Spurs Losing on Purpose: A Deeper Look Inside the Genius Master Plan to Lose Games
Ah yes, tanking. A subject we’ve visited once or seven times before. Eventually, I’m going to need to create a link tree for all of my tanking articles.
But for now, let’s do a little bit of detective work.
You see, after a half of a season transpires, clues, evidence, and facts start to seep out from even the best laid plans. Architectural team blueprints that were meant to be kept secret, can’t remain secret forever because, well, the results from those plans are in the public domain.
The key for pro sports teams that are purposefully migrating south rather than north is to craft and spin narratives to frame negative results in a positive context and draw attention elsewhere.
We’re not losing, we’re developing.
We’re not sitting our healthy franchise player, we’re being cautious.
Those types of things.
What we’re going to do now is reverse engineer what has transpired up to the halfway mark of the Spurs 2023–2024 season so that we can use some professional sports tanking forensics to see what Pop and co. are up to.
Exhibit 1-A: Offseason Roster Moves
Pounding the Rock called it. More specifically, Professor Jesse Pittsley (@JessePittsley) already knew the Spurs were tanking back in July.
In Jesse’s article, It may not seem like it, but the Spurs are still tanking, he wrote:
Logically, the Spurs are not a playoff team, and considering the free-agent non-signings, they are focusing on development this season. A team in the bottom 25% of the league, focusing on development, is on a slippery slope to another label…Tanking.
My level of attention during the summer was browsing Reddit every so often and listening to Bill Simmons podcasts so I only loosely knew what was going on. It’s kind of like when someone gives you pertinent information right after you’ve just woken up and you were distracted by something else while they were telling you.
I, like Bill Simmons, did find the lack of Austin Reaves bidding to be stupid. But, I excused that away as maybe the Spurs didn’t want to tie up $100m for five days (while the Lakers waited to decide to match) in the thick of free agency. Or maybe the Spurs just didn’t want to risk $100m on a guy they weren’t sold on (the Lakers could have always not matched).
Otherwise, I chalked up the Spurs lack of real acquisitions as maybe they didn’t like what they saw:
- I’m not paying Fred VanVleet major money.
- What the hell does Grant Williams do for the Spurs?
- Dillon Brooks doesn’t make sense either.
- etc.
And as for the draft pick grabs, why not be a collector of “draft capital” (Woj likes to sound fancy sometimes) while other teams are scrambling to make deals?
The only two things that seemed out of frequency were not at least trying for Austin Reaves and waiving Cameron Payne (they acquired Cam along with cash and a second-round pick).
The Spurs only point guards going into the season were Tre Jones and Devonte Graham. Why would you waive Cameron Payne?
Again, at the time, no red flags surfaced for me. I wasn’t paying close attention, but there was also no glaringly absent free agent play that I’m aware of.
With the benefit of hindsight, the Spurs moves and non-moves also make sense in a different light.
Exhibit 1-B: The Leash Pull
One especially curious circumstance looking back is the Spurs starting out 3–2 and then going 1–23.
Seems a bit off, doesn’t it?
Nothing says tanking like winning 3 of your first 5 games and then losing 18 in a row.
And the Spurs early wins included victories over real teams: the Suns with Kevin Durant, the Suns with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, and the Rockets.
Also, the Spurs season opener loss against Dallas was very competitive.
It’s been said the Spurs began preparing for the possibility of Victor Wembanyama’s arrival well before they won the lottery.
But what the Spurs may not have anticipated is how competitive they would be right away.
This meant the leash needed to be yanked. And yanked hard.
18 straight losses helped get everything back on course.
Exhibit 2-A: The Jeremy Sochan Experiment
I hadn’t watched a full Spurs game in years before Wemby so I had no idea whether or not Jeremy was a competent ballhandler when the whole Jeremy Sochan point guard ruse began.
But the Spurs had all of 2022–2023 to watch him up close.
The man can’t handle the ball. And he has no court vision.
And guess what, it makes sense because he’s a power forward and he’s literally never played point guard in his life until Pop trotted him out as the Spurs starting point guard for Victor’s rookie season.
Directly from Jeremy Sochan via SI.com:
There’s been some moments where it’s like ‘F*ck this sh*t.'
It’s the first time I’ve ever played point guard in my life.”
This is who the Spurs started at point guard for Victor Wembanyama’s first ever NBA season.
Tell me you want to lose without telling me you want to lose.
This was never a real experiment. Earlier, I thought it was and wrote:
Any other head coach would absolutely be getting annihilated for such a stupid experiment but because it’s Pop, commentators and analysts only quietly talk around the move.
But let’s not be quiet about this: Jeremy Sochan cannot play point guard in the NBA.
There’s no need for stats.
It’s obvious if you watch the Spurs play; Jeremy can’t handle the ball and has very limited court vision.
Looking back, of course the team knew all of this, but they wanted, needed some preposterous move like Sochan playing point guard to ensure the team was always weighed down.
At a quick glance, it sounds like the ultimate contrarian move a badass genius might make.
The Jeremy Sochan Point Guard Experiment.
It’s kind of catchy.
And, technically speaking, crazier things in the world have worked.
But this failure was by design. The Spurs put a guy who literally can’t handle the ball as the point guard.
Here’s a turnover highlight reel for those of you keeping receipts at home:
Us article writers, analysts, commentators, etc. criticized it because we thought Gregg Popovich was really trying, but those of us critiquing the move just weren’t in on the real story yet.
P.S. This was all completely unfair to Jeremy because his own coach put him in a position to fail and then he received an onslaught of negative commentary. If you take someone out of their element, put them on the biggest stage, and then say go, what do you think is going to happen?
Exhibit 2-B: Teammates Not Passing to Victor
When Gregg Popovich fired Bob Hill and named himself head coach, as soon as he got Tim Duncan, the Spurs entire offense revolved around getting the ball to Tim Duncan.
4-Down was the only play the Spurs ran.
Pop figured this out real fast.
Don’t let Pop’s humble pie speech of just trying to clumsily guess at what a scintilla of Wemby’s talents are fool you; he knows exactly what to do: get the ball to Victor.
But Pop doesn’t coach like a man who needs or wants to win anymore. He coaches like a man who is constantly battling to appear competitive while ultimately achieving a desired outcome.
Throughout this season, myself and others have lamented over and over and over again on how the Spurs don’t get Victor the ball. This has gone on all season until just recently, at the halfway mark of the season, it seems that somehow the Spurs have finally figured out they have this super talented giant on their basketball team.
Again, for those of you scorekeepers at home, this has been happening from the start of the season.
During the first few games, I kept thinking, that’s odd, they missed Victor on that sure lob. And that one. And that one. And that one…
20 games later, a Victor’s-teammates-don’t-pass mob had formed online. And on a very momentous game in Chicago, the absurdity of the situation boiled over into both Sean Elliott and Stacey King, the respective color analysts for Spurs and Bulls telecasts, calling out the repeat ignoring of Victor.
I was watching the Spurs telecast and knew it might become a big deal because Sean is normally reserved and he semi-went off as the play transpired.
But what stuck was King’s objective observer commentary. It went viral on Reddit and the casual crowd took notice, with more Pop dissenters emerging.
Coming back to this article’s theme: how do you tank with Victor Wembanyama on your team? Well, with this technique, you simply ignore him on offense and typecast him as a very good role player.
In fact, there was one game in Minnesota where the Spurs literally passed the ball more to Zach Collins than they did Victor. Here’s what I wrote in my Wemby Watch for the December 6th Timberwolves game:
Gregg Popovich isn’t featuring Victor Wembanyama and his teammates are ignoring him.
Victor, for all his greatness, is treated like just another role player by the Spurs coach and teammates.
For the entire Timberwolves game, the Spurs literally looked for Zach Collins more than they did Victor.
It’s hard to fathom this could happen to a 7'4' #1 pick who was billed as the greatest prospect ever, but it’s true.
Exhibit 3-A: Doctor’s Orders
How else can you make a team lose when you just drafted a basketball prodigy who could single-handedly take your team to the playoffs?
Simple, you don’t play him.
I can just imagine the suppressed delight when Victor’s ankle finally gave Gregg Popovich a certifiable reason to block off a 17 block radius with caution tape around Victor.
Pop made this into a huge deal where we had edicts and mandates coming from the Spurs medical staff on how Victor was on a minutes restriction and he couldn’t play back-to-backs. Doctors orders. You’ve always got to follow doctor’s orders.
A run-of-the-mill ankle strain was parlayed into this ongoing 1–2 month hazy, ambiguous cloud of Victor’s playing time needing to be suppressed because the Spurs are looking out for the long-term — if Victor played too much, we were given the impression that he might be throwing away his future.
It was all so dramatic and it was all so contrived.
There was no basis for it in common sense. Or in medicine.
In fact, here’s the most famous sports doctor in the world, Brian Sutterer MD, saying the Spurs (Pop) are wrong and mocking the Spurs for their handling of Victor’s ankle:
Note that embedded clip in the tweet where the guy who’s dunking from half court with one dribble is the guy who needs his minutes restricted because of medical reasons.
Also, one other piece of trickery from this whole vague medical thing: originally Victor “resting” or “sitting” or “not playing” or whatever the hell it is that Pop wants to label it as, was supposed to be about Victor’s ankle healing.
But then it sounds like we had a shift from ankle to general long-term health and well-being.
I think what happened is once Victor’s ankle was back to 100%, the goal posts moved.
I wrote about this in my Pop Psychology article where I explain how Pop got an ultra competitive Victor Wembanyama to go along with not playing basketball.
Exhibit 3-B: The Impossible Deficits and Statistical Anomalies
How is any team losing to the Atlanta Hawks by 35 at halftime?
But then there’s a comeback and that same team almost wins the game, but, damn, they fell short.
And then, literally two days later, that same team is losing by 25 at the half to the Celtics.
That doesn’t sound like a ball club that’s coming out ready to play.
How about some different numbers?
Per an ESPN Spurs article posted on December 15:
They’ve blown double-digit leads (nine, the most this season, including eight in a row, tied for the longest such streak in the last 25 years). They’ve been blown out — five losses by at least 20 points, tied for the second most in the NBA. They have the league’s 30th-ranked offense and 24th-ranked defense — a combination that makes for the worst point differential in the NBA.
Oh, and what about this from early on:
The Spurs suffered two 40 point blowouts in the first 7 games of the season and a 36 point blowout in the 11th game of the season.
And it might be of no surprise to you that the Spurs’ record against the spread was well under .500 for their 5–30 start. I never finished the article, but you can easily look up the Spurs play against the spread.
Also, not only did the Spurs perform poorly against the spread, but they were way under it a curious amount of times.
One more numbers-based consideration: the Spurs over-under win total before the season ranged from 27.5 to 30.5. The Spurs are on pace for 16 wins — this would mean bookmakers would be off by a factor of nearly 2x for a season win total.
I’m not suggesting anything gambling-Spurs relating. I’m suggesting the Spurs are artificially performing worse than they should be.
In other words, there are inorganic factors in play driving up the Spurs losses.
Exhibit 4-A: Pop’s Tanking Speech
You may be surprised to learn that Pop has addressed the issue of tanking. He did this last season.
I wrote an article entirely on Pop’s tanking speech.
If you like this article, there’s at least a 28% chance you’ll like that one. But just in case you’ve got TikTok dances to get to, here’s the gist:
Pop said he can’t tell his players to go out and lose. But it’s what he didn’t say that speaks volumes. Because if I’m not mistaken, there are other methodologies for sports tanking beyond walking into the lockerroom and announcing, we’re calling the season off this year, gentlemen.
Exhibit 4-B: This Clip From the Sixers Game
Here we have Victor Wembanyama taking off his warmup so he can check into the 76ers game only to be denied entry by Pop.
As Victor turns away, Pop shakes his head and has a look of disdain, making an expression as if to indicate that Victor still doesn’t get it.
The original poster of the content, @dannysanders80, wrote this happened in the third quarter.
Once again, we have a collision of force.
Joel Embiid, Megatron, is out wreaking havoc on Victor’s, Optimus Prime’s, team and Victor wants to go out and do battle to try and mitigate the damage and fight back.
But a trusted advisor (Pop) to Sentinal Prime (Tim Duncan) holds Victor back under the guise that he is sage and knows best.
Optimus doesn’t realize that the trusted advisor is working against him.
From my Pop Psychology article:
“I feel like he thinks this is going to be a special time, too. I could follow him with my eyes closed.”
I wouldn’t do that, Victor.
One needn’t look further than Pop’s expression once Victor’s back was turned to understand why.
When you combine the clip along with all of the other evidence, it’s quite revealing.
The Insider Circle
RC Buford used to be the GM and he’s now the CEO so I have to think he’s in on it. Brian Wright is the current GM and the owner of the summer’s non-acquisitions so he’s in on it.
And then there’s Brett Brown, a figure I’ve zeroed in on because of his ties to Sam Hinkie’s “process.” Brett Brown was the coach during Philadelphia’s “The Process” years.
If you’re unfamiliar with the mastermind scheme to turnaround the Sixers, grab a drink and take a seat because this one’s going to take a while to unpack everything.
Here it goes:
They lost a lot to increase their lottery odds.
That’s it.
Did you catch all of that?
If you’re having trouble, don’t worry, I’m coming out with a course on Udemy soon.
These masterminds, man, they’re lightyears ahead of us.
Anyway, I think the continued tanking, despite having landed Wemby, may have been a song taken out of Brett Brown’s playlist.
In 2013, the Sixers went 19–63.
In 2014, they went 18–64.
In 2015, they went 10–72.
Spectacular.
That’s Something They Consider Conversation Worthy
I can’t quite tell the extent to which Pop thinks people are taking notice of what he’s doing with the Spurs — you do realize these games are being recorded, right?
You’re tanking during Victor Wembanyama’s rookie season.
That’s something people consider conversation worthy.
