’s moment, and forced him to answer a bunch of questions about Pop and his retirement. I tend to discount your opinions, AHF, because you hated Pop WHILE we were winning les for the simple reason that he didn’t do thing the way you wanted him to. Never change, dude.
No surprise here. Per the course, the front office made the classy move rather than doing their due diligence. The laurels are continuing to be rested on.
The only thing is, those laurels are fast becoming a distant memory, as the last time we made the playoffs was back in 2019. We need to start winning, like, right now. ESPN will be salivating to get Wemby to LA if we don't start doing so ASAP.
I will say, I’d be a lot more excited about this if I were confident that Mitch were empowered to call his own shots.
with that said, maybe I’m being too pessimistic and he will be. For s sake, I hope Mitch crushes it and is a COTY contender next year!
For that to happen, we need Brian to continue cooking this offseason. Make some magic happen Big Brain Brian, jettison the Power of Friendship and prove the haters wrong!
“He should get a chance because that was the decision” is not a value judgment on the hire? What are you saying then? Mitch Johnson is the coach of the spurs and will have a clip board and determine rotations? “Should” is a normative term; if you’re not saying Mitch was a good hire then you need to re-learn your words. we know that he is now the head coach. The whole conversation is whether that ought to be the case or not. Repeating a news headline isn’t exactly profound dude.
“He should get a chance because that was the decision” is not a value judgment on the hire? What are you saying then? Mitch Johnson is the coach of the spurs and will have a clip board and determine rotations? “Should” is a normative term; if you’re not saying Mitch was a good hire then you need to re-learn your words. we know that he is now the head coach. The whole conversation is whether that ought to be the case or not. Repeating a news headline isn’t exactly profound dude.
It's not about high standards it's about common ing sense. The faster you put a good team together, the larger the "window" you have to compete. 2 of OKC 3 best players are on rookie contracts. Should OKC be saying "oh let's wait and see if J Will is really an all nba player. Let's wait and see if Chet is even an all star player." Is that what they should have said about Hartenstein instead of giving him 80 million to fill the massive void at back up center for them? "Sorry Hartenstein our team isn't ready yet so maybe two years from now we can pay you to be the backup center." Think they would have been the number one seed without having him when Chet got hurt? Think they would have swept Memphis, one of the largest front courts in the nba, without him playing?
Wade was in his 3rd season when the Heat signed Shaq. Should they have said "no way, we got one star and he is still on his rookie contract, our window isn't open yet, it makes no sense to sign someone like shaq fresh off a couple of championships."
That's beyond an archaic way of thinking. When you sit around and wait for "windows" everybody else get's the prize except you.
The spurs have already gotten significantly better. Victor has gotten much better since year 1. Our point guard position went from bottom of the barrel worst in the league to at least top 12 if not top 10 in the league. We finally have a "do everything" wing player who won rookie of the year, and we went from the oldest coach in the league to the 4th or 5th youngest coach in the league. All of that and we haven't drafted a player or signed a player in the offseason for next year yet.
No. This was my reaction on RealGM within minutes of me hearing about the news:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/vie...932#p118392538I don't like Mitch Johnson getting the nod unless he's going to get free reign to coach and has some big changes he wants to implement. The Spurs have had a coaching issue for years now, and they shouldn't be aiming for continuity in that regard. Give Johnson a real chance, but be willing to move on to a real coach in a year or two if the problems continue.
So it's pretty clearly not me saying I liked the hiring. He should get a chance because he already has the job now. I think making a -fest about it is dumb. It's like drafting a player I didn't want. Every once in a while I'll get mad if I really hated the player or if there were cir stances around the pick that really bothered me. But most of the time, my reaction is, "Okay, well that's done. So what happens next?" I've said in this very thread multiple times that I would have preferred the Spurs had done a real coaching search. They didn't. They promoted Mitch. Okay. So what now?
It was addressing the argument that ‘the players like him.’ That’s not that important or telling as far as ‘success.’ Players might like a coach for all sorts of reasons—many of them not good.
I’ve detailed many times before why Mitch is a bad choice. We’re near dead last in basics like boxing out for rebounds, developing players, etc. He had a trial run this year before Wemby’s injury. He sucked. Spurs have sucked for years. Gambling another year of Wemby and franchise on Mitch, who really has nothing to recommend him—particularly when you have guys like Jenkins available—is stupid.
What does Mitch have going for him? ‘Guys like him’ means nothing. ‘Spurs guy’ and ‘continuity’ are negatives now, and have been for several years.
Those decisions came from up top imo.
This isn't the article I initially read this in months ago, but here are those quotes on his old nickname that I mentioned previously in the thread. It seems like even back then players held him in a high regard.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...on-san-antonio
at Stanford, where he was a four-year starter playing alongside Brook Lopez, Robin Lopez and Landry Fields. Brook Lopez told ESPN that in college, they nicknamed Johnson "Maestro" due to the "the way he conducts and runs the show."
"Seeing him in the position he's in now is not a shock. He belongs there," Lopez added. "[He's] such an intelligent basketball player, the highest basketball IQ I've ever played with or been around."
No. That isn't how it works. Windows are solely dependent on whether your best player is ready or not. Until Wemby's ready, there's no window, and he's not ready. He's not particularly close. STers don't want to admit that because they "expect" him to be there already regardless of how unrealistic that is. It gets exhausting, because even before the career-threatening condition Wemby has, I was pretty firm in the Spurs not having any chance at all until the fourth year at the very earliest. I find all this handwringing to be the equivalent of kids asking, "Are we there yet?" 30 minutes into a cross-state road trip. It's like no, sorry guys, but this is going to take time, and if you can't handle that, go do something else for a while.
I get you don't have an encyclopedia of every take I've ever had, but if you think bringing up that example is disagreeing with my point, I don't know what to tell you. I've never been against making a move for a superstar to be the franchise player for Wemby to learn under. But no amount of lesser stars will make Wemby an actualized franchise player. Time does that.Wade was in his 3rd season when the Heat signed Shaq.
It's far more common that teams blow their loads and watch their stars walk than them slow-play their rise and miss out. It's called a window because you can miss on both sides of it.When you sit around and wait for "windows" everybody else get's the prize except you.
See at this point, I wonder if you're even serious. You can't both be pushing for the team to enter a win-now posture and be counting Castle as a key player. If you think Castle's going to have a major role, then you're projecting the window to be three or four years into the future. If you think the window is in next year or two, you're not thinking of Castle. He was so far from a win-now player last year that it's ridiculous. It's cool to believe in him and want him to have the chance to grow, but then you have to give him that time and understand that a huge chunk of your minutes are going to a player that was a major negative last year. That's fine if you believe the Spurs aren't a playoff team like I do. It's not fine if you think them missing the playoffs would be a "colossal failure".We finally have a "do everything" wing player who won rookie of the year,
That sounds ridiculous to me.
Coaches never turned down jobs like SA. They almost never turn down jobs period.
Even prestigious coaches like Doc signed on under known s bag Donald Sterling to get to coach the clippers. There is no ownership bad enough or roster empty enough that they couldn't get coaches.
ESPECIALLY with a chance to coach Wemby. Maybe someone who never coached before like Manu would have turned it down, but come on.
Are you seriously expecting me to know what you posted on another message board (which I never visit, or even have an account for) to divine your intention here?
Bro, I just have the words you write on the board I actually read. If you don’t like the hire, then just say so. The idea that I would know your posting history across the internet is bananas.
Separately, saying “I don’t like it, but let’s give him a chance because that’s the decision” isn’t really a ground breaking take either. If you used your words and said as much, I’d still disagree, but there wouldn’t be the need to spill all this digital ink.
No. What I'm saying is that even on here.
It's pretty clear on a forum that isn't whinging up a storm that I was never saying it was a good hire. I'll chalk up your misinterpretation to you being in some kind of mood. But I'm not backtracking and saying I wasn't a fan of the hiring now. I said it in my first posts on multiple forums.
No, because I did, and you were so in your feelings that you spilled the ink anyway.
Just to provide an alternative perspective amidst all the gloom and doom in here: maybe there’s a universe in which Mitch grows and improves organically with the team, given his youth, and he becomes a Spoelstra-type hire in which he becomes the championship coach of a multi- le team.
He also has outstanding pedigree: Stanford grad, a decade-plus as an assistant under Pop.
He might even just be a solid coach. Everyone has to start from somewhere. The Spurs are in a position where they can see what he does with a full off-season and on spectre of Pop coming back and taking over the team hanging over him. I just hope they didn't make this move expecting it to be another 30-year stint. He should have free reign but a short leash.
I'm willing to give him a chance as when I read some articles about him a month or two ago, there seemed to be a lot of praise from players that aren't on the Spurs. And then that Brook Lopez quotes made me ease off on him a bit the last 1/4 of the season (I don't remember everyone Brook has played with), but when he says he's the highest basketball IQ player he's played with or been around, that holds a bit of weight. Enough for me to be willing to give him a shot if the Spurs also think he's worth giving the job too (I did want someone else more experienced). Of course a high BBIQ doesn't mean he'll be a great head coach, but it can help. It also makes me wonder if he was handcuffed a bit during the season and wasn't able to coach the way he wanted to (I hope that was the case).
I think he was only an assistant under Pop since 2020.
Spot on. I actually thought he made some great roster calls like ending the Branham experiment, reducing CP3’s minutes, benching Jeremy and Keldon, and even tightening the leash on Devin.
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