There you have it. Undeniable proof that even the most shortsighted of tactic can be considered an act of genius when employed by the one and only Gregg Popovich. I suppose that reads as a sarcastic critique of a legendary head coach who burnt a timeout before the squeaking of one sneaker, but the truth is that I'm in complete awe of the mastermind behind the timeless success of the San Antonio Spurs. Imagine reaching a point in your career in which everything you do is universally praised, even if it's done on a complete whim and purely out of frustration? If it were literally anyone else then tipping off a game with a 1:1 mistake-to-timeout ratio would serve as an indictment of their team's preparedness. If it were literally anyone else then that impractical allocation of intermissions would be mocked all throughout NBA Twitter. Instead, all I see is a proverbial inflating of the balls it takes to pull your team aside and ask them what in the fuck they are doing when the extent of what they had done was fail to close out on a shooter. Personally, I would consider that decision to be rash if not for the person making it having long transcended the peasant-like philosophies of sport. And let's be honest, that timeout might as well have been a Jadakiss-esque laugh in the face of the Cleveland Cavaliers. While managing a roster that - for the first time in ages - is almost unrecognizable to the casual basketball fan, Gregg Popovich prematurely decided that he needed one less opportunity to draw up a play before even running a play. Against a team that features LeBron James, he chose to devote an in-game adjustment period to berating his starting lineup before they even got started. I know the coach in question isn't particularly worried about the outcome of mid-January regular season matchups, but still. Going up against the best player in the world on a night in which he had incentive (30,000 points) to return his team to Eastern Conference Championship form, Gregg Popovich basically said "meh, we won't need this break in the action later". That might not be directly disrespectful, but indirectly it was the equivalent of chugging from a limited supply of water while knowing that - worst case scenario - the dumpster fire that is the Cleveland Cavaliers could be extinguished with nothing more than the resulting piss and vinegar.
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