Read Online Chasing Perfection: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the High-Stakes Game of Creating an NBA Champion by Andy Glockner - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Andy Glockner
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meeting with the Nuggets was in the midst of an absolutely punishing December run that, if you included a game on November 30 at Boston, featured nineteen games in thirty-two days, including seven sets of back-to-back contests. To make matters worse, none of those back-to-backs even featured two consecutive home games.
“The whole month is just ridiculous. We just have to deal with it,” Popovich said, plainly.
While coaches often can trend toward both hyperbole and recency effect, there was ample reason to believe Popovich when he said that December was the worst schedule month he had ever seen in his two decades with the franchise. In addition to the sheer number of games, the travel, and the quick turnarounds, a rash of injuries had left him much shorter on personnel than the ordinarily deep Spurs liked to find themselves. Parker, the starting point guard, was struggling with a hamstring problem that had cost him some games, and he wouldn’t play on this night. His primary backup, Patty Mills, still hadn’t at this point returned from summer rotator cuff surgery, so the point guard role was nominally in the hands of the inexperienced Cory Joseph, with some help from Ginobili and other perimeter players.
The Spurs also had seen small forward Kawhi Leonard suffer a hand injury that cost him two games ahead of this particular contest(in which he played), and then soon after saw him miss fifteen more. San Antonio also had been without center Tiago Splitter for all but ten minutes of the season prior to his return on December 8, and on this night, he still hadn’t completely been integrated back into the rotation as he got his fitness levels back to normal playing standard.
All of this meant Duncan, in particular, was finding himself playing more minutes than usual. Entering this particular game, Duncan had played at least thirty-six minutes in four of his last five appearances after not even averaging thirty minutes a game during the 2013–14 season. Two nights before, Duncan played a then season-high forty minutes against the Los Angeles Lakers; later in the week, he would play forty-eight and forty-three minutes, respectively, in triple-overtime losses to Memphis and Portland. Popovich ultimately found a way to rest Duncan for four separate games in December, but the thirty-eight-year-old still played in fourteen contests and averaged 34.5 minutes a game for the month. It was hardly ideal.
“It’s a little tougher on us this year, you know?” Popovich said, expounding on the impact of the schedule and the personnel issues. “Patty Mills is such a big part of what we do, coming off the bench if Tony didn’t play, because he scores. And Tiago’s just coming back into the feel of the game. He hadn’t played in, well, I don’t know how long now. So we’re doing OK. We’re much better off with Tiago and Patty Mills [though] if we sit people.”
Sitting players in strategic fashion has been a major part of how Popovich has extended the contention window for this Spurs team as its core ages. The team even made some light of the strategy late in the 2011–12 season, which was a compressed sixty-six-game schedule after extended negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement cost the league part of the campaign. Box scores list the reason players who didn’t enter a game received a “DNP” (did not play) in that particular contest, and against the 76ers on March 25, 2012, the Spurs listed Duncan’s reason for hisDNP as “old.”
Some in the league office didn’t find these types of roster manipulations funny, and the issue came to a head early in the following season, when the Spurs elected to send Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, and swingman Danny Green home before the end of a six-game road trip, having them miss the Spurs’ lone game in Miami that season. It didn’t help the Spurs’ cause that the game was a national TV broadcast, and no league wants to irk its big-money broadcast partners. After
“The whole month is just ridiculous. We just have to deal with it,” Popovich said, plainly.
While coaches often can trend toward both hyperbole and recency effect, there was ample reason to believe Popovich when he said that December was the worst schedule month he had ever seen in his two decades with the franchise. In addition to the sheer number of games, the travel, and the quick turnarounds, a rash of injuries had left him much shorter on personnel than the ordinarily deep Spurs liked to find themselves. Parker, the starting point guard, was struggling with a hamstring problem that had cost him some games, and he wouldn’t play on this night. His primary backup, Patty Mills, still hadn’t at this point returned from summer rotator cuff surgery, so the point guard role was nominally in the hands of the inexperienced Cory Joseph, with some help from Ginobili and other perimeter players.
The Spurs also had seen small forward Kawhi Leonard suffer a hand injury that cost him two games ahead of this particular contest(in which he played), and then soon after saw him miss fifteen more. San Antonio also had been without center Tiago Splitter for all but ten minutes of the season prior to his return on December 8, and on this night, he still hadn’t completely been integrated back into the rotation as he got his fitness levels back to normal playing standard.
All of this meant Duncan, in particular, was finding himself playing more minutes than usual. Entering this particular game, Duncan had played at least thirty-six minutes in four of his last five appearances after not even averaging thirty minutes a game during the 2013–14 season. Two nights before, Duncan played a then season-high forty minutes against the Los Angeles Lakers; later in the week, he would play forty-eight and forty-three minutes, respectively, in triple-overtime losses to Memphis and Portland. Popovich ultimately found a way to rest Duncan for four separate games in December, but the thirty-eight-year-old still played in fourteen contests and averaged 34.5 minutes a game for the month. It was hardly ideal.
“It’s a little tougher on us this year, you know?” Popovich said, expounding on the impact of the schedule and the personnel issues. “Patty Mills is such a big part of what we do, coming off the bench if Tony didn’t play, because he scores. And Tiago’s just coming back into the feel of the game. He hadn’t played in, well, I don’t know how long now. So we’re doing OK. We’re much better off with Tiago and Patty Mills [though] if we sit people.”
Sitting players in strategic fashion has been a major part of how Popovich has extended the contention window for this Spurs team as its core ages. The team even made some light of the strategy late in the 2011–12 season, which was a compressed sixty-six-game schedule after extended negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement cost the league part of the campaign. Box scores list the reason players who didn’t enter a game received a “DNP” (did not play) in that particular contest, and against the 76ers on March 25, 2012, the Spurs listed Duncan’s reason for hisDNP as “old.”
Some in the league office didn’t find these types of roster manipulations funny, and the issue came to a head early in the following season, when the Spurs elected to send Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, and swingman Danny Green home before the end of a six-game road trip, having them miss the Spurs’ lone game in Miami that season. It didn’t help the Spurs’ cause that the game was a national TV broadcast, and no league wants to irk its big-money broadcast partners. After
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