San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich’s innovations don’t just stop with his insistence on resting players or his ability to preside over several disparate styles of championship-level basketball. His biggest contribution to his particular professional field might be his unabashed honesty when it comes to discussing his craft. There’s no pretense with Pop, no referees to sway or narratives to distort. At the risk of delving into sportswriter-ese, Popovich just cuts the crap when it comes to talking about his gig.
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On Sunday morning, in the early hours prior to his team’s matinee showdown with the Chicago Bulls, Popovich was asked by the San Antonio Express-News’ Dan McCarney about his habit of asking his players to intentionally foul poor free throw shooters away from the ball, and its imprint on the aesthetics of the pro game:
“I’m torn in the sense free throws are part of the game,” he said. “Just like if another team doesn’t play good defense, you try to take advantage of it. If they have people who don’t shoot free throws, you try to take advantage of it. The goal…is it to win. Does it look bad? Does it look ugly? It looks awful. There you have it.”
I don’t like it, “it looks awful,” I’m going to continue to use it. Not all the time, but should DeAndre Jordan come ‘round these parts again …
Popovich isn’t exactly an innovator in this realm, as his former boss Don Nelson was the first person to employ the strategy extensively in the modern era. And because Nellie was Nellie, he went all out:
Understand that this was borderline shocking to watch in 1997, as this dork did in real time. This was nothing like opposing centers giving up on a play involving Shaquille O’Neal, fouling the poor free throw shooter as he rolled to the hoop. This was an outright singling-out of a player, in Rodman, who was making fewer than 39 percent of his free throws. Nelson even made a trivia question out of poor Bubba Wells, a player Nelson didn’t draft and would end up trading some six months later, as he became the quickest player in NBA history to foul out of a game.
“I think Don Nelson respects me more than most people in this league,” Rodman said. “He respects my work ethic and the way I play basketball. “After the game I saw him smoking a cigar and he said, `You kicked our (butt) today.'”
Shaquille O’Neal? He didn’t like it when Popovich intentionally fouled him away from the ball, calling it “coward basketball.” Popovich, because he’s Popovich, responded with this:
Gregg Popovich comparing a center’s terrible free throw stroke with a team’s overall inability to properly defend might rankle some, but he’s not off. A weakness is a weakness, whether that means ducking under screens while defending a screen and roll or playing a lefty to drive left. Defenses do just as much to Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili repeatedly, they have for years, and it’s caused the Spurs quite a bit of consternation even while the team contends for a championship every year.
The list of potential Western Conference hack-ees in 2015 is basically down to two players: DeAndre Jordan, and Dallas’ Rajon Rondo. The Spurs sent Jordan to the line 28 times in a recent game, but as McCarney noted in his piece the Spurs only shaved one point off of the Clippers’ lead in what turned out to be a 119-115 Los Angeles win.
Instances like these are why the NBA needn’t update its intentional fouling rules. Games like this truly are “awful” to watch, for some stretches at least, but sending a poor shooter to the line repeatedly rarely greases the wheels for a comeback win. As it was with Rodman, as it was with Shaq, and as it has been thus far with Jordan – the ploy doesn’t really work. This, and the rarity of its application, is why the NBA doesn’t truly need to pass laws that would discourage someone like Gregg Popovich from working along these lines.
The inability to secure a win through intentionally fouling? That’s what is going to sway someone like coach Popovich to stop. The Spurs coach will experiment will all sorts of perceived weaknesses prior to landing on a cogent game plan; and while you could see San Antonio hacking away at Jordan this spring in a playoff game, it’s hard to see this becoming a staple if teams continue to win out even with their weak link making just 40 percent of their free throws after being intentionally fouled.
Whatever the outcome, Popovich will be upfront about his intentions. You have to dig that.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
