Minnesota Sports Forum

Im liking the Mike Brown redemption story as a coach. Good for Nigeria and Mike.

Okogie's box score in game against Argentina:

16 minutes/10 points/4-7 FG, 0-1 3PT, 2-2 FT/4 Reb/0 Asst/2 Stl/1 Blk/2 TO/+6

Bolmaro's box score:
15 minutes/10 points/3-7 FG, 0-2 3PT, 4-4 FT/1 Reb/1 Asst/1 Stl/0 Blk/1 TO/-4

If Popovich doesn't win the gold will he be back in 3 years?

bleedspeed177 wrote:If Popovich doesn't win the gold will he be back in 3 years?

No.

And I don't think he'll be coaching anywhere in 3 years. He's already old. He'd be 75.



[Note: Even if he wanted to... that 9 - 5 career mark is a tough look.]

It's an interesting situation with Pop and deserving of closer analysis.

Pop's success has always been with largely homegrown talent that grew up in the Spurs organization. He's rarely had to juggle multiple high-usage stars and shot makers. May be his past experience and style aren't as well suited to a bunch of hastily assembled NBA all-stars (?). I wonder if a guy like Ty Lue, for example, would fare better?

Or is this just a matter of international players, systems, and coaches maturing year by year and getting better and better?

Still.....on paper, the the talent isn't even close when you look at Team USA vs. Nigeria and Australia. It's not that those other teams don't have some good players, but clearly most aren't good enough to play in the NBA, otherwise they'd be there already. And the ones that are mostly are role players.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

bleedspeed177 wrote:If Popovich doesn't win the gold will he be back in 3 years?

No.

And I don't think he'll be coaching anywhere in 3 years. He's already old. He'd be 75.



[Note: Even if he wanted to... that 9 - 5 career mark is a tough look.]

Great point. I used to like the guy, but man has he become an angry bitter old man.

bleedspeed177 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

bleedspeed177 wrote:If Popovich doesn't win the gold will he be back in 3 years?

No.

And I don't think he'll be coaching anywhere in 3 years. He's already old. He'd be 75.



[Note: Even if he wanted to... that 9 - 5 career mark is a tough look.]

Great point. I used to like the guy, but man has he become an angry bitter old man.

Wasn't he always pretty bitter? Now, he's old, too.

I think his reputation has taken two hits in recent years. (1) The relative lack of success... with the Spurs and now the Olympic team. And, (2) he's a basketball coach who openly ripped the most polarizing politician I've seen in my lifetime. That hasn't sat well with people.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

bleedspeed177 wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

bleedspeed177 wrote:If Popovich doesn't win the gold will he be back in 3 years?

No.

And I don't think he'll be coaching anywhere in 3 years. He's already old. He'd be 75.



[Note: Even if he wanted to... that 9 - 5 career mark is a tough look.]

Great point. I used to like the guy, but man has he become an angry bitter old man.

Wasn't he always pretty bitter? Now, he's old, too.

I think his reputation has taken two hits in recent years. (1) The relative lack of success... with the Spurs and now the Olympic team. And, (2) he's a basketball coach who openly ripped the most polarizing politician I've seen in my lifetime. That hasn't sat well with people.

On #2, it turned me off (even though I probably agreed with him at times) because there was zero value-add in doing so. As if we needed a professional basketball coach to tell us how idiotic Trump was when basically every major cultural and media institution in the entire country was already telling us this every single day (except Fox of course). All he was doing was piling on. No one's opinion was going to change because of what Pop said.

Pop will go down as one of the all-time great coaches. But yeah, it's probably time he moves on.....

Q12543 wrote:It's an interesting situation with Pop and deserving of closer analysis.

Pop's success has always been with largely homegrown talent that grew up in the Spurs organization. He's rarely had to juggle multiple high-usage stars and shot makers. May be his past experience and style aren't as well suited to a bunch of hastily assembled NBA all-stars (?). I wonder if a guy like Ty Lue, for example, would fare better?

Or is this just a matter of international players, systems, and coaches maturing year by year and getting better and better?

Still.....on paper, the the talent isn't even close when you look at Team USA vs. Nigeria and Australia. It's not that those other teams don't have some good players, but clearly most aren't good enough to play in the NBA, otherwise they'd be there already. And the ones that are mostly are role players.

This reminds of the old question we used to argue about when Bama won 3 straight national championships. If they could beat the 0-16 bengals in a game. My point was that everybody on the bengals is still nfl player. A lot of players on bama are but not everyone is so no.

FWIW that Australia roster has some pretty solid NBA players. Patty Mills, Ingles, Baynes, Thybulle plus players like Delly and Exum who have had some success in the NBA. Should USA lose to them? No but it's not a bunch of guys nobody has heard from either. It's telling that Mitch Creek didn't even make that team. It must be loaded!!! Lol

In some ways some of the Olympic competition you may not really have a good idea of how good these rosters really are for 2-4 years down the road. For all we know a couple guys on Nigeria May end up being pretty good players. Heck they might have about as much big man talent as team USA does. Ok maybe not but team USA doesn't have much height/length which could be a problem if they play some teams with legit big dudes.

As for Pop...the guy can still coach but I'm not sure he was the right guy to take a bunch of guys and then get them to play basketball. He seems like a guy that is successful at getting guys to play well over time. It seems like a number of seasons the Spurs started out kinda slow and then 10-15 games later they suddenly were at the top of the standings. Idk how much these guys go to practice together especially with the Covid situation. The players have to be to blame too. These losses are even more embarrassing when JVG had to qualify with a group of scrubs.

As for Pop's NBA coaching they went 33 and 39 with one player in Derozen that's a really good player. They played a bunch of young guys and a few of them showed some nice promise like Keldon Johnson. Pop clearly isn't going to coach forever. He is one of the greatest coaches of all time.