With 2-game sweep of Spurs, Silas can commiserate with Popovich
When the Rockets first visited San Antonio this season, the preseason was just beginning. Houston coach Stephen Silas was asked about the advice he would give the Spurs’ Gregg Popovich as the latter embarked on the teenager-filled first steps of rebuilding that the Rockets had a year earlier.
Silas would not presume to advise the winningest coach in NBA history. But when the question was posed to Popovich on Saturday in regard to advice he would give Silas, he made it clear that as different as their road has been, with Popovich five championships and 1,359 wins into his career, when it comes to what is needed to guide teams so young, there is much they now share.
“The same advice I give myself,” Popovich said. “Just patience, set the standards, make people accountable, teach.”
The Spurs had an 11game losing streak spanning late November and early December. They lost 16 consecutive games in January/February. As much as the Rockets have similarly struggled — even after ending their own 11game winning streak Saturday in San Antonio and whipping the Spurs again Sunday at Toyota Center, Houston shares the NBA’s worst record with Detroit — seeing Popovich move from decades of teaching NBA advanced studies to the ABCs of the business offered a reminder of the challenge.
If you send Ted Williams to the plate without a bat, he won’t get a hit.
“He’s the best, the best ever,” Silas said of Popovich before Saturday’s first game of the back-to-back. “So yeah, it has a lot to do with who’s on the floor. But he’s the best.
“I guess I do (relate to the Spurs’ situation). They just went through a long losing streak and have won two games in a row (before Saturday) and … their guys have been in and out, injuries and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, we’ve been going through a lot of the same things. They’re playing a bunch of young guys. We are as well.”
The Spurs utilize five players with more experience than anyone in the Rockets’ rotation, four who started Saturday, but they also have three teenagers who have totaled 123 games this season. A fourth, Josh Primo, played four games before being cut, pushing the teen-game total to 127. Last season’s Rockets had teenagers combine for a record 187 games.
A glance at Jeremy Sochan, Malaki Branham and Blake Wesley (who is in his last two weeks as a teen) will quickly offer a reminder of how young Popovich’s roster has become, though he quickly pointed out that to him, 25year-olds still look babyfaced.
“When you have got 19year-olds that went to college for one year and probably the whole year thought about going to the NBA, probably didn’t pay a whole lot of attention anyway, you know you are at the beginning,” Popovich said. “And it is real easy to skip steps if you don’t have patience, because you want to get to step B, C, D, E. You can’t do that, so patience is probably the biggest factor in making sure you stay on a timeline so that you don’t leave anybody behind.”
This has been the challenge for Silas in Houston’s rebuild. As much as the Rockets have acknowledged that experience will be the best, most irreplaceable teacher and have invested heavily in the theory by buying out almost every veteran who has stopped by their roster, the wait for the benefits of those experiences can be painfully slow.
“Yeah, it’s very difficult to be patient,” Silas said. “You want it right away, and you want the learning curve to just speed up. And you want these first-, secondand third-year players that we have playing to be third-, fourth- and fifthyear players, what they’re going to be. But yeah, patience is the key, because if they feel that tension, as far as like, ‘We’ve got to get there,’ then it’s harder for them to play. So it’s hard for them to grow. So yeah, we have to be patient. Both of us.”
In some ways, adjusting to coaching kids is a fitting full-circle experience for Popovich, a return to his Pomona-Pitzer days or his time under Larry Brown — a similar teacher/coach — at Kansas. But even though he is coaching players the age of those he had with the Sagehens, whom he led to their first outright title in 68 years, this season is not unlike his decades with the Spurs in at least one respect.
Coaches have long marveled at Popovich’s ability to adjust his style to fit the talent on hand. Though the championships were built around the foundation of Hall of Fame big men Tim Duncan and David Robinson, he adjusted to the styles of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobilli.
Now that the foundation of the Spurs championships has been inducted in the Hall of Fame, Popovich, 74, is willing to be considered to join them. He is a finalist for the Class of 2023 and expected to be named an electee on April 1 in Houston.
“He is as adaptable as they come,” Silas said. “Regardless of the situation, he’ll figure it out, whether it’s they have a smaller team that needs to play fast, or they have a bigger team, or they’ll post-up more. Whatever the roster kind of dictates, he’s a genius at making them … the best version of themselves, I guess. And that’s something that every coach strives for their team to be.
“But he also has a way of being incredibly honest while also allowing the players to know that he cares a lot about them. So those are two things that are important, I think, not just for me but for every coach. And I think every coach can look at Pop and pick things that he does and the things that he has done over the years and become better as a result.”
That remains the goal. But it will take time, as Silas knows too well. And when he and Popovich met again in Houston on Sunday, they did not need to trade words of wisdom from their similar experiences this season as much as commiserate.