Victor Wembanyama, Gregg Popovich And San Antonio Spurs Show Others The Way To The NBA Land of The Living

Courtesy of those Ping Pong balls Tuesday night in Chicago bouncing with the No. 1 pick overall toward the San Antonio Spurs during the NBA Lottery, Gregg Popovich became “great” again as a head coach.

Victor Wembanyama is Popovich’s latest David Robinson and Tim Duncan, both Basketball Hall of Famers, which brings us to the bottom line: This epidemic of NBA teams shuffling head coaches between themselves every two or three years after whacking them for some of this or a little of that, but mostly for underperforming talent, shaky talent or zero talent – well, the whole thing ranks between ridiculous and pointless.

According to Forbes, the average NBA team was worth $2.86 billion this season (up 15% more than last season). So owners likely had enough extra cash either to improve their talent or to have their head coach join them during a lecture on Ping Pong Strategy 101 or something.

Which brings us back to Popovich, otherwise known as” Pop,” or with apologies to the ghost of Lou Gehrig, you can call the Spurs’ 74-year-old ruler of 27 seasons the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

The Spurs sputtered (OK, stunk) the last four years. Even so, those Ping Pong balls gave Popovich and his franchise the chance during the NBA June draft to select a sixth world championship through Wembanyama with that No. 1 pick.

It all placed Popovich within a few magical performances from Wembanyama (the generational sensation from France at 7-foot-3) of returning to the elite status at courtside. That would complement his distinction as the league’s highest-paid coach at $11.5 million.

What a change for Popovich. Before the Wembanyama thing and after the last retirement of the Spurs’ Big three when Tony Parker stopped dribbling following the 2019 season to join Tm Duncan (2016) and Manu Ginobili (2018) out the AT&T Center door, Popovich wasn’t so great.

The Spurs had four straight losing seasons, including last year’s plunge to a winning percentage of .268 (22-60), tied with the Houston Rockets for the second-worst mark in the NBA behind the Detroit Pistons.

Simply put, the Spurs’ Big three was replaced by nobody worth mentioning, which brings us back to that bottom line: Talent matters. It matters for all professional sports leagues, but it matters the most in the NBA, where 11 years of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant on his rosters earned Phil Jackson championship rings after each of those seasons.

The year Jackson lacked one of those guys (the 1993-94 season when Jordan left the Chicago Bulls to play baseball), he was like the overwhelming majority of his peers.

In case you didn’t know, the overwhelming majority of NBA head coaches are ordinary or worse without significant talent.

If you’re Red Auerbach, and if you have 11 future Basketball Hall of Famers during your head coaching career with the Boston Celtics during the 1950s and 1960s, you’re going to win something like nine NBA titles.

How great was Pat Riley?

Oh, Riley was really great in Los Angeles with the Showtime Lakers of Magic
MAGIC
Johnson, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar and the rest during much of the 1980s. There wasn’t much greatness for Riley with the New York Knicks in the early to mid-1990s, but he got great again for the 2005-06 season with the Miami Heat of Dwyane Wade.

See a pattern?

Out of the 30 NBA teams, there might be such thing as a bad coach or even a great coach during a given season, but probably not.

They’re all about the same.

Not that it matters to NBA team officials.

After the vanishing acts of NBA Most Valuable Player Joel Embiid and future Basketball Hall of Famer James Harden in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals in Boston, the Philadelphia 76ers whacked Doc Rivers, and get this: Mike Budenholzer is among those considered as Rivers’ replacement only days after the Milwaukee Bucks fired Coach Bud. Just two years ago, Budenholzer led the Bucks to a world championship.

Wasn’t it only last season that Ime Udoka took the Celtics to the NBA Finals before he was fired for violating team policies?

Yep, but Udoka will coach the Rockets next season.

Rick Carlisle went from the Dallas Mavericks after the 2021 season to the same Indianapolis Pacers he used to coach before he left them for the Mavericks prior to the 2008 season.

Elsewhere, Steve Clifford was fired by the Charlotte Hornets after the 2018, but he landed with the Orlando Magic slightly more than a month later, and now he’s back in charge of the Hornets.

Longevity with a team is no longer a thing for the NBA coaches who go multiple seasons without a Russell, a Kobe or a LeBron.

If nothing else, those coaches should learn from Popovich on the proper way to rub a rabbit’s foot.