That feel when you lose 12 in a row and still aren’t the bottom of the barrel

Glad we’re cracking down on the rim hangs instead of something inconsequential like flopping.

So first it was: “y’all are classless”

Then it was: “don’t poke the bear”.

Now it’s: “the world is mean, why can’t we hold hands and sing kumbaya?”

I’m not sure even Pop knows why he did it at this point.

A) Who has said that? Pretty much every take I’ve seen is basically “old man yells at clouds”.

B) Oh no! You mean San Antonio might lose its reputation as the free agent hot spot of the league!? LeBron had his jersey burned and Gilbert wrote a scathing public letter to him. Many teams have booed their own players while they’re still on the damn team.

C) No one was yelling obscenities at him, no one was chanting something inappropriate, he was getting booed. Is it petty? Yes. It’s also petty to try and distract players while shooting free throws, which happens to every away player every single game. Trash talk is oftentimes petty. Stadium music choices can be petty. The PA begrudgingly calling away buckets and calling home buckets like he’s introducing a WWE wrestler is petty. There seems to be an accepted level of pettiness in the NBA that is seen as socially acceptable, and I don’t think the Spurs fans exceeded that. Is it petty? Yes. But people are paying money to watch these guys throw a ball through a ring, some booing is not that freaking serious.

VC was booed in Toronto for a looooong time. If you want to forgive and forget, go for it. I don’t care for Kawhi, but we actually kind of dodged a bullet by getting rid of Mr. Glass.

But trying to force other Spurs fans to have your same opinion is dumb.

Basically:

Kawhi got hurt.

Spurs diagnosed him with a chronic, degenerative quadriceps injury. Kawhi was coming up on the end of his contract and wanted the max, but the Spurs were apparently hesitating after diagnosing him.

Kawhi shopped around through various specialists, almost all agreed with the Spurs initial diagnosis.

Kawhi found a doctor in New York that told him what he wanted to hear, that it was a normal injury that could be fixed, and Kawhi began aggressively rehabbing with them.

During this time, Kawhi didn’t communicate with the team. Pretty much the entire year, reports said he was 2-4 weeks away from returning. And every 2-4 weeks, a new report would come out saying it would be 2-4 more weeks.

While there, he sequestered himself with his Uncle, Dennis. Dennis was like a father figure to Kawhi after his own father had been murdered. Dennis was also Kawhi’s agent, and seemed like he wanted to start his own agency like Rich Paul did with LeBron. He also asked the Spurs to give him a job in the Spurs FO, which they declined. It is widely believed that Dennis was in Kawhi’s ear at this time and essentially convinced him that he was too big a star to be constrained to a small market like San Antonio.

Apparently, Spurs reps went to see him in New York to check on him, and he hid from them and refused to talk to them. He was never on the bench in street clothes, even during the Playoffs. His teammates became frustrated with constantly being asked when he’d return, and a few even said some sharp things about the situation.

Less than a week after the Spurs were eliminated from the Playoffs, Kawhi, who had basically not made a public appearance in months, was seen at an LA Dodgers game. Shortly thereafter, Kawhi demanded a trade and named Los Angeles as his preferred destination.

Kawhi was traded to Toronto for far below his value, won a championship with the Raptors, and then signed with the Clippers in free agency. To add insult to injury, the Clippers medical team stated that Kawhi had a chronic, degenerative quadriceps injury which the Spurs medical staff had initially diagnosed him with.

As a result of this, many Spurs fans feel that Kawhi essentially quit on the team and hid behind his injury as an excuse. Dennis also tried to throw the Spurs under the bus, claiming the medical staff was incompetent (which was proved wrong a few years later) and that Kawhi wanted a trade because the Spurs were pressuring him to come back before he was healed (which is odd considering the Spurs were the first team to adopt the practice of load management, including resting Kawhi himself in some back-to-back games pre-injury). Of course, the media ran with those claims and celebrated the downfall of the once “classy” Spurs organization, so it was a rough time to be a Spurs fan.

I mean, fans boo all the time especially during free throws. This “don’t poke the bear” stuff makes no damn sense lol.

Spoiler: we’ll probably be pretty bad next year too.

Tbf, you had to know it would be this way. We’ve sort of been the trust fund nepo babies of the NBA. 20+ years of having great records, making the playoffs, and being contenders spoiled a lot of people. We’ve had more success in the last 10 years than a lot of teams have had in their entire history.

Yeah, we’ve sucked the last several years. We’ll probably suck for a few more. But at least we have hope for the future and we seem to be setting ourselves up for promising runs in the next 5 years or so.

Drop the expectations and just enjoy that one day you’ll be able to say “yeah, I was there when Wemby was a rookie”.

A first option rookie big with <15 NBA games playing without a true PG and subpar spacing isn’t scoring on hyper-efficient splits consistently?

Obviously a bust, pack it up boys.

Honestly, I’m so pissed. Why tf have we won 3 games? I want every game to be 5-15 point loss.

At least we’ve wronged the ship and gotten back off track the last 6 games.

Mouse in the house! Mouse in the house!

Oh shit, this is a strong mouse…