In November of 2023, somewhere between the In-Season Tournament and the about-to-be Thanksgiving holiday, there was a game between the Clippers and the San Antonio Spurs. The score was 48-39, Clippers, and then something happened. A coach grabbed the microphone from the announcer to chat with the fans — in the middle of a game. Welcome back to BASKETBALLWEATHER.
Greg Popovich is one of the winningest coaches in NBA basketball history. In the eyes of many a fan and media he is one of the greatest coaches of all time, and may in fact be the GOAT. A stable of current/recently fired NBA coaches, including Steve Kerr, Ime Udoka, and Mike Booodyholzer all worked for him in some capacity. He’s got a great wine collection and has been the star of many hilarious memes that have circulated through the NBA loser-sphere. He’s also the longest tenured coach in the NBA by far, having been the coach of the San Antonio Spurs since I was in HIGH SCHOOL.
He’s also lost his fucking mind.
Case in point numero un0 is the stunt he pulled during that game against (former Spur) current Clipper Kawhi Leonard. A few months ago was 2023, so you might not remember the way he grabbed the microphone like a bar mitzvah DJ and chastised the San Antonio fan base for being mean to Kawhi on their home court. A fan base that Kawhi abandoned and left in the dust after accusing the Spurs of misdiagnosing his incurable injury.
Now I know Pop has always been a champion of the Player Empowerment Thing, he’s on the right side of history for the most part there, but there’s player empowerment and then there’s backing your former player over your own fan base. When Greg Popovich, the most respected NBA coach in the entire country, jumped on the microphone — during the game, and clapped back at the San Antonio fans for booing a Los Angeles Clipper, he went too far into the player arena.
Sure the fans were being annoying and a little disrespectful, but sports is supposed to be a safe place to release your tension — it’s part of the reason we get so amped about it. Of course there’s a line. Personal attacks like the relatively frequent kinds against Russell Westbrook, are inexcusable, but shouting at a player because you’re butt-hurt that he dissed your franchise, come on.
Come on, Coach Pop. It’s a bit righteous of you to speak to fans like they’re your grandkids. A thing like that happens to someone who is wayyyy too comfortable in their position, way too relaxed, like a drunk married guy at the bar in Cancun who starts hitting on all of the college girls because he forgets where he is.
Come follow me, friends.
A much bigger problem: The way Coach Pop has been treating the NBA season this year. His team isn’t going anywhere and he figures he can spend the year fiddling around with the rotation and trying things out with young Victor Wembanyama, allowing him to experiment and fuck up in real time, under the bright lights of real NBA competition, while fans pay good money to watch, and advertisers spend boat loads. It’s not a terrible idea, except for one thing.
Basketball isn’t really art.
It’s not Jackson Pollack splattering colors on a canvas in his studio or Charles Mingus improvising on stage in front of an audience. It’s not that interesting to watch a team “experiment” if it means that they’re going to play horribly every game but a few.
Basketball is a competition. Winning, losing.
Unlike painting or stand up comedy, it’s concerns are concrete. There’s plenty of poetry and metaphor in it, but at its basic core it’s something that happens within a set space (the court) and time (48 minutes per game). There’s rules, and, again, by the end there’s a winner and blissfully a loser. Unlike art, it’s outcome is objective.
So, though I love the adventurism behind what Coach Pop is doing with his microphone, I almost want to hand him a violin or something. There’s a reason things like the pre-season and summer league exist, I want to say. Those are the areas of the season where experimentation should be happening, not during the actual season, when games count.
If Pop wants to experiment, go try your set at the comedy club. Go make your own pizza. Go run for Senate.
Here’s what I propose. (I heard Austin Rivers bring this up on his pod the other day, which is cool because it means other people are thinking about it as well.) Basic premise as follows:
Every year at the end of the regular season 1-2 NBA teams should be eliminated from the league.
Entire fifteen man rosters demoted if they suck. And promoted if they’re awesome.
The stakes of that would automatically make the regular season dramatic, lower the bullshit experimentation that waters down the game from night to night, and the viewership of the regular season would explode like a teenager’s zit. There would be no time for chastising.
Where would the losers go?
To the G-League.
Basically the b squad of the nBA where players compete for 40K a season, average salary, to try and come up to the NBA where the average salary is 8.5 million. It’s filled with former NBA players, young guys trying to catch their first NBA contract, and a shit ton of ambition.
I can’t even begin to tell you how much more entertaining basketball would be if getting demoted to the G-League was at stake for entire NBA teams. Fans would circle the sport like vultures. Every point would count, as well as all 82 of the games, because owners and GMs would care a lot more about losing if the risk was losing their right to play in the league.
It would also immediately drive up interest in the G-League, which again, is owned by the NBA. Two birds one stone.
I’m not some Harvard MBA, but I do know the NBA has a real problem when it comes to their regular season. (It’s all anyone talks about.) There are too many needless game stoppages, and as a result, commercials. Many of the regular season games are a slog, even for someone like me who is a die-hard. Worst of all, I believe this is intentional. By which I mean, the NBA doesn’t really have a choice.
If it’s true what people say, the only way the NBA makes money is through TV. Aka commercials. More stoppages, more time-outs, more game breaks, equals more more more chalupa commercials from Taco Bell.
So, you know, maybe in some way we deserve a crazy old man like Popovich, chastising us for bashing his former player. Maybe he’s reminding us that we’ve all turned a little numb to the way things are in the world? Maybe we should be thanking Pop for giving us a lesson in etiquette during the middle of a game, it’s better than a beer commercial.
Or maybe brilliant coaches like Greg Popovich shouldn’t be able to turn the NBA season into a joke by yelling at the fans for booing a player who 86’d them for Los Angeles? Maybe he should just be afraid to lose.
Thanks for catching up with me this week. If you like what you just read, consider a tip.