Heh. Does everyone remember when the Nets picked up Garnett and Pierce, how everyone said crazy things like how they were going to make the ECF before people reminded them what year it was? Yeah that's the Spurs this year.
Just a hypothetical idea here, but maybe West is interested in coaching and Popovich is offering him an assistant position down the road. An assistant position under Pops would certainly open doors for him once he's ready to assume a head coach position (either with the Spurs or a new team). If that's the case, West is like a kid who passes on a full ride to a state university and pays his/her way to an Ivy League school. That's about the only logic I could imagine in this situation. The Spurs are a great organization, but they got bounced in the first round last year and are old. Given the other reported offers, this hardly seems like the best scenario for him to win a championship, even with the addition of Aldridge. So there has to be some other incentive here. To make an analogy, I always suspected that the Rockets got Mutumbo because Les promised (and followed through on) a promise to make a big donation to his hospital in Africa. I could see a coaching apprenticeship under Pops being a very powerful incentive to take less money now.
Ummm, giving up 10M for a non-guaranteed chance at a chip is really stupid. I can't believe he did that.
Right, every year people have knocked the Spurs for being too old, and every year they prove us wrong. Funny thing is, now they're younger than those years that we all thought they were too old. eg. Kawhi, LMA, Green and Mills.
I hope you are right, but barring injury, those are the clear cut best teams and best coaching staffs.
You, hands down, are the most annoyingly pessimistic poster on this Forum. Regular season, trade deadline, playoffs, free agency. I'd honestly rather sit in a room with Basketballholic for 10 hours, than one with you for 2. Let FA and the regular season play out before you start making these grand proclamations. The Spurs are talented, no doubt, but whose to say Parker won't continue his decline? How good will Manu be this year? Can their backup bigs man the 5? Will Duncan need to play heavy minutes and get beat up at the 5 prior to the playoffs? They've got some issues.
Im incline to agree, but I have to put the Thunders right up there with the Warriors and Spurs. Blah blah if healthy of course...
if all teams are healthy (LMAO) , then the Spurs are 1a and the Warriors 1b. But we all know that won't happen, so anything is possible.
Clear cut? I think the Warriors in bringing everyone back are the best in the West. Everyone else is in that 2nd tier. The Spurs do have deficiencies. A lot of their key guys are old. They have no true center on the roster. And their depth is worse than last year. The Grizzlies are solid at every position, but still lack outside shooting. The Thunder are full of question marks, but when healthy, they're always a threat to reach the Conference Finals. They do need to resign Kanter though. And of course the Rockets have to stay healthy for once and get another PG(resigning Smith would be good too). But that's why they play the games. Everyone was picking the Spurs and Clippers last season and those two wound kicking the crap out of each other in the first round. We'll see what happens this season.
Why are people here acting surprised? That's the lure of a championship winning coach, a well run franchise with a great GM an great role model cornerstones
Not surprised but the Spurs have not had a major free agent signing in years, 3-4 years at least IIRC They were scary without going for the big fish....now that they have two major rotation players 1 allstar and 1 former allstar our division will be harder to win..... that is all