https://matthewtynan.substack.com/p/the-night-gregg-popovich-finally?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=53560&post_id=103203501&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
/But following his team’s fourteenth consecutive loss last week, a record-setting streak of futility for the franchise, a switch seemed to have been flipped. Pop stopped short of calling the Spurs’ 120-110 dud against the Charlotte Hornets last Wednesday “pathetic” (his go-to description of poor showings over the years) because proper perspective wouldn’t allow it. But the canned answers he’s often given this season — variations of ‘We made this mistake and that mistake, but they’re learning, and I’m proud of the guys’ effort’ — were replaced by direct criticism, with no age-related caveats.
“Yeah they’re young, and blah blah blah, but that ‘young’ thing is getting old,” he said. “It’s the same mistakes — giving up middle, not blocking out, not getting back in transition, that sort of thing. Just inexcusable. Youth’s got nothing to do with it.”/