The Suns announced Earl Watson as their new head coach

[DRK]

Yes because a head coach is purposely going to try and lose games while keeping a "winning culture" in the locker room............

[saintEscaton]

Never thought I'd like Watson as much as I do. Bringing free agents here will be huge. Suns are smart.


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Can't wait till we offer Barnes the max and get turned down.

[ATTL]

Never thought I'd like Watson as much as I do. Bringing free agents here will be huge. Suns are smart.


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Can't wait till we offer Barnes the max and get turned down.

We'd be saved from ourselves again just like when Eric Gordon was matched.

[KLEON]

I haven't seen a Suns' game since last December. Can someone tell me what is Watson's playing style?

[darealjuice]

I haven't seen a Suns' game since last December. Can someone tell me what is Watson's playing style?

From what I saw he uses a lot of off ball screens to try freeing up shooters, block to block screens with guards picking on weak side bigs to either get a mismatch or good position in the post, and he preaches more passing and off-ball movement over pounding the ball. Don't think he's as much of a dribble, drive, and kick kind of guy.

It seemed like a good percentage of our possessions started with a pass to the wing with the guard making a strong side cut to the basket, then setting a screen on the big on the opposite block, and coming off a pin down screen at the top of the key/freethrow line by the trailing big for a shot at the top of the key or a pick and roll/pop game with the same big. I also feel like I saw us run a double pick play on the ball at the top of 3 point line where the center would come up and set a ball screen and roll down to the post, then usually Teletovic (sometimes Len) would set a second on-ball screen shortly after for a pop to the 3 point line/top of the key. I might not have the specifics exactly right, but that's the gist of it and I know I'd see Booker coming off pin downs to the top of the key or flairing out to the wing like a hundred times a game.

Anyways, like a lot of you guys I'm not upset at the hiring of Watson. I'm not happy that we don't seem to have brought anyone in to interview, but we were never a realistic destination for Thibs, Brooks, JVG, etc. and I didn't want Walton or another rehashed coach like D'Antoni here. I just hope he puts together a good coaching staff to support him, we have a strong draft, don't throw money at guys like Harrison Barnes in FA, and come back with a better, more competitive brand of basketball next year. I don't have a complete opinion on Watson as an in-game coach because he was handed a terrible situation and had to resort to starting Archie Goodwin at the point for multiple games, but I do feel like the team put out more effort under him and I'm optimistic he won't be an awful coach for us next year.

[GMATCallahan]

He didn't really need a resume since he could hand himself the keys in a classless move to oust Bob Hill who went 59-23 the previous year losing to the eventual WC Champion Jazz who gave the Bulls all they could handle....they have a team who was a contender every year and they lose their best player for the next year with a looming Duncan draft coming up "hey, I think I'll name myself the coach".

It was a smart move for his resume though. He didn't have a real tough time with two of the most sure fire #1 pick bigs in NBA history on a team to start with.

He had a LOT of time and a LOT of talent to become such a strategist and learned and became a much better coach along the way. Time and job security and two superstars will pave that road for you.

That response to the tweet was a dumb comment pointing out the dumb comment by Howard in jest. You took that a little too seriously.

I'm not expecting Watson to be Pop.

I'm not going to pre-judge him either. But your bases are covered. No matter what happens with the team there will surely be something to complain about, but that goes for anyone that gets hired, because that would be a bad move too, right?

Seattle actually won the West that season (1996), defeating Utah in seven games in the Western Conference Finals. The Jazz had beaten the Spurs in six games in the Western Conference Semifinals, but San Antonio had constituted the higher and seed and had enjoyed home-court advantage.

But to your greater point, Hill not only coached San Antonio to a 59-23 record and the second seed in the West in '95-'96 (despite the Spurs' lopsided, if necessary, trade of Dennis Rodman for Will Perdue on the eve of the season), but he had coached the Spurs to a league-best 62-20 record and the Western Conference Finals in '94-'95. Hill had proved highly successful, although the fact that San Antonio had lost to a lower seed in the Western Conference Playoffs both years, and had thus still failed to reach the NBA Finals, may have played a role in his ouster. (Of course, in the 1995 Western Conference Finals, the Spurs lost to the defending champion Rockets, who successfully defended their title that year.)

Popovich fired Hill when the Spurs were 3-15; David Robinson was not out for the season at that point, but he actually had not played yet as he recovered from hernia surgery and a bad back. He played in the next six games (playing about half the minutes), during which the Spurs went 3-3 (1-1 versus Phoenix), and then he went down for the year after breaking a bone in his foot two days before Christmas.

Popovich is obviously a brilliant coach, but he was never really in Earl Watson's situation, either.

[GMATCallahan]

I haven't seen a Suns' game since last December. Can someone tell me what is Watson's playing style?

From what I saw he uses a lot of off ball screens to try freeing up shooters, block to block screens with guards picking on weak side bigs to either get a mismatch or good position in the post, and he preaches more passing and off-ball movement over pounding the ball. Don't think he's as much of a dribble, drive, and kick kind of guy.

It seemed like a good percentage of our possessions started with a pass to the wing with the guard making a strong side cut to the basket, then setting a screen on the big on the opposite block, and coming off a pin down screen at the top of the key/freethrow line by the trailing big for a shot at the top of the key or a pick and roll/pop game with the same big. I also feel like I saw us run a double pick play on the ball at the top of 3 point line where the center would come up and set a ball screen and roll down to the post, then usually Teletovic (sometimes Len) would set a second on-ball screen shortly after for a pop to the 3 point line/top of the key. I might not have the specifics exactly right, but that's the gist of it and I know I'd see Booker coming off pin downs to the top of the key or flairing out to the wing like a hundred times a game.

Anyways, like a lot of you guys I'm not upset at the hiring of Watson. I'm not happy that we don't seem to have brought anyone in to interview, but we were never a realistic destination for Thibs, Brooks, JVG, etc. and I didn't want Walton or another rehashed coach like D'Antoni here. I just hope he puts together a good coaching staff to support him, we have a strong draft, don't throw money at guys like Harrison Barnes in FA, and come back with a better, more competitive brand of basketball next year. I don't have a complete opinion on Watson as an in-game coach because he was handed a terrible situation and had to resort to starting Archie Goodwin at the point for multiple games, but I do feel like the team put out more effort under him and I'm optimistic he won't be an awful coach for us next year.

... well-described, but all of that came without his best player, Eric Bledsoe, and much of it came without his other established offensive guard, Brandon Knight. So the play sets could change, at least to some degree, with a healthy roster. Once Bledsoe returns, and with a healthy Knight, the Suns may again become more of a pound-dribble/drive-and-kick team, just by default.

Of course, we will also need to see who Phoenix drafts.

[jcsunsfan]

Never thought I'd like Watson as much as I do. Bringing free agents here will be huge. Suns are smart.


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Can't wait till we offer Barnes the max and get turned down.

Which Barnes?

[jcsunsfan]

I always thought the firing of Bob Hill was classless. He took the reins at the exact time that would make himself look good and the former
Coach look bad. That move forever imprinted on my opinion of Pop.


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I mean I value character and not being a scum human being, hence I prefer Sloan, Dennis Rodman voiced the same complaints and got dealt for a nobody. But who really cares ? Nice guys don't always come out on top, at the end of the day rings talk.Pop realized that sometimes the means justify the end and played the Machiavelian antihero, I'm sure the entire Spurs fanbase is thanking him now as he has handpicked his successor and acquired the torchbearers to ensure the never ending reign of the Evil Empire. Meanwhile we have been relegated to the dustbin of history, merely a chapter mentioned in passing we failed to adjust to the new era our innovation ushered in

Oh, he took care of himself alright. I can't say that Bob Hill wouldn't have won 8 straight championships starting in 99 either. He pretty much had the team on the cusp WITHOUT Duncan.

I understand that people in power are going to make the moves to benefit them....was it better for the Spurs? No one knows for sure. Sure they are well off, but they were going to be anyway.

Props to Pop though! Good job! Well done sir!

As for the Suns, luck doesn't happen to be on our side, like it was with the Spurs when they happened to have Robinson out and landing Duncan, and it did with the Pelicans and the Timberwolves.

This is a star driven league, so you need luck...the Suns could very well be bad or mediocre for a while, but a little luck could change things quickly.

Already got a little with Booker.

[GMATCallahan]

But you must agree that having a change in an offensive philosophy is a breath of fresh air?

Hornacek's sets were completely completely predictable. Markieff isolation postup, pindown into pick and roll on the weakside, high horns into a corner three or just a high screen pick an roll. That was Horny's offence... Predictable, repetitive, and lacking creativity.

To see Watson have the balls to play 2 centers at once is awesome. Hes willing to try things, and willing to give the players a challenge to do something out of their comfort zone- something Horny never did. Alex Len at the 4?? Alex Len at the top of the key? Tyson Chandler distributing from the high post? MADNESS?!? But it was encouraging signs to see! Here is a coach willing to try things that people wouldve thought was crazy! Even though it wasnt a huge success, for Watson to have the balls to try things people would deem as crazy is encouraging signs. This is a guy who is willing to experiment with things.. Hornacek on the other hand kept throwing poo at the wall and hoped it stuck.

For Watson to even get a wins with the depleted squad we had is a phenomenal job in itself. As a rookie head coach, he may make some errors, but he is learning on the job as much as the rookies in the NBA are. But we have a coach who is creative, and willing to make bold adjustments. That is always a great sign.

I have no issues with retaining/promoting Watson, but I am not sure that sustaining ineffective alignments, such as Chandler-Len, is something to be applauded.

Really, Watson was in a different situation than Hornacek, and playing Len at "power forward" probably had more to do with finding enough minutes for both him and Chandler than some attempt at "mad genius" basketball strategy. Strategically, Watson would have been better off starting Leuer in order to gain a better grasp of what he could mean to the Suns moving forward.

[jcsunsfan]

But you must agree that having a change in an offensive philosophy is a breath of fresh air?

Hornacek's sets were completely completely predictable. Markieff isolation postup, pindown into pick and roll on the weakside, high horns into a corner three or just a high screen pick an roll. That was Horny's offence... Predictable, repetitive, and lacking creativity.

To see Watson have the balls to play 2 centers at once is awesome. Hes willing to try things, and willing to give the players a challenge to do something out of their comfort zone- something Horny never did. Alex Len at the 4?? Alex Len at the top of the key? Tyson Chandler distributing from the high post? MADNESS?!? But it was encouraging signs to see! Here is a coach willing to try things that people wouldve thought was crazy! Even though it wasnt a huge success, for Watson to have the balls to try things people would deem as crazy is encouraging signs. This is a guy who is willing to experiment with things.. Hornacek on the other hand kept throwing poo at the wall and hoped it stuck.

For Watson to even get a wins with the depleted squad we had is a phenomenal job in itself. As a rookie head coach, he may make some errors, but he is learning on the job as much as the rookies in the NBA are. But we have a coach who is creative, and willing to make bold adjustments. That is always a great sign.

I have no issues with retaining/promoting Watson, but I am not sure that sustaining ineffective alignments, such as Chandler-Len, is something to be applauded.

Really, Watson was in a different situation than Hornacek, and playing Len at "power forward" probably had more to do with finding enough minutes for both him and Chandler than some attempt at "mad genius" basketball strategy. Strategically, Watson would have been better off starting Leuer in order to gain a better grasp of what he could mean to the Suns moving forward.

If there was ever a time to try unconventional line ups and see if anything worked, it was Jan-April of 2016. I applaud understanding his willingness to be creative without worrying about immediated wins and losses. I hate coaches who try to win preseasons games while missing the point of preseason. Same situation here.

[darealjuice]

... well-described, but all of that came without his best player, Eric Bledsoe, and much of it came without his other established offensive guard, Brandon Knight. So the play sets could change, at least to some degree, with a healthy roster. Once Bledsoe returns, and with a healthy Knight, the Suns may again become more of a pound-dribble/drive-and-kick team, just by default.

Of course, we will also need to see who Phoenix drafts.

I agree, the offense we run after he has the full offseason to put it together will be probably be pretty different from the one he put in mid-season, and I'm sure we'll see more driving in the offense when our two players that are most successful at it are back on the court. But from his recent interview it seems like he's trying to emphasize ball movement over dribbling around without a purpose, which I'd like to see our team, especially Brandon Knight, buy into a bit. Whether it actually turns out that way remains to be seen of course.

[GMATCallahan]

Spoiler:

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ScottHoward42/status/722503379004461056[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/MikeLisboa/status/722504069726613504[/tweet]

Talk about a leap of faith. Thats some fallacious reasoning, if Earl becomes even half the strategist Pop is I'll eat my sock. Pop wasn't just handed the keys without a resume, he had a strong pedigree under Don Nelson and Larry Brown as a lead assistant of the ACTUAL Spurs, not the DLeague affiliate. He was acting GM as the head of bball operations and it was basically his decision to throw away the season where the Admiral went down so that he could team up with the Big Fundamental.

While I agree that there is no reason to believe that Watson is the next Popovich, what happened in '96-'97 season with San Antonio represented more of a fortuitous and ironic bad luck-becomes-good luck bounce than some ingenious maneuvering. When Popovich took over as the Spurs' head coach in December 1996, David Robinson was not out for the year. Instead, he was just about to return from hernia surgery and a bad back, with his first game of the season being Popovich's first as head coach.

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1996&b=19961210&tm=PHO

Then, six games into his return, Robinson broke a bone in his foot, requiring surgery and ending his season. Moreover, Sean Elliott, an All-Star and 20-points per game scorer the previous year, only ended up playing 39 games that year due to season-ending quadriceps surgery (he would miss most of the following year, too), and Sixth Man Chuck Person missed the entire season due to injury. I do not believe that Popovich made any decision to throw away that season—without Robinson, Person, and eventually Elliott, the Spurs just did not possess the personnel to win anything.

Through all those injuries, San Antonio received a chance in the lottery and ended up being lucky, receiving the top pick despite not having the best chance at it (Boston did, with the Spurs finishing five games better than the Celtics).

There is actually a lot of evidence suggesting that the Spurs were not tanking to try and draft Duncan. For instance, examine the box scores of San Antonio's last two games against the Suns that season, both coming late in the year. In the first, the Spurs led at halftime and were tied with the Suns, in Phoenix, heading into the fourth quarter, before the Suns pulled away and won by seven.

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1996&b=19970320&tm=PHO

With about five minutes to play, Phoenix only led by one point.

http://stats.nba.com/game/#!/0029600964/playbyplay/

In the penultimate game of that year's regular season, in San Antonio, the Spurs put up 55 points on the Suns in the first half, taking a fourteen-point lead into halftime before the Suns—who were striving to finish with a .500 record and earn the sixth seed in the West—stormed back by scoring 65 points in the second half.

http://www.databasebasketball.com/teams/boxscore.htm?yr=1996&b=19970418&tm=SAS

And the Suns stormed back because they were a much better team, with much better players, and had a lot on the line. Plus, Phoenix's pattern down the stretch of that season was that the Suns would often start slowly and improve as the game proceeded. If the Spurs were trying to lose, they should not have taken a fourteen-point lead into halftime in the first place, especially since they entered that contest just half a game ahead of Denver and two games in front of Philadelphia. By playing competitively, San Antonio nearly finished with the third-best or fourth-best chance to land Tim Duncan, as opposed to the second-best slot.

... just some facts for consumption or contemplation.

And I believe that Scott Howard's Tweet was ridiculous and inaccurate.

[carey]

Talk about a leap of faith. Thats some fallacious reasoning, if Earl becomes even half the strategist Pop is I'll eat my sock. Pop wasn't just handed the keys without a resume, he had a strong pedigree under Don Nelson and Larry Brown as a lead assistant of the ACTUAL Spurs, not the DLeague affiliate. He was acting GM as the head of bball operations and it was basically his decision to throw away the season where the Admiral went down so that he could team up with the Big Fundamental.

That's kind of curious the way you phrased that. You act like that was Pop's master plan. San Antonio was only 3rd in the lottery standings behind Boston and Vancouver. They jumped both those teams. It was a bit of a surprise to everyone he didn't wind up in Boston. Plus that roster in '96 was a mess. It just seems odd you would give him credit for throwing away the season to team up with Duncan as if it were a sure thing.

Edit: I see the poster before me tended to this much better than I did.

[GMATCallahan]

If there was ever a time to try unconventional line ups and see if anything worked, it was Jan-April of 2016. I applaud understanding his willingness to be creative without worrying about immediated wins and losses. I hate coaches who try to win preseasons games while missing the point of preseason. Same situation here.

I have no real issues with trotting out the Chandler-Len duo in the final months of a wasted season, and I agree that that time period was one for experimentation. However, I do not see anything "creative" to that pairing or any reason to believe that there would have been any upside. In that sense, it represented a waste of time from the beginning, and the Suns would have been better off learning about the future by giving Jon Leuer more minutes at power forward.

That said, I understand the idea of using the Chandler-Len lineup to give both of those centers more minutes: Len to develop and learn from Chandler, and Chandler in order give the young players more on-court veteran leadership while also showcasing him for potential trade talks down the road.

[GMATCallahan]

Talk about a leap of faith. Thats some fallacious reasoning, if Earl becomes even half the strategist Pop is I'll eat my sock. Pop wasn't just handed the keys without a resume, he had a strong pedigree under Don Nelson and Larry Brown as a lead assistant of the ACTUAL Spurs, not the DLeague affiliate. He was acting GM as the head of bball operations and it was basically his decision to throw away the season where the Admiral went down so that he could team up with the Big Fundamental.

That's kind of curious the way you phrased that. You act like that was Pop's master plan. San Antonio was only 3rd in the lottery standings behind Boston and Vancouver. They jumped both those teams. It was a bit of a surprise to everyone he didn't wind up in Boston. Plus that roster in '96 was a mess. It just seems odd you would give him credit for throwing away the season to team up with Duncan as if it were a sure thing.

Edit: I see the poster before me tended to this much better than I did.

Vancouver actually was ineligible for the first selection that year, as was Toronto. When those two franchises joined the NBA, they agreed to be ineligible for the first pick for their first three drafts (1995-1997).

That said, as I noted, San Antonio finished five games behind Boston and barely finished with a better record than both Denver (just one game better) and Philadelphia (only two games better).

As you noted, the heavy expectation was that Duncan would end up with the Celtics. Media folks were already anticipating Dunkin' Donuts endorsements ...

Having the second-best odds and winding up with the first pick obviously is not a stretch, but again, San Antonio was not deliberately losing games or even playing rotations in a way to ensure losses, and the Spurs nearly finished with the third or fourth-best chances of winning the lottery.

[GMATCallahan]

Still baffled he got the job without anyone else even interviewing. There was no rush to lock him up.

Sarver and McDonough could make themselves look better in terms of firing Hornacek: Watson was the real deal, and we knew it all along!

[GMATCallahan]

Oh, he took care of himself alright. I can't say that Bob Hill wouldn't have won 8 straight championships starting in 99 either. He pretty much had the team on the cusp WITHOUT Duncan.

I understand that people in power are going to make the moves to benefit them....was it better for the Spurs? No one knows for sure. Sure they are well off, but they were going to be anyway.

Props to Pop though! Good job! Well done sir!

As for the Suns, luck doesn't happen to be on our side, like it was with the Spurs when they happened to have Robinson out and landing Duncan, and it did with the Pelicans and the Timberwolves.

This is a star driven league, so you need luck...the Suns could very well be bad or mediocre for a while, but a little luck could change things quickly.

Hill certainly did not deserve to be fired, and he may well have coached San Antonio to a championship, but I do believe that Popovich is a unique individual. He is very worldly and really has a way of broadening the picture for his players in a way that, I sense, balances and stabilizes them. When anyone has the time, I would strongly recommend reading these two Sports Illustrated articles:

http://www.si.com/vault/2013/04/29/106316155/pop-art

http://www.si.com/nba/2015/03/25/patty-mills-australia-san-antonio-spurs-bala-gregg-popovich

Popovich was clearly lucky at the start, and the NBA is a star-driven league, but the championship team that has arguably impressed me the most since the 1990s was the 2014 Spurs. People keep saying, "You need a superstar to win in the playoffs," and "No one has done it since the 2004 Pistons." Well, sorry, but the Spurs did it. Tim Duncan is one of the greatest players ever, but he has not been a "superstar"—and arguably not even a "star"—in years. A good player? Yes. A vital player? Yes. An important player? Yes. But a star who is going to carry you to victory with dominant performances? No. And by the 2014 NBA Finals, Duncan was thirty-eight years old. Tony Parker and especially Manu Ginobili were also well into their thirties; I would argue that they were never "superstars," and they certainly did not meet that description by that point. Kawhi Leonard was a rising player, but not yet a "star"—not really. The Spurs were simply a team, a team in the truest sense of the term, and Popovich excels in that regard. He brings in players who buy into that approach and does not get caught up in the Carmelo Anthony-style myths of the NBA. The way that he has rested his players and kept their minutes down, while off-putting at times, was also ahead of the curve. No one combines Old School and New School like Popovich, and he is constantly ahead of or abreast of the curve in terms of game strategies and tactics at both ends of the floor—while not simply imitating anyone, either.

And rising to success is one thing; sustaining it for as long as Popovich has done, with the potential for complacency, resentment, and mounting egotism, is something else. Pat Riley eventually turned many of his Laker players against him; Popovich apparently has never done so. Indeed, the greatest analogy is probably to the culture that Red Auerbach and Bill Russell built with the Boston Celtics in the late 1950s and 1960s. Again, Popovich proved lucky at the start of his coaching tenure with San Antonio, but he has needed much more than luck to build on, and sustain, that initial fortune.

[bwgood77]

Oh, he took care of himself alright. I can't say that Bob Hill wouldn't have won 8 straight championships starting in 99 either. He pretty much had the team on the cusp WITHOUT Duncan.

I understand that people in power are going to make the moves to benefit them....was it better for the Spurs? No one knows for sure. Sure they are well off, but they were going to be anyway.

Props to Pop though! Good job! Well done sir!

As for the Suns, luck doesn't happen to be on our side, like it was with the Spurs when they happened to have Robinson out and landing Duncan, and it did with the Pelicans and the Timberwolves.

This is a star driven league, so you need luck...the Suns could very well be bad or mediocre for a while, but a little luck could change things quickly.

Hill certainly did not deserve to be fired, and he may well have coached San Antonio to a championship, but I do believe that Popovich is a unique individual. He is very worldly and really has a way of broadening the picture for his players in a way that, I sense, balances and stabilizes them. When anyone has the time, I would strongly recommend reading these two Sports Illustrated articles:

http://www.si.com/vault/2013/04/29/106316155/pop-art

http://www.si.com/nba/2015/03/25/patty-mills-australia-san-antonio-spurs-bala-gregg-popovich

Popovich was clearly lucky at the start, and the NBA is a star-driven league, but the championship team that has arguably impressed me the most since the 1990s was the 2014 Spurs. People keep saying, "You need a superstar to win in the playoffs," and "No one has done it since the 2004 Pistons." Well, sorry, but the Spurs did it. Tim Duncan is one of the greatest players ever, but he has not been a "superstar"—and arguably not even a "star"—in years. A good player? Yes. A vital player? Yes. An important player? Yes. But a star who is going to carry you to victory with dominant performances? No. And by the 2014 NBA Finals, Duncan was thirty-eight years old. Tony Parker and especially Manu Ginobili were also well into their thirties; I would argue that they were never "superstars," and they certainly did not meet that description by that point. Kawhi Leonard was a rising player, but not yet a "star"—not really. The Spurs were simply a team, a team in the truest sense of the term, and Popovich excels in that regard. He brings in players who buy into that approach and does not get caught up in the Carmelo Anthony-style myths of the NBA. The way that he has rested his players and kept their minutes down, while off-putting at times, was also ahead of the curve. No one combines Old School and New School like Popovich, and he is constantly ahead of or abreast of the curve in terms of game strategies and tactics at both ends of the floor—while not simply imitating anyone, either.

And rising to success is one thing; sustaining it for as long as Popovich has done, with the potential for complacency, resentment, and mounting egotism, is something else. Pat Riley eventually turned many of his Laker players against him; Popovich apparently has never done so. Indeed, the greatest analogy is probably to the culture that Red Auerbach and Bill Russell built with the Boston Celtics in the late 1950s and 1960s. Again, Popovich proved lucky at the start of his coaching tenure with San Antonio, but he has needed much more than luck to build on, and sustain, that initial fortune.

I agree with all that. That was one of the best teams ever that won it that year...much better than the earlier championship Spurs. Even the same team that lost to the Heat in an epic fashion the year before, I believe, were better than any previous championship Spurs. Same with this year's team and probably last year's team. He is a great coach, but I also believe it took him many years to get to that type of coach that he is today. The coach today would have never lost to 8 seeded Memphis in the first round or even swept by us in 2010 imo....as a matter of fact, I think the latter had a big impact on him reshaping his focus and being open to more ideas and creative thinking....the kind where you don't HAVE to rely on a superstar.

[GMATCallahan]

Yes, in the Robinson era, they tried several coaches, including Larry Brown, and had quite a few good players with Sean Elliott, Robinson and others, and never did terribly well. Brown had one bad year, two good years, though he lost in the first round in one of them after winning 55 games, and made it to the 2nd round in the other.

Bob Hill comes in, takes over, leads them to their best record ever, at 62-20, and lost in the WCF to the same Rockets team we blew a 2nd round series to after going up 3-1 and having game 5 at home and going into OT....so that Rockets team was the defending champ who was a 6 seed largely due to injuries throughout the season.

After Robinson arrived, the Spurs were very successful with Larry Brown, despite two First Round exits. (In 1992, the Suns swept the Spurs as Robinson did not play due to injury, and San Antonio swingman Willie Anderson had also gone down for the season.) In 1990, Brown's first season with Robinson, Elliott, and power forward Terry Cummings (not to mention point guard Rod Strickland), San Antonio won 56 games and nearly faced Phoenix in the Western Conference Finals. The Spurs lost in overtime of Game Seven of the Western Conference Semifinals in Portland when Strickland committed an infamous blunder and Jerome Kersey capitalized on it in spectacular fashion. See the last six minutes of this highlight video here:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at1NCGxJl5o[/youtube]

After three years with Brown and two with John Lucas, Bob Hill took over the Robinson-led Spurs. But Hill enjoyed some advantages, too. First, let us again review San Antonio's playoff history during the preceding years. In 1990, with Robinson and Cummings, San Antonio came within an eyelash of the Western Conference Finals. In 1991, the Spurs repeated as Midwest Division champions (beating out the powerhouse Jazz both times), but Don Nelson's small-ball Run TMC wizardry sank the Admiral in a First Round upset. In 1992, again, Robinson was out and the Suns swept San Antonio in the First Round. In 1993, San Antonio won 49 games and lost in six contests to Phoenix in the Western Conference Semifinals, but Cummings only played in 8 regular season games after offseason knee surgery, his ability greatly reduced. Thus, on the eve of '93-'94 season, after the Suns' pending acquisition of Dennis Rodman fell through due to Richard Dumas' drug relapse, Detroit dealt Rodman to San Antonio for Sean Elliott. The Spurs obviously filled their hole at power forward, and they subsequently won 55 games that season before losing in the First Round to a 53-win Utah club that had just added Jeff Hornacek. But after that season, San Antonio reacquired Elliott from the Pistons in one of the most lopsided trades in NBA history. The Spurs could now flank Robinson with Rodman and Elliott at forward, giving them perhaps the best starting front-court in the league. San Antonio also brought back free agent point guard Avery Johnson, who had spent the previous year with Golden State, starting 70 games under Nelson in his most extensive NBA experience to date.

Bob Hill thus inherited a club that had, in a year's time, added Rodman and brought back both Elliott and Johnson without subtracting from its roster. The Spurs were now wonderfully balanced. Moreover, Johnson was now a better, more experienced point guard than he had been during his initial stint in San Antonio, and Robinson and Elliott were more mature, fully developed players than they had been as young players in the early nineties. Robinson, in particular, had refined his low-post moves and overall offensive game, becoming a scoring titlist.

So just as Popovich would prove lucky with regard to personnel in the late nineties, Hill proved fortunate as well. To his credit, the Spurs did not skip a beat after trading Rodman for Will Perdue in the fall of 1995, but by then, San Antonio did not seem to need Rodman.