San Antonio has missed the playoffs the last 2 years in a row. Is that winning or losing? Here's the truth Developing your players is a winning mentality and culture. Focusing on w/l at the expense of developing your players is a losing mentality and culture.
At least At least we got sengun and Tate who play off a lot of contact. They’ll eventually start getting calls and impact the game. Sengun can definitely Insightful. Thanks.
You develop those players that show they have it, you move on quickly from those that are clearly not going to get it. That includes high picks that don't pan out - not saying it is any of ours....but you have to identify those that will work to get better and actually can - pretty quickly. DD
I'll disagree a bit. It usually is an 'either/or' situation. There's never been a team in the history of the NBA that's found immense playoff success with their best players being around the age of 20. I doubt a trio of Harden/Durant/Westbrook or LeBron/Wade/Bosh, all at 20, would have 'won' anything at that age. However, as your primary core reaches age 24-26 or so, I think it's more winning than developing. Not saying our core is going break that mold or anything (they won't; we're going to suck more than be good, this year) but they'll definitely be fun to watch.
The only player we had bolt for the Lakers was Ron Artest, and he was a hired gun to begin with. Every other player we have developed we have ended up trading with the exception of Chandler Parsons who signed a ridiculous contract.
Look at the perrenially sucky teams. . . they are generally the training ground for the big teams Rocket River
Difference is that Pop is NOT trying to miss the playoffs. And Spurs culture is clearly defined. No loser mentality there. You know this. Poor comp.
Ideally as the team develops they win more. I still think they are another high level lottery pick away from turning things around.
First it's they never have more than one bad season and when I point out their last two seasons have been bad you move goal posts.
Let me clarify, I’m not talking about contention. I’m talking about being ABLE to win games. Many here think it’s better to win 20 games and get a high draft pick than win 35 games and teach your guys how to win with what they’ve got — even if it’s not “winning” a lot. So we get a later lottery pick but our guys have learned much more than they would have had they just been basically sent out to the slaughter.
The Rockets are not one of those teams and won't be one simply because they are putting player development first over w's this season. In fact that's why. By letting these guy learn and play they will grow and the results will come. When Harden first came to the team, he'd dribble it and chuck it much to the chagrin of most of clutchfans who constantly cried about McHale constantly giving the ball to Harden and not having an offense with ball movement. The result was to turn Harden into the most unstoppable one on one player in the league and perhaps league history. That's player development. Parker came into a ready made team where he didn't have to carry - he could develop as the pressure was off of him on already stacked team. And Ginobili was already a star when he joined the spurs. Houston has really raw talent and they are not joining a playoff team in contention unlike other situations. They are joining a really bad team - one with the worst record last year. Houston is going to suck this year. There's no way around it. It doesn't matter who you have as coach. You just have raw players who are new to the NBA and new to one another. They are going to get destroyed. You aren't going to teach them complex NBA sets in a few months. You aren't going to get them locked in on D in a couple of months. The players need to develop and they need the freedom to try and fail and things over and over just as Harden did. Otherwise you stunt their growth and you might be an average team faster, but you put being a contender further away. It's sauce for the goose
Yep which is sad. Knowing we have Wood who is 25 and should just be a force out there at his age, and KPJ at 21. At this point just those two should be able to get us to the 8th seed if they really are the stars or studs everyone is making them out to be.
