Success with old tricks puts Popovich in position for COY

[ace3g]

In this mixed-up, meatball, post-lockout season, maybe it's fitting that the NBA's Coach of the Year award winner would claim that le mostly for whom he hasn't played.

The rationale we're hearing in favor of San Antonio's Gregg Popovich, after all, typically goes like this: "He has kept Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker fresh for the playoffs." By restricting their minutes, by leaving them behind on road trips, by sending his three star players home around noon from Phoenix on Wednesday after a rigorous morning practice -- hours before tipoff -- Popovich has kept Duncan, Ginobili and Parker in virtual bubble-wrap for the more important games that begin this weekend.

It has been a season of performance art for the NBA's longest tenured head coach. A minimalist's less-is-more delight. Parlor tricks, as in, "I can win this game with one ... no, two ... wait, make that three starters tied behind my back." If Popovich could have ensured that the Spurs would win their division, nail down the West's No. 1 seed and make it to late April with a healthy team while playing only the fourth-through-14th guys on the San Antonio roster, he might have done it.

Some ticket-buying fans and media folks got irritated when Popovich thumbed his nose at the idea of NBA basketball as entertainment -- and maybe at a sense of sportsmanship, too -- by having Duncan or Ginobili show up in a suit or not at all. But Popovich didn't apologize for serving what he felt was the greater good of another championship pursuit. And the league didn't seem to care.

"I cringe but then I un-cringe," commissioner David Stern said Wednesday about healthy stars withheld from games. "We knew in some ways it might be intensified by the compactness of the season. That's something we have tried to do in recent years, is not try to coach for the coach."

http://www.nba.com/2012/news/feature...s=iref:nbahpt1

[therealtruth]

I think Aschburner was the one who was critical of Pop when he rested his players before. He basically argued that while technically legal it went against the spirit of fair compe ion.

He also has this humorous bit:

If Popovich were to win a second COY award -- official results won't be annuonced until sometime during the playoffs -- you get the feeling that he might be tempted to swap them out on the mantel from time to time, always resting one. Or maybe he'll stick both trophies in the closet and just go with a stray bookend and a doorstop.