Time for a New Coach: Pop’s Bad Decisions are Limiting Victor’s Success

Initially, I planned to wrap this article as a Festivus holiday special, airing grievances about Gregg Popovich’s handling of Victor Wembanyama’s rookie season.

My key points are still within, but an incident took place that intensifies the conversation on Gregg Popovich’s decision-making.

Last night, in a bizarre moment, Pop took the mic during the game to tell Spurs fans to be classy and stop booing Kawhi Leonard. Here’s the footage along with Stephen A. Smith and Brian Windhorst capturing my exact thoughts:

This incident escalates my coaching criticisms to their final conclusion: the Spurs need to transition Pop out of the head coaching position.

While he has been a stalwart for the team over the years, achieving remarkable success, he’s well out of his coaching prime now. And his current approach isn’t aligned with the strategy the Spurs need to progress.

We’ve seen other coaching legends like Phil Jackson and Pat Riley fade into more of a front office advisor role and maybe Pop can do the same.

My lobby for change isn’t because of Pop’s only-in-the-movies mic moment, it’s because of his horrible coaching performance.

Just 15 games into the 2023–2024 season, we’ve already seen a mounting collection of reasons for concern.

• Jeremy Sochan point guard experiment
• Not establishing or organizing an offense
• Victor generally floating around on offense with no plan
• Not ensuring more touches for Victor
• Obsessively shaving minutes off Victor’s playing time (30.1 mpg)
• Three 36+ point blowouts in the first nine games
• Spurs on pace for a 15-win season (vs. 22 games last season, without Victor)

This video does an excellent job of capturing several of the problems along with visual examples:

A lot of things are very wrong and Pop is the main reason why: in several situations, he’s doing the exact opposite of what should be the clear path forward.

And because the Spurs have taken center stage, everyone is quickly noticing the enormous role the coaching or lack thereof is playing in a current 12-game losing streak after starting 3–2.

Calls to “fire Pop” have been increasingly been thrown out by Spurs fans and Wemby Watchers who are frustrated with the direction (or lack thereof) of the team.

As the creator of the video, Goatiology, points out, Pop is fostering a losing culture that is visibly starting to impact the team and, most notably, the guy you want on your franchise forever.

Before the season even started, Victor stated that one of his wishes was to make the playoffs. In multiple respects, Gregg Popovich has undermined that competitive desire. In some ways, Pop’s decision-making is making a mockery of that goal.

For example, it is very, very clear Jeremy Sochan, who is a power forward, is not fit to be a point guard. Yet, Gregg Popovich has chosen Victor’s first season as the time to make a guy, who has never played point guard in his life, the orchestrator of the Spurs offense.

Also, as hard as it is to fathom, the Spurs offense has literally had games where the 7'4 once-in-a-generation basketball phenom isn’t involved in the offense. In fact, it’s been quite common for the Spurs to go 3+ possessions in a row without Victor touching the ball.

And what compounds the Spurs’ problems is Pop obsessively shaves minutes from the 19 year-old’s playing time.

This removes the Spurs best player from more of the game and lessens the Spurs chances of winning.

Pop got into the habit of limiting minutes as Tim Duncan managed injuries and aged into the twilight of his career.

In Tim’s last 4 years, he averaged 30.1, 29.2, 28.9, and 25.2 minutes.

In Tim’s first 4 years, he averaged 39.1, 39.3, 38.9, and 38.7 minutes.

Victor is averaging 30.1 minutes per game which is 89th in the league.

This is all to say, Pop is playing Victor like he’s a 37 year old Tim Duncan with bad knees.

Victor Wembanyama came into this season ready to make the playoffs.

Earlier in the year, his enthusiasm and jubilance were brimming — Victor’s vibes were off the charts in the best way possible.

And he’s repeatedly shown that he is more than capable of fulfilling all of the hype.

But Gregg Popovich’s horrendous coaching is starting to temper that enthusiasm. And Pop’s open embrace of losing is encroaching upon Victor’s competitive nature.

Pop has reached peak contrarian status in a season where no drastic measures were needed.

The winning formula for this season is both obvious and very similar to that of when Tim Duncan burst onto the scene: get the #1 pick the ball and work from there.

But for some reason Gregg Popovich’s decision-making is closer to that of George Costanza’s when he ordered chicken salad on rye, untoasted, with a side of potato salad and a cup of tea.

Thus far, Pop has been rather flippant in his approach to Victor’s rookie season. But this wasn’t the time or place for Pop to randomly decide to be the ultimate contrarian with a curiously cavalier attitude.

Not only is the entire basketball world keeping one eye on the Spurs, but the prize of the lottery is acutely aware of his environment. Victor is processing everything that’s happening and given that he openly stated he wanted to win immediately, I have to think he doesn’t just look like he’s losing patience.

Update: After the Spurs 18th straight loss to the Lakers, the elephant in the room is starting to knock over appliances.