I agree with you.

Sobering, but sane. At least you’re not calling for Pop’s immediate resignation or insinuating that he’s a disgrace to humanity.

You laid it all out beautifully, as usual.

I’m not telling myself that it will get better, but I am still hoping it will. I would like to see some sort of progress or change in Pop’s approach, even if it ultimately (as you discussed) serves only to set the table for next season.

Too right. I feel like there’s no way that Hill is going to play, because Pop said as much. He’s so stubborn that I don’t think he’d turn around and play him, if only to avoid contradicting what he had said earlier about Hill not being ready. But you’re right, Hill’s probably the best matchup for Barea or Terry to keep Tony off those guys. Tony can guard Jason Kidd—Kidd would have a size advantage for posting up, but I’m OK if Dallas abandons its offense to let Jason Kidd work in the post.

Fin is a useful player in spots, but not playing big minutes at the three. I like your idea of starting him at the two, giving us a lineup of Parker-Fin-Bowen-KT-Timmy. The problem is that you have to hide him on D against a non-scorer like Antoine Wright, but you also would like to hide Mason, Bonner, and even Tony (to keep him from getting tired). It’s tough to hide 80% of your starting lineup on D.

If I were Pop I might have tried to give Drew Gooden a bunch of minutes with Hill to be pick-and-roll pals so someone could score in the second unit, but what do I know?

I’m watching these other teams in the playoffs, and the Spurs’ lack of size is even more glaring than the lack of athleticism. The Spurs are fine at the 4-5 (as long as Bonner isn’t playing), but they are consistently physically overmatched at the 2 and 3, and Tony doesn’t exactly play big as a PG.

I still think they can beat the Mavs IFF (if and only if) Pop makes the right adjustments, but every game would be a tossup, with the Mavs in the driver’s seat now that they have a game under their belt.

Duncan
Gooden
Fin
Bruce
Tony

If Bonner doesen’t shoot the 3 ball then he shouldn’t even be playing.

Saturdays game was just unbelievably depressing really…

I agree with most of what you said so instead of restating all of it here are a few things that I am not on key with.
Interesting, early in your post:

..it was Finley, not rotating time and again. It was Finley, not fighting through picks. Finley, Finley, Finley. Ban me if you want Wayne, but I don’t have the words to express how wretched he was out there in his own end.

Then later you went on to say:

I’m not gonna blame Finley or Bonner for sucking. It’s not their fault that they’re being put out there in a position to fail.

I guess when you said “I’m not gonna blame Finley or Bonner…” You meant “I’m not going to blame Finley or Bonner for the rest of this post” Either that or in the time it took you to write your long winded you forgot you had in fact criticized these guys.

At any rate I mostly agree that Finley was not good on defense but he wasn’t terrible. In the first half he drew and offensive foul on Dirk and forced Howard into a wild baseline pass that resulted in a turnover. Bonner was everything terrible at both ends.

One more thing.

Tony and Roger are both physically weak for their position and cannot fight through screens.

I agree that Roger is but not Tony. Here are the 15 other starting PGs in the playoffs: Fisher, Billups, Kidd, Blake, Brooks, D. Williams, Paul, Rondo, Rose, Miller, Alston, Mo Williams, Stucky, Bibby and Chalmers. Who of those guys can effectively use their size against Tony? Derron Williams, Chauncy Billups and Andre Miller. Kidd tries to post up but he’s not effective anymore. Maybe Chris Paul but he uses his quickness more than power. Tony got burned yesterday by quickness not because his lack of size or power. That and because he let JJ get into his head.

Effing agree with you. Mainly because the points you make about playing Hill are the same ones I made in my ranting response to the news that Pop didn’t want to play him. So it makes me feel better about my basketball knowledge.
I didn’t see the first half of the game. So we built a nice lead and then lost it? Wow, I can’t believe it, that hasn’t happened once in the season.

The Mavs’ psyche is fragile. We are the one team that they feel very confident playing. I’ve watched them all year and last night they looked at their best. Are they peaking at the right time? Could be. Call me a sucker but I honestly feel they just played a great game yesterday. I think Pop did right by forcing their bench to beat us. That doesn’t happen every night. If we can find a way to shake their confidence, force them to think about the jump shots, they will break.

Recently, it seems like there’s been a lot of tickets sold for the “Pop has lost it” train. The insistence that Hill ride the bench, the criminal marginalizing of Ginobili, the Finley-Fatality love affair and the Roger Mason point guard experiment are all choices which seem to indicate that the man has let his stubbornness and dare I say it, ego, get in the way of the teams best interests. But while on the surface this may seem like evidence of Pop’s faltering decision making skills I find it prudent to point out a couple of things.

Firstly, it’s unnecessary to explain that Tim, the undisputed leader/ most important player, has always placed his unwavering trust in Pop. While the arbitrary coaching decisions and idiotic rotations may have resulted in what seems like some of our most useful players being sidelined, Timmy has never once shown anything but complete belief in the system. The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Without The Big Fundamental’s support there is absolutely no way the Spurs could even function at today’s apocolyptic level.

One of the crucial pillars to our constant overachieving is the fact that our best player is always on the same page as his coach. Even if the statistics and results don’t show it, one of our greatest “X” factor advantages over other teams is that Duncan has always believed that Popovich has the answer. This level of trust is derived from the underlying philosophy of the current Spurs, Pop will get Duncan what he needs and in response Duncan will carry the team. So today when we see the likes of Udoka and Finley playing extended minutes it is probably because this is the lineup which Pop believes best supports Duncan. Even in the 2005 Playoffs, when Ginobili out Manu’d himself the rest of the league, our successes and failures still hinged on how well Timmy played. So if Duncan believes what Pop is doing is right than I believe what Pop is doing is right, because if we cannot put our faith in Tim than we are nothing.

Secondly, it was mentioned in the article that Pop has always been lauded for his “master plan” mentality as a coach. I feel like its necessary to remind everyone that this is something which may still be true. It’s only been a few months since his coaching has come under fire and really, has enough time passed in order to make an accurate assessments? Probably not.

I know that not many people here follow soccer (football, whatever) but it offers great examples of the best coaches being those who are stubborn in their ways. A few years back Alex Ferguson, the coach of Manchester United, was under constant scrutiny for his teams lack of success. He had just recently sold his star midfielder, David Beckham, because they didn’t get along, Jaap Stam, his best defender for writing an unflattering passage about him in his autobiography and Ruud van Nistelrooy, his best forward for not getting along with a younger less important player. These seemingly arbitrary decisions coupled with two consecutive trophy barren seasons led his critics to believe he was a finished man. They said many of the same things we are saying about Pop today; things like his team was too old, he had lost touch, and that his ego was getting in the way of the best choices. But five years later Manchester United, led by Ferguson, climbed back on top as champions of Europe and England. In retrospect, it is obvious that the foundations to United’s current success were laid in those years when Ferguson made those seemingly strange decisions. The point to all of this is that there is empirical evidence which shows that sometimes the master plan isn’t so clear.

The trademark of Popovich and the Spurs is consistency. No matter the odds the Spurs will always be pounding away at the rock. If Pop changed his game and coached for instant success, we would be doing ourselves a huge disfavor in losing touch with our roots. Anyways, if we wanted to be a flash in the pan we could’ve probably just hired Pat Riley.

This is all very logical and rational. Good post.

If someones playing and succeeding he sticks with them. Every time Bass or Barea get a good start in games i’ve seen them play he lets them roll. There was one game earlier this year vs Portland maybe? Where Bass basically put the team on his shoulders and carried the game. Hat tip to him for this. He went through a few different options out there before settling on a gameplan that countered Pops, then stuck with it. Pop never changed.

If the season is really screwed, what in the hell can pop loose by playing George? Temper the kid in the fire.

one game does not a series make. dallas did it to us with strong defense after the first – and by sticking with bass and berea. spurs have had trouble with both of those guys since they hit dallas.

spurs do have some holes to fix – and no shit that they are not going to win a title without manu, but they do have enough to beat dallas with what they have.

mavs are not the most consistent team out there, ut they did play pretty well for thress quarters last night.

…..and it looks lke rosarios is the semi-official home of PtR. nice.

Some observations from my seat, second row in the balcony facing the Mavs bench.

My favorite Mavs fan was a guy in a Dirk jersey wearing a white wristband up on his forearm. He had a pretty high douchebag quotient going.
Bonner looks ridiculous running when he is doing his shooting drills. It’s hard to explain but T Rex arms comes to mind.
Drew was doing a shooting drill with Coach Bud where he was shooting jumpers off a pick and roll. Drew’s not a good shooter from 18-20 feet. He leans back too much on his shot.

Why did we run our first play for Mason going against Jason Kidd? This was a strange way to start the game.
We had no TO’s in the first quarter.

Drew was making hay going at Dirk. Why did we not go to that in the second half?
After Dirk’s third foul, the scoreboard played a clip of Arnold from Kindergarten Cop saying, “No whining”. It was awesome.
A couple of Bass’s shots were ridiculous. One rolled off the top of the backboard and went in.

The crowd was good, but not electric.
We played NO defense for the first 6-7 minutes of the second half. We were just awful and we were lucky to be tied after 3.

To me, there were two big calls by the refs in this game. The second charge on Dirk, which I thought was questionable, sent him to the bench in the first and set up the third foul sending him to the bench for most of the second. A non-call on Dampier in the third where he clobbered Duncan. We got the ball, but they didn’t make the call. I told the guy in the seat next to me, “that’s a big no call. Even if we score.” We did score, but that should have been Dampier’s fourth foul and it was 3:00 left in the 3rd. Instead, he was able to sit when Tim sat AND be very aggressive with Tim in the fourth. Those were both big calls.

Dick Bavetta is not a good official. In fact, I would say he is terrible. Brothers and Capers were solid though, I thought.

I’d disagree with whoever said in the other post that we got the short end of the calls. It seemed to me to be fairly balanced. They were just more physical than we were.

It seemed like we couldn’t miss from 3 point land. I was right. We didn’t miss much.

Tony hit a 3, but I don’t think he hit another jumper all night. He over dribbled way too many times. If we had just run our offense, I think he would have been able to take advantage of Barea.

I don’t know where Bruce and Drew were in the second half, but they missed.

Bonner was awful. He looked awful the whole time.

Tim didn’t look good to me. I was stunned he shot 13-24. However, he only got to the line once and that says a lot.

Barea is tiny, but he was huge for them.

They turned up their intensity on defense in the second half and we didn’t match it.

and i’m glad i didn’t see this one, it would have just made me dislike dallas more

I’d say you’re being a bit dramatic while hitting at a great deal of truth and good analysis. Finley’s lay-back D on Howard might be the game plan. Pop may have decided (and I’d agree with this) that with the Dallas big-3, you contain one, stop one and live with one going off. Howard is the toughest matchup so he may have fallen into the “live with,” Dirk into contain (helped by making him play defense as we could never do in the past and having Bowen guard him) and Terry into stop. Pop may also believe that since Howard is the space cadet of the bunch, he’s the least reliable in the 4th quarter, which was true yesterday, we just didn’t take advantage.

I don’t ever think a team should panic after one loss anymore than I think we should have celebrated had the bunnies dropped and refs treated Damp’s contact as they did Bonners.

All that said, yes to your suggestions on more Hill, less Bonner and changes in the starting lineup. I don’t agree with less Udoka as he needs to spend minutes on Dirk and Howard and is a decent rebounder. His playoff minutes last year contributed to our getting past NOOCH.

Lastly, count me amongst those who has never forgotten the unique importance of Manu. He’s a future HOFer that has never received the proper respect around the league due to the feeling he’s a flopper (though that hasn’t hurt Paul for some reason) and the media market in which he plays. You’d think 3 titles and a gold medal would solve that but, I digress. He brings toughness, clutch shots, smarts, defense, key rebounds assists and is a road assassin. He also happens to be the guy that shares ball handling duty with Parker, gets the other team in the penalty and gets to the FT line. All in all, yes, our second most important player. To miss him is to hurt so Pop is right, guys can’t think about what was or could’ve been. They have to figure this out themselves with the guys that are playing. If that mental toughness does not exist then this series is over.

Good evening all. Some excellent conversations going on in here. Not to get too off topic, but the Thuggets murdered the Nooch tonight. Don’t care for the Thuggets, but not gonna lie. I like me some Nooch stompin’!

Most people don’t believe in the Pop “Vacation” theory, but I certainly do. Dude had a great run, made tremendous player acquisition decisions, picked up outside the U.S. talent that nobody even knew square one about, developed a team built to beat the Utah Jazz (who had owned us to that point) and develop a pattern of interior defense and inside-out play that would dominate the playoffs for a decade.

However, as time has gone on, Pop’s ego has grown as has his sense of self satisfaction. After all, why shouldn’t it? His legacy is secure. He has four championships. His hall of fame horse will never say a negative word about him in the locker room or out. He has it made.

Recent years have shown a complete reversal of everything that made Pop great and the Spurs a dominate playoff team.

1. Big guys, young guys and athletic players have egos as well. It comes with knowing you are a bad ass. Mario Elie, Stephen Jackson, Nazir…all those guys gave Pop some lip. Pop got tired of having to deal with the egos, so he stopped recruiting these types of players. Peter Holt had to approve because these types of players also come with heavy contracts. A virtual win-win situation everywhere except on the court.

2. Pop started drafting very oddly. His early draft success in picking players that nobody had a handle on came crashing to an end. Most likely because he just didn’t want the chore of having to bring up a young player who didn’t know his system and would take a while to develop. So, that well of talent was sealed off.

3. Who can get along with Pop became priority one for a Spurs signing. The loss of Scola was a decapitating move. It is so devistating that most Spurs fans refuse to even speak of it. The reason quoted is always, “lets just move on, there is nothing that can be done.” Yes, but as Mike Coleon said in the Godfather, “Ah, you have to pay for Santino. You didn’t expect that little ruse you played with my sister to fool me did you?”. What is even more disturbing is that Scola makes the same dough as Bonner.

4. Pop literally has stopped coaching. The memories of Pop calling a time out and chewing a players ass for missed rotation are fading. Then when a player drove the middle and scored an easy basket, Pop would call an immediate time out and go ape shit. Now, opposing players drive to the middle with one thunderous dunk after another and one over the rim finger roll after another. Pop sits silently on the bench.

5. He no longer even pretends to build a playoff style team. His suspect signings, his lack of taking chances on athletic players, his avoidance of big men, turning his back on foreign talent, all of that points to a guy who really isn’t interested in playoff success. Yes, the team can Golden State Warrior their way to a decent regular season, but as for the playoffs, it is a complete joke.

6. Watching the Spurs whiff on the Brandon Basses, the Poes, the big babys makes one scratch their heads. How can the wizard of finding and signing these type of bargain hard working Malik Rose types completely miss on every single talented bargain post player in the last 4 years?

7. What is the future of the Spurs? Does Pop even care? I am not sure. We do know that his plan is to leave when Duncan leaves. That is not comforting. Sounds like somebody is going to get a pile of dump dropped in their laps.

My faith in Pop is gone. I want to believe in him, but I just can’t. What makes this even harder for me to think about is…Pop is a basketball genius. He must know what is he doing and it is a calculated move. That is unforgivable in my book. If he doesn’t want to make an effort to win, then he needs to get out. Maybe we can call Steve Kerr back in from his mission to destroy the Suns from the inside and jack up the rest of Shaqs career. That mission has been completed.

• Bass had the midrange-jumper since last season. But he has no other offensive game beside the dunk.
• Finley shot lights out, had 19 points and a game-worst +/- of -20
• While Carlisle always looks for working things (changed the starting linuep 32939 times during reg. season), Kidd was also sick
• Parker tired?
• Let’s hope that Pops does not become Avery. My way or the highway, not listening to assistant coaches, players, etc

I think there should be a movie called 2010: A Spurs Odyssey

You know, cause it won’t happen.

Dead on!!!!!

Just gotta pray that Pop takes our advice.

Ugh. Still at work. Trying to make tip-off. Send help.