 |
|
| Gregg Popovich won't even be sitting next to his stars Thursday night. (Getty Images) |
Gregg Popovich could not give a flip.
Not a single flip.
Not a single, solitary flip will be given.
The San Antonio Spurs announced Thursday that Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Danny Green and Tim Duncan did not travel to Miami for the Spurs' Thursday night matchup vs. the Miami Heat. San Antonio is at the end of a long road trip and coach Gregg Popovich, clearly considering the game a lost cause, decided to pull the firepower and live to fight another day.
With Kawhi Leonard and Stephen Jackson out with injury, you're looking at a lineup featuring Patty Mills, Gary Neal, Matt Bonner, DeJuan Blair, and Tiago Splitter.
So that's where the news part ends.
***********
Couple of things here.
- Buck Harvey of the Express-News notes that the unspoken message here is to David Stern regarding the schedule. The basic idea being touted is that setting up the Spurs vs. Miami at the end of a long road trip is not conducive to a fair fight, so then Pop's going to take his ball, the ball being his talent, and go home. Of course, every team has a rough part of their schedule... and the Spurs are veteran players who are more than capable of getting up for this game... and the Spurs' recent schedule has featured a brutal series of matchups with Toronto, Orlando, and your Washington Wizards.
- The other side is that Popovich is paid to win championships (so based on that logic he hasn't done his job since 2008), and he'll do what it takes to win. Because clearly, resting four of your best players in November when they've played fifteen games will unock the secrets of basketball N.I.M.H. and they will now go on to win the title. Glad that Pop took care of this early.
- Another popular point is that this is proof the NBA season is too long. Which is breaking news that no one has ever encountered before, except when everyone said that starting the year last year at Christmas was awesome except for the contracted schedule. Fans and media love the idea of a shorter schedule. But that would jack up prices even more than they are now where families have a hard time affording tickets to the good teams in the first place. And ownership which is already going to lock out the players again in three years would have all the more incentive to squeeze more blood from the stone.
- Regardless of all that, I don't think using one cranky old coach's petulance about a schedule as reasoning for a drastic change in the economic and contextual makeup of a sports league is a good plan, but hey, I just work here.
- Finally, you will hear the phrase "Popovich doesn't care" about 1,700 times in the next 24 hours and it will be used in a lauding tone. Everyone loves that Popovich is irreverent, because we like irreverence. The result is a nationally televised game between two of the league's best teams that has been rendered into an exhibition, even if the Spurs were to win. It's fine that Popovich wants to exact a little revenge, it's just unfortunate for the hundreds of TNT personnel, the San Antonio fans who have been looking forward to this game for months, the Heat fans who wanted a good game, everyone watching on television, and the TNT executives who need all the ratings they can get. Tomorrow we'll find something else to take ridiculous polar positions on and the whole things start over.
- There's not a small amount of irony in the fact that a team whose fans complain never gets the national attention they deserve is deliberately sabotaging a national television appearance. Maybe we should just ignore them completely, since they clearly don't care at all as an organization? (It's such a shame because they're so good.)
- Seriously, Danny Green?!
