San Antonio Spurs

[tackielarla]

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O.T just enjoy the pics bro duncan did enjoy that costume he is wearing

Well good for him then.

So what's in it for us here if he wears that costume?

[icon_king]

Well good for him then.

So what's in it for us here if he wears that costume?

well, tim duncan just turned from BIG FUNDAMENTALS to BIG JOKE!!! bwahahahaha



i love it when he wears this one

[tackielarla]

well, tim duncan just turned from BIG FUNDAMENTALS to BIG JOKE!!! bwahahahaha

Uh-huh...

So you expect us to laugh at that joke? Big Fundamentals to Big Joke? Are you serious?

And oh fyi: it's BIG FUNDAMENTAL. Singular bro.

i love it when he wears this one

You should wear it sometime then. It matches your personality.

[icon_king]

a super hero !!!! thats what san antonio needs !!! a hero one example

[tackielarla]

a super hero !!!! thats what san antonio needs !!! a hero one example

I honestly have no clue where you're going with all these pics. Could you just get to the bottomline please?

[tackielarla]

... I guess not.

Back to regular programing!

This is a great article about what happened 20 years ago which is happening again to the team today.

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Time for a change was 20 years ago
Buck Harvey

Gregg Popovich met the media this week. And when asked to assess this summer's changes, he paused and took a breath.

Where should he start?

To some, the Spurs have never been busier. To most, the changes have never been more dramatic.

But 20 years ago, there was another trade with Milwaukee. A draft pick was taken, and this one, too, had knee issues. Another tall athlete arrived, and it also took a daring investment to land him.

They would contend from the tip. The Spurs have had at least one Hall of Famer on their roster ever since, and over these 20 years, the franchise has put together the league's best winning percentage.

That summer — not this one — is the summer of change.

Popovich isn't sure about the details. When asked Wednesday, he again paused and took a breath. This time, he needed a few seconds to remember.

Everything was a blur to him then. He had been working in the NBA for only a year, and he didn't have much responsibility.

His joke: He and R.C. Buford were trying to fix the copier while Larry Brown and Bob Bass were huddling in the office.

Brown was being Brown, trying to get rid of players he didn't like while dreaming of those he might. This time, some of it was easy for him.

The Spurs were already waiting for David Robinson, and they had paid for this privilege. Peter Holt faces a luxury tax now, but Angelo Drossos and Red McCombs gambled, too.

Their rare agreement: They guaranteed to Robinson that he would always earn a salary equal to the average of the league's two highest salaries.

Then the Spurs traded several players to Milwaukee for a 20-point scorer. Sound familiar? Terry Cummings, as it is with Richard Jefferson, was both bald and in his prime.

On draft night, Sean Elliott fell to the Spurs, just as DeJuan Blair did. Elliott was not without an ACL, but he did wear a large knee brace while in college. Elliott would go third, however, not 37th.

With that, the Spurs had put together a starting frontline as if they were in a fantasy league. Robinson would become the consensus rookie of the year. Cummings would score 52 points in a game on his way to a 22.4 average. And Elliott would be as athletic a small forward as the Spurs have ever had until, well, Jefferson.

Twenty years ago this week, the Spurs made yet another move. They traded for Maurice Cheeks, and the Spurs thought they were finished. They had added nine new faces to the roster, after all.

But they weren't finished. They would later trade Cheeks for Rod Strickland.

Compared with then, the current Spurs have merely been tweaking their roster.

In 1989, they had instant chemistry, with a mix of youth and experience and naivety. They hadn't been together long enough to see one another's flaws. And in a Western Conference not as strong as it is now, the Spurs were suddenly as good as anyone.

Maybe better. They would lose in the second round to Portland, an athletic and deep team. But it took seven games, with the Spurs losing once in overtime and once in double overtime.

“Every year I look back,” Popovich said Wednesday, “I think of that. We hadn't even been together, and we were THERE.”

The chemistry wouldn't carry over to the next season. Brown would be gone shortly after that, and Popovich would leave before returning as the general manager. He would get someone else to fix the copier.

But the success would remain, sometimes lessening and sometimes growing, beginning with that change. Twenty years ago.

[mab]

cant wait for the season to start! let's get it on! go spurs!

[owNinZ]

go spurs go!

[icon_king]

go TIM "the wizard" Duncan

[tackielarla]

Popovich ready to play with new toys
By Jeff McDonald - Express-News
Web Posted: 08/26/2009 12:00 CDT

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich spent much of his summer vacationing in Maine, as far away from the record San Antonio heat as he could get without leaving the lower 48 states.

He also enjoyed a working barnstorm through Europe, hitting France, Italy, Germany and Spain on a reconnaissance mission. He even spent a few days in Las Vegas, watching the Spurs' young summer league squad.

All along, Popovich wished his offseason were shorter, that it hadn't begun in April after a first-round playoff loss against Dallas. Now, he's wishing it were over completely.

After the most eventful summer of his San Antonio tenure, Popovich is ready to get back to work.

“You can only relax so much,” Popovich said during an informal fat-chewing session with reporters Tuesday at the Spurs' Northwest-side headquarters. “You can only chase players so much. My stomach is starting to churn. I'm getting anxious.”

In a sense, Popovich is like a kid at Christmas brunch. His new toys have been unwrapped. He is eager to start playing with them.

Training camp doesn't begin for another month, but the wheels have already begun to turn in Popovich's head — the neat tricks he can try with his new athletic swingman, Richard Jefferson; the new offensive elements veteran forward Antonio McDyess can bring; the raw rebounding potential inside rookie forward DeJuan Blair, waiting to be unleashed.

When the Spurs open the season Oct. 28 against New Orleans, they could boast as many as eight new faces.

“We're calling it ‘change the music,' Popovich said. “We'll come to camp with a few different faces, a different chemistry, a little bit different team personality. We'll see how that comes together.”

In a relatively quiet NBA offseason, the Spurs made arguably the most noise. If they hoped to remain among the NBA's elite, to keep the L.A. Lakers and others from running too far away from the Western Conference pack, it was noise that was necessary.

Popovich and general manager R.C. Buford told team owner Peter Holt as much, in a meeting not long after the Dallas disaster.

In order to keep the Spurs competitive in the waning years of the Tim Duncan era, they told Holt the team needed to get younger and more athletic. And to accomplish that, Holt was going to have to open up the checkbook like never before.

“He decided we were going to have to spend money like we usually don't,” Popovich said.

The pricetag for the Spurs' offseason makeover — which brought in Jefferson by trade, McDyess and veteran center Theo Ratliff via free agency and Blair, an All-American from Pittsburgh, via second-round draft pick — pushed the Spurs deeper into luxury tax territory than they'd ever been.

“The face of the league has changed significantly over the last two years,” Popovich said. “We hung in there as long as we could. Now, we're going to have to spend money like some other people.”

Holt has certainly done his part, signing off on the mega-expensive renovation project (“He took a little bit out of all of our paychecks,” Popovich quipped). It will be up to Popovich to help make sure the spending spree pays off.

After an offseason of rebuilding, the Spurs are thinking NBA title once again. Popovich won't label his reinvigorated team the team to beat in the West, not with Kobe Bryant and the defending champion Lakers still on the prowl.

Still, as Popovich told NBA.com earlier this summer, with tongue planted in cheek: “If we don't win it, I should probably be fired.”

The work toward that end begins in earnest when training camp begins Sept. 29. Until then, Popovich has about a month of offseason left to let the butterflies fester.