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2018-2019 San Antonio Spurs: Fuck Kawhi Leonard


Michael Knight

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Here was their roster that year minus Chuck person, who missed the entire year with an injury (Achilles I think).

 

2373aa50cf0920812ed2b6adb207dbcb.jpg

 

David Robinson played 6 games because of a broken foot and a bad back, iirc. Sean Elliott only played 39 games. Bob Hill was fired 20 games into the season and Pop took over coaching duties. Needless to say, it was a horrible year that turned out wonderfully.

 

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  On 3/19/2019 at 5:39 PM, Hate said:

Here was their roster that year minus Chuck person, who missed the entire year with an injury (Achilles I think).

 

2373aa50cf0920812ed2b6adb207dbcb.jpg

 

David Robinson played 6 games because of a broken foot and a bad back, iirc. Sean Elliott only played 39 games. Bob Hill was fired 20 games into the season and Pop took over coaching duties. Needless to say, it was a horrible year that turned out wonderfully.

 

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When did Rodman play for Pop??  ..... Rodman hated Coach Pop

Edited by LTtxfan
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  On 3/19/2019 at 5:59 PM, housious said:

Either you're drunk, trolling, or being sincere. But that's okay. Rodman never played for Pop. Rodman's last season was in '95 while Pop was still GM. 

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Oh, well I remember Pop was involved in trading Rodman and something negative was mentioned in Rodman's book about Pop.  You're right -- the trade happened while Pop was GM for the Spurs.

Edited by LTtxfan
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  On 3/19/2019 at 5:34 PM, LTtxfan said:

Thx for responses regarding 1997.  I didn't remember a huge tank job, just glad Spurs won the 1st pick in NBA Lottery....

 

Also saw this Best Taco bracket for March Madness if you live in SA area.....😀

https://news4sanantonio.com/features/contests/taco-madness-03-15-2019

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Complete bullshit that Torchy's is in there. Also, that Taco Riendo vs. Rolando's matchup is just brutal in the first round.

With regard to 1997 and the Spurs tanking, Robinson broke his foot in December and was only supposed to be out 6 weeks, but they held him out the rest of the season. Could he have come back? Probably, but he also missed the beginning of the season with a back injury and the team was already so far into the dumps that they wouldn't have made the playoffs anyway. Plus, they had a bunch of other injuries as well.

The other interesting thing about that season was Pop canning/replacing Bob Hill after about 20 games even though Robinson was out. At the time, it was viewed as completely self-serving and backstabbing. 

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  On 3/19/2019 at 5:28 PM, LTtxfan said:

Need Spurs historians to help out.....

Stephen A. said even the Spurs tanked a year on purpose when David Robinson got hurt to land Duncan..... Do you believe that's true??

If I remember correctly, both Robinson and Elliott were hurt during that season

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Stephen A is a colossal dipshit but ... is he right? Did the Spurs purposely tank in 96-97? No, not really. David Robinson's back injury was extremely serious. The Spurs didn't take a dive in the same sense the Houston Rockets did to land Sampson and Hakeem back-to-back one decade earlier, which led to the lottery in the first place. What the Spurs didn't do, however, was rush Robinson and Sean Elliott back from injury once it was evident the Spurs had no shot at working their way back into the playoff picture.

In 1996-97, I was a sports intern at KMOL. I attended every single morning shoot-around and home game that season, not to mention many practices in between.  I can't remember exactly when Robinson hurt his back but he was not going to be able to start the season with the team. He was going to miss a month or two to start the year.

Popovich was in his first season back with the team as a first-time GM after being an assistant coach for Don Nelson in GS. Pop had very few, if any, skins on the wall. It wasn't a surprise that the Spurs got off to a terrible start without former MVP Robinson. The Spurs started 3-15 but were getting Robinson back for an early December game against the Suns. Naturally, Pop decided that was the perfect time to fire Bob Hill, which I thought was blatantly unfair at the time. Then Pop named himself head coach. Robinson wound up playing six games and the Spurs were 3-3 in those games. How's that for karma, I thought.

Robinson re-injured his back (EDIT: As Mitch pointed out, I stand corrected and it was his foot that got hurt in December) and probably could've come back late in the season but what for? The Spurs weren't going to be able to make the playoffs, especially with Elliott hurt by that point, so Pop and the team decided to let them get healthy for the following season.

Meanwhile, the team's leading scorer was an over-the-hill Dominique Wilkins. They got heavy minutes from Avery, Del Negro, Cadillac Anderson, Will Perdue and, yes, Jamie Feick in the second half of that season. And the team finished with a 20-62 record. I wasn't a Pop fan for how he handled Hill. But I can tell you the Spurs played hard and bought in to Pop's hard-nosed, no excuses, defense-first mentality that would become a staple of Pop's teams. Then we lucked out and won the lottery. You know the rest of the story.

Edited by C-Man
EDIT: Mitch is right. After coming back from the back issues, David broke his foot and missed the rest of the year.
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  On 3/19/2019 at 7:00 PM, Mitch Cumsteen said:

Complete bullshit that Torchy's is in there. Also, that Taco Riendo vs. Rolando's matchup is just brutal in the first round.

With regard to 1997 and the Spurs tanking, Robinson broke his foot in December and was only supposed to be out 6 weeks, but they held him out the rest of the season. Could he have come back? Probably, but he also missed the beginning of the season with a back injury and the team was already so far into the dumps that they wouldn't have made the playoffs anyway. Plus, they had a bunch of other injuries as well.

The other interesting thing about that season was Pop canning/replacing Bob Hill after about 20 games even though Robinson was out. At the time, it was viewed as completely self-serving and backstabbing. 

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This is how I remember it.  They could have brought David back but decided not to so they got accused of tanking.  The organization's thoughts are why push David back when they were realistically eliminated from the playoffs, Sean was hurt and he had back issues earlier in the year.  Realistically, we understood that winning a few more games was going to hurt our chances for Tim and decided to just get healthy.  How you see it will depend on your point of view....

giphy.gif

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Probably have told this story before but late in that season, Avery Johnson missed a game because he had his tonsils removed. Corey Alexander started in his place and scored 30+ points and the Spurs got a rare win. We were assembled for Pop's post-game press conference and I (24 at the time) decided to ask the first a question, a soft-ball to get a nice soundbite about Corey Alexander to go along with that night's highlight package:

Me (tongue-in-cheek): "So, uh, does Avery need to worry about his starting job after what Corey did tonight?"

Pop (long pause): "Who are you? Why are you in here? Where did you come from?" (or some variation of that)

Needless to say, Pop knew damn well I was the young guy from KMOL who was the only non-camera guy who was morning shoot-around and often in the post-game pressers because the team was so bad. I asked another question or two and ran back to the back of the Alamodome to transmit tape back to Pete Delgado or Don Harris at the station.

I've not run across Pop's path again since that season ended and I moved to Dallas shortly after. Obviously, the guy is fucking aces in my book. I would love to talk to him again and ask him if he remembers that night. I feel like I got the Pop/sideline reporter business before anybody else did.

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Another interesting note about Chuck Person, who I always loved when he was on the Spurs. He permanently fucked up his back when the back of his seat on the team's charter plane popped loose upon takeoff. IIRC, he won a pretty substantial lawsuit as a result.

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  On 3/19/2019 at 7:59 PM, C-Man said:

Probably have told this story before but late in that season, Avery Johnson missed a game because he had his tonsils removed. Corey Alexander started in his place and scored 30+ points and the Spurs got a rare win. We were assembled for Pop's post-game press conference and I (24 at the time) decided to ask the first a question, a soft-ball to get a nice soundbite about Corey Alexander to go along with that night's highlight package:

Me (tongue-in-cheek): "So, uh, does Avery need to worry about his starting job after what Corey did tonight?"

Pop (long pause): "Who are you? Why are you in here? Where did you come from?" (or some variation of that)

Needless to say, Pop knew damn well I was the young guy from KMOL who was the only non-camera guy who was morning shoot-around and often in the post-game pressers because the team was so bad. I asked another question or two and ran back to the back of the Alamodome to transmit tape back to Pete Delgado or Don Harris at the station.

I've not run across Pop's path again since that season ended and I moved to Dallas shortly after. Obviously, the guy is fucking aces in my book. I would love to talk to him again and ask him if he remembers that night. I feel like I got the Pop/sideline reporter business before anybody else did.

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In looking back, I bet it was this game -- 22 points and 10 assists in a win over the Celtics on "Steak & Blowjob" Day:

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/alexaco01/gamelog/1997

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  On 3/19/2019 at 8:01 PM, C-Man said:

Another interesting note about Chuck Person, who I always loved when he was on the Spurs. He permanently fucked up his back when the back of his seat on the team's charter plane popped loose upon takeoff. IIRC, he won a pretty substantial lawsuit as a result.

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That and he just plead guilty in the FBI-NCAA scandal. He's looking at 24 - 36 months in prison.

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  On 3/19/2019 at 5:28 PM, LTtxfan said:

Need Spurs historians to help out.....

Stephen A. said even the Spurs tanked a year on purpose when David Robinson got hurt to land Duncan..... Do you believe that's true??

If I remember correctly, both Robinson and Elliott were hurt during that season

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Stephen A. He's full of shit. Always.

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The bench is out scoring the starters this evening. Going to need LMA, DWhite and DDR to pick it up here if they want to rally back and close this out.

 

LMA caught fire. Miami was forced to call a timeout, down by 5 with plenty of time.

Edited by Chad
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They were due for a letdown not only because of the streak but also for beating GS last game. It's just human nature. Defensive intensity was for shit until the fourth quarter and that's about as poorly as White has played all season.

Still, Derozen turning the ball over in crunch time is getting really, really frustrating. He's already got the bad rap for all the playoff choking in Toronto but this is getting ridiculous. I feel bad for the guy because you can tell he wants it really badly, but he's too far inside his own head. It's going to be a beating to watch him shit himself in the playoffs.

Edited by Mitch Cumsteen
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The key is to take the ball out of his hands. He’s great on sets, but not so much in starting the offense. It’s kinda on Pop that this keeps happening. I was literally yelling at the television for a timeout, knowing what was about to happen. It’s comical at this point, he plays a great game and it’s undone by a turnover at a critical part of the game. Sucks for the dude, because he was one of the only bright spots in a shit game. 

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  On 3/21/2019 at 3:47 PM, Kermit said:

The key is to take the ball out of his hands. He’s great on sets, but not so much in starting the offense. It’s kinda on Pop that this keeps happening. I was literally yelling at the television for a timeout, knowing what was about to happen. It’s comical at this point, he plays a great game and it’s undone by a turnover at a critical part of the game. Sucks for the dude, because he was one of the only bright spots in a shit game. 

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All that is true but didn't he (it might have been Gay, not 100% sure) also have a terrible turnover a couple of possessions before when he drove the lane and tried an impossible pass to Aldridge instead of putting it up? Derozen's game is almost exclusively beat your guy off the dribble and create your own shot or create an opportunity for a teammate. And honestly, he's surprised me this year with how well he's distributed the ball. I never thought he was that good of a passer before watching him this season. Still, the guy needs the ball to be effective and he needs to put it on the floor. He's not Reggie Miller coming off 17 different screens and popping a jump shot in your face. He's an iso / pick and roll guy. I'm not sure how you reconcile his propensity for turning the ball over at the most inopportune time and giving him a chance to make a play down the stretch.

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