Many of the great coaches in NBA history have their own distinct tactical labels, and fans are always talking about their tactical characteristics. For example, Phil Jackson and the triangle offense, Adelman and Princeton, and then nelson Sr. Nelson's crazy experiment, D'Antoni's run-and-bomb system, Jerry Sloan's block-and-pull coordination, Larry Brown's egalitarianism. These names already cover most of the legendary coaches in the league, but only one of the most important names is missing.
Greg Popovich, who just surpassed Don Nelson today to become the most winning coach in NBA league history, so what is his coaching style? It doesn't seem easy to answer this question.
The Spurs are the most consistent team in the league in the 21st century. But in retrospect, you'll see that fans had a divided impression of the Spurs. If you go back a dozen years ago and ask a fan, what kind of team are Spurs? He may tell you that it's a dull, slow, even ugly defensive team. Today's fans always praise the Spurs for their reasonable offense and smooth coordination, saying that they are a team with pleasing play and even some flamboyance.
Both Spurs teams exist in the minds of fans, and their coach is Popovich. So it's hard to sum up Popovich's coaching style. That's one of his most admirable things, and perhaps one of the reasons he's been able to win so many victories, as a legendary coach who won a championship in his third year in charge, Popovich never rests on his laurels, he's always renewing and evolving.
Twenty years ago, the NBA game was very different from today's, and today's Spurs also play a completely different basketball game from the peak of GDP. From predatory defense to fluid offense, from inside hand-to-hand combat to small-ball fast-hitting, Popovich has been following the development of basketball.
Before 2009, the Spurs were indeed a slow-paced team. Their number of rounds ranks at the bottom of the league for many years, and although their record and goal difference have always been among the top in the league, they can only rank in the middle of the league when they average the best points per game.
In the 2005 Finals, the Spurs met the defending champion Pistons in the Finals, where the two defensive teams played a suffocating series. Spurs have not scored more than 100 points in one of the seven games in the Finals, and three of them have scored under 81 points. The Spurs eventually fought hard to win seven championships, but in the entire series we could not see the Spurs' continuous outside transmission, dazzling breakthrough points, patient transfer schedule. Fans saw more duncan's frontcourt rebounds and interior strikes and Ginobili's heroic breakthroughs. Popovich made the Spurs' two sharpest weapons lethal, and the Spurs won the "ugly" Finals.
In the 2007 Finals, the Spurs swept the Cavaliers 4-0. The difference in strength between the two teams is obvious, but in all but one of the spurs' four games, which scored 103 points, the other three only scored 85 points, 83 points and 75 points respectively. The Spurs dragged James into a slow positional warfare offense. On offense, the Spurs don't have much of a trick, either hanging Duncan at a low post or emptying the side to allow Parker or Ginobili to break through, and the other three starters (Oboto, Bowen, Finley) often miss many rounds in a row. Popovich's side played even a bit dull, but they won easily.
The Spurs were extremely slow and sluggish on the offensive end of the 2007-08 season. The Spurs ranked third in the West that season with a 68.3 percent win rate, but they averaged just 95.4 points per game, third-to-last in the league, just above the Heat and Western Clippers at the bottom of the East. That year's playoff Spurs went all the way to the Western Conference Finals, but lost 1-4 to the Lakers led by Peak Kobe Bryant. The following season, the Spurs, who lacked Ginobili, were overwhelmed by the Lone Rangers in the first round of the playoffs, and in the third game, the Spurs scored only 67 points, and only two members of the team scored in double figures, with the highest scoring being Parker, who scored 12 points.
After a dismal playoff round, perhaps aware of a championship that could not be won by relying on the past, or perhaps because his heart had long been stirred, Popovich's reform began. Before the start of the 2009-10 season, the Spurs sent Bruce Bowen, 37, Colt Thomas, 36, and Fabricio Oboto, 33, from the Bucks to 28-year-old small forward Richard Jefferson.
Bowen, Oboto, and Thomas are all very old, but they have always been a defensive barrier for the team at the Spurs. Both Bowen and Thomas have played in about 80 games in the previous season, and Bowen has even been promoted to start in the playoffs. Popovich chose to send off three experienced defensive veterans for younger athletic talent. Those three veterans have always been very adapted to the Spurs' system, and they are also loved by Spurs fans, and sending them away shows Popovich's determination to reform.
It's a sign with a sign. Popovich wants to speed up, he wants someone who can create a threat in offensive and defensive transitions, he wants someone who can rotate quickly to assist the defense, he wants someone who can sometimes replace Ginobili and Parker to advance with the ball. Perhaps Popovich has seen that speeding up is the general trend of basketball development, the importance of changing defenses will exceed the guard, and the Spurs must be prepared. They then chose the small but explosive De Juan Blair in the draft. Popovich was very excited about the team's change, saying: "If these people can't win under me, I should be fired. ”
Jefferson, though, is clearly not the right person to lead the Spurs to speed up. Jefferson is a highly athletically talented striker, tall and powerful, explosive, balanced in attack and defense, and he is just 29 years old, which is the golden age of a player. But Jefferson's performance at the Spurs was terrible, and it was difficult for him to adapt to the rhythm of the Spurs' attack and defense at halftime because of his poor personal ball holding ability. Jefferson's performance on the Nets relied on Jason Kidd's advance, but at the Spurs, Jefferson gradually became a role player standing outside the three-point line waiting to receive the shot, and he didn't play his explosive power at all. Jefferson's scoring average quickly slipped from 22.6 points during the Nets era to 12.3 points, and his free throw average fell from 8.3 to 3.5 per game.
In the 09-10 season, the Spurs only played 50-32, which is their worst regular season record in nearly 10 years. But Popovich's determination to reform has not wavered. Although Jefferson has completely degenerated into a role player from stats to on-court performance, the Spurs still unexpectedly renewed his contract with an annual salary of 9 million.
It was a failed signing, but looking back now, 2010 was also a turning point for the Spurs. Spurs and Popovich performed amazingly in the 2010 offseason. Popovich's direction of reinventing the Spurs is clear, and they've seen what the NBA's next era will look like. For Popovich, who has led the Spurs to a lot of glory, such an active transformation is not easy.
Beginning in 2010, the Spurs' offensive pace and scoring averages per game began to soar. After weight loss, Duncan and Blair formed a group of fast-moving interior pairs, and space-type interior lineman Matt Bonner gradually replaced Split's substitute center. The open attacking space made Parker and Ginobili's breakthrough sharper, and the two attacking little defenders in the bench, George Hill and Gary Neal, also made their heads in this open attack that constantly broke through the score and outside. It took Popovich just over two seasons to transform the Spurs from a sluggish defensive team into a new team with offensive firepower.
Three years later, the Spurs picked Upoe Leonard in the rookie model of Jefferson, and they didn't hesitate to send away the sixth man on the team, George Hill. After two seasons of development, the Spurs made up for the star forward missing due to Jefferson's decline.
In 2011-12, the Spurs averaged 103.7 points per game and ranked second in the league, behind the brainless Denver Athletics team. At the same time, the Spurs ranked first in the league with a three-point shooting rate of 39.3%, and the second place was the Warriors who had just gathered the Splash Brothers, and the Spurs' three-point performance was better than the Warriors. At this time, the Spurs' style of play is already quite modern. While Duncan, 35, Ginobili, 34, and Parker, 29, remain the Spurs' mainstays, they look very different from when they beat James in the Finals five years ago. Steve Kerr is 46 years old, three years before he and Steven Curry lead the Warriors to the top. By this time, Kerr's teacher, Popovich, was 63 years old, and he was already leading the once-old spurs to embrace the small ball era in advance.
In the 2013-14 season, the Spurs recorded a regular season record of 62 wins and 20 losses, reaching the Finals for the second consecutive year. Facing the Heat led by James, the Spurs did not exert much effort and won the championship by beating their opponents 4-1. Popovich's team has performed on the offensive end of the game differently from when they beat James in the Finals seven years ago, scoring over 100 points in all four of their winning games and scoring more than 110 points in two games. Popovich's two titles are seven years apart, and in seven years he has produced two championship divisions belonging to different eras and with very different offensive styles.
Of course, with Leonard's accidental injury and then breaking up with the team, the Spurs' transformation was disrupted. In order to strengthen the immediate combat power, the team retained Aldridge and brought in DeRozan. The two players with the most classical playing styles in the league have pulled the Spurs' style back to the past. Popovich has also tried to get Aldridge to shoot more three-point shots to open up space, allowing DeRozando to organize the transformation of the offense into an all-round forward, but the effect is not ideal. Popovich also knows that the Spurs' future hopes are not in the hands of the two Germans.
After sending off Aldridge and DeRozan, this season's Spurs have become a team that has always been exciting. The Spurs have averaged 112.7 points per game this season, ranking seventh in the league, and the newcomers who have been trained over the years, such as Dezhangtai Murray, Kelden Johnson and Lonnie Walker, have greatly improved their performance and become key players who can take responsibility. It looks like the 73-year-old Popovich is about to open a new chapter for the Spurs, just like in 2010.
Watching the Spurs ball you'll never aesthetically fatigue, you'll never get used to it. From the twin towers of David Robinson and Duncan, to the heyday of GDP, from the transition period of the rise of George Hill, Danny Green and others, to Leonard's emergence spurs to win the championship again, from Aldridge and DeRozan's mid-shot double, to the new chapter opened by the all-round point guard Murray in the new era, Popovich has written a different chapter after another at the Spurs, he has created a very competitive and ornamental team in different eras, and he has cultivated 6 all-star players with different styles. The six cover all five positions on the pitch.
In 2010, the Spurs re-signed Jefferson, which was not a successful operation, but it was Popovich who opened his arms to the small-ball era, and he completed a forward- and brilliant but short-lived embrace with the new era. This small action is not remarkable in Popovich's brilliant and great career, but it silently records Popovich's difference in the dark.
Just today, the Spurs beat the Jazz at home, and Popovich finally became the most winning coach in NBA history. After the game, the commentator shouted: "Popovich has been persevering for more than thirty years, leading the Spurs to create glory." Yeah, for Popovich himself, it's been three decades of perseverance, but for Spurs players and fans, every day of having Popovich is new.
After the game, when the Spurs players excitedly surrounded Popovich in the middle of the court, Popovich smiled and fought for a while, then pretended to be serious to block them, and then calmly walked off the court, again with a unique stubbornness. But the millennial kids like Kelden Johnson and Devon Vassell still have excitement on their faces, and they must feel that this is a great coach who is always evolving, a coach who is always young inside.
(NBA official website)