He’s not an old head. It was hilarious that they were referring to him as the vet on the court and he’s played literally one more playoff series than any of the Spurs young core. Once they hit the second round, it was uncharted territory for everyone except Harrison Barnes and Kornet.

Because the reason you lose a series in which you had blown multiple double digit leads (including a 29 pt blown lead) cannot be blamed on one player. It’s a collective effort and he gets way too much blame for it.

He should get a fair share of the blame, but imo it’s too much.

Nobody talking about Wemby or the team chucking 3s in the series or the rest of the team doing it when you were up 29, or castle committing stupid ass fouls cus he plays too aggressive

And how they lose the series when the refs were blatantly on their side it’s beyond my understanding

Couldn’t agree more

If your team let’s a 29 second half lead be cut to 1, you have way way bigger problems than what Fox did at the end (which given that he is one of the fastest players in the league was not that stupid a play.)

Insane overreaction lmao JR smith against the warriors clears it by a mile

He did but we losing prospective like a mf. What moment in his career have garnered him more experience in a finals series than anyone else on the roster ? He had one playoff run on the kings and we expect him to act like he’s been here before. Bridges, og, Brunson, kat, shamet, Robinson, mike brown all have deep playoff/championship experience. Pressure can kill anyone and his contract number doesn’t make him immune to that. Also what was Fox supposed to do ? Tell the spurs don’t pay him that or don’t trade those assets for him ? Is that not more of a front office error than the player ? If i remember correctly he did everything in his power to make the deal as easy for SA as he could.

He’s been playing injured for two series now, I get every casual wants to find a scapegoat but the Spurs lost as a team. They basically gave up no assets to get him, which is the reason why he was given that contract.

That play wasn’t even that dumb, he thought he had a free run to the rim and went for it. OG just made an incredible play. Calling it the dumbest finals play in the past twenty years says everything about your ball knowledge. Just a game ago, Wemby threw the ball away which was magnitudes dumber than Fox.

Because everyone else also had atrocious levels of gameplay. Trust me I’m a certified Spurs hater. This ain’t on Fox he isn’t the DPOY talking shit giving up 4th quarter leads. Doesn’t matter how much experience or how much he makes. Disaster class by the entire team but this weight falls on the dude saying I’m in your heard throwing people by the neck to the ground.

Nobody was saying what a shit player he is after the Spurs upset the Thunder, the favorites to win it all coming into the playoffs, but since they just lost to the Knicks, people are calling him a scrub now. Reminder he’s a key starter on a team that made it to the finals, and 28 other teams weren’t even able to make it to the finals and are currently sitting on the sidelines.

KAT went for 2 points on 1-7 shooting in the Knicks’ most important game in 50 years, and reporters and influencers would be roasting his ass right now if the Knicks had lost the game. But since they happened to win, nobody gives a shit about his performance.

Phil Jackson said, “Winning covers a mountain of sins, and losing creates mountains out of molehills.”

wemby turnover worse imo

He isn’t even seen as the best player on the team tho & the player who is isn’t just a generational talent, most ppl already consider him the best player in the world & is on a goat trajectory. Everyone already agreed even in the thunder series that fox’s contract is terrible so to see ppl hold him at that standard even though most dont rate him anywhere near that makes no fucking sense (its on the spurs for giving him that dumbass contract). meanwhile the so called “best in the world” had just as bad errors as fox: costly turnover game 2 & bricked 2 game winning shots in the end, had a terrible second half game 4 & missed two decisive free throws that would’ve won them the game & was dogshit last night but since he’s 22 & its only his 1st playoff experience we gotta ease up on the criticism, alr bro.

Probably flak

Came here to say this. This is at least the third /r/NBA post to say “slack” when they mean flack flak. Not sure where it’s coming from. Slack is the opposite, like cut some slack. Like you’re not on a tight leash anymore.

Autocorrect or r/boneappletea I think by OP, by context they probably meant “flak”

100%. All the Fox criticism is really Mitch criticism.

Mitch’s main criticism in my opinion is also his strength. What do I mean with that? Pop would have chewed his players up and called them out when they kept saying we are the better team or we are going to win 3 straight. He would have benched Fox and every player who was making mistakes or not putting in the effort.

Mitch was great because he believed in his players and allowed them to play through mistakes and be cocky.

That got us in the finals and also was our downfall.

So to me it is hard to be upset about Mitch.

I knew the series was gonna be short after the 2nd or 3rd “Pop met with the team last night to rally the troops” headline.

No way to say this without being somewhat insensitive, and I get there are special circumstances, but if you need your 77 year old former coach who is recovering from a major stroke and probably lives most waking minutes of his life in pain to light a fire under your team every single time, then you are at best way out of your league with a concerning amount of growing to do, or at worst youre just flat out a shit coach.

Youre shit for putting a guy like that in a position like that and youre shit if you can’t get your players to at least pretend like theyre not ti-ti on the court in the fucking finals without getting the guy you replaced involved.

I 100% blame the coaching on them blowing this series. They outplayed the Knicks in every game except game 1 and only won 1 of them. Who in their right mind tells their team to continue playing hurry up offense and shooting early in the clock with a 30 point lead? Or to continue doing that when you’re up 20 at the start of the 4th? He essentially gave the Knicks every advantage imaginable to come back from these double digit leads in every single game and never went away from it. Playing Fox over Harper is a crime as well. The game Harper started because Fox was hurt against OKC (can’t remember which game that was) should have been more than enough to keep him as the starter. If Pop had been coaching this Spurs team I wouldn’t have been shocked at all if the Spurs won 4-1

i said the same about fox, but i can say the same about Mitch..

people said the same thing about atkinson trusting in harden at the end.. Nick nurse and quinn Snyder said the same thing after the series’.. these are coty and championship winning coaches and they said how the knicks were relentless, adaptive, and hard to solve.. they win with fast breaks, movement half court, iso half court, rebound tough and play team rotation defense with elite wing length.. oh and they also have the clutchest player in the league.

theres only so much you can do against that

Idk man. I mean obviously a couple of coaching mistakes were glaringly obvious in all the games. And Fox is a feast-or-famine player. But at times it feels like Wemby just doesn’t execute the game plan and the guys on the court adjust late. You can see the miscommunication happening in real time, especially on offense. I just don’t get why Wemby clogs the top of the key as much as he does. It can’t possibly be what their offense is about.

Yeah. As a Spurs fan. Missed Popovich a lot during this.

Harper was the silver lining of the series. Very excited about his future. But he definitely had plenty of bad rookie mistakes. His shotmaking and finishing also fell off pretty much every 4th quarter.

The margin for error when trying to win a championship is minimal. You can’t throw the ball away with 12 seconds left. Can’t go 0-2 on FTs late in games. Can’t be standing out of bounds when getting a rebound. Can’t give up offensive rebounds off FTs at end of games. Can’t give opposing teams best player free points by fouling repeatedly on 3PAs, etc.

Spurs defense did great. Knicks did not score comfortably all series. The main issue was on the other end

Yah wasn’t his main appeal for the spurs that he won cpoy and was the guy they could give the ball down the stretch of games? Out of everyone on the spurs he failed at his job the most

You mean you don’t want to pay a guy $200 million to shoot 34% for the series?

Plus a veteran player. He was absolute trash. I don’t understand why he was allowed to shoot threes at all, especially down the stretch.

Spurs really needed their coach to draw up plays and run some better sets to close out games. Not let Fox shoot threes.

nobody is defending him, but isnt he just being scapegoated at this point? I think wemby also had almost equal contribution in losing this series.. He is supposed to be a top 3 MVP candidate, best player in the world, but when it mattered most, was severely outplayed by harper, brunson, og on the court. He has a lot of learning to do, but we need to shift some blame on his shoulders for sure.

Right, unlike the Spurs young core he knew it wasn’t a guarantee that he’s gonna be with Spurs long term or be in the finals again. He should have grabbed the opportunity to win it all, instead he made bad plays.

Whoever expected a player who was a part of a losing culture for so many years to be a “winning veteran presence” is a clown

How is the DPOY and a top MVP finisher getting so little flack? Say he’s young sure. But he has more accolades than Fox already yet was a ghost every 4th quarter of the series. Sitting on the perimeter, not attempting to get into the paint at all

It’s not just that he underperformed, he did terribly at precisely the part of the game he’s supposed to be doing well at as the veteran. He was the opposite of a good veteran example/leader for the young guys, they fed off of his terrible leadership. You can’t tell me a good vet leader in the game wouldn’t have influenced the young players

Fox’s salary was \(37m this season. Kat was \)53m, and OG was $40m. Fox still played like crap but he was not the highest paid player.

Dude making more than double what Brunson getting

Also their vet, and the guy the Spurs got because he was an all-star and clutch player of the year. Bro had 2 jobs, close the games and keep the young guys from doing stupid shit, and he could not do it.

And his LITERAL role on the team is vet PG closer

He’s also playing hurt, but he really hasn’t hit the peak he was with the Kings. He was once the most clutch player in the league. TBH I think he is better as a ball-dominant player, but Spurs don’t play that way.

Maybe the Knicks were letting him shoot that’s why he got a lot of shots. They probably game planned on letting him do what he wants and play him straight up. I’ve seen him left open on threes more than a few times as well so he might not be a priority on their rotations.

Yes it is definitely a team issue but Fox himself blew several consecutive possessions with bad shots, bad turnovers, and bad fouls that directly led to the Knicks taking the lead in every fourth quarter that the Knicks won.

He had more touches than any other player in the 2nd half before the game losing blunder where he could have just held the ball in game 4. Of those touches only 10% of the time the ball reached the paint.

The Knicks were letting him try to hero ball it. That’s why they let him take those awful dribble pullups. Without him the Knicks would’ve likely been down 1-3 or swept.

After game 1 while other NY fans were bitching about refs all I could think was “Let Fox get the ball, he’s with us!” As soon as he subbed into the games I knew we were making the comebacks every time.

Wemby’s stats in the 4th were significantly lower than the 1st half. I think Harper missed 3 of his last 4 shots as well as 0-2 from the line in the 4th for the last game. Fatigue was absolutely a factor.

Fox was not good but the we’ve seen how Castle performed as the primary ball handler against OKC which was a turnover machine.

Plus I think the heavy defensive pressure on the Knicks ball handlers wore themselves down more so than it wore down the Knicks.

I haven’t thought about his, but I think you’re on to something here. The intensity of their ball pressure from around midway 3rd quarter on and what they were doing before was night and day

In order to keep up with level of intensity they were playing with on the defensive end they needed more contributions from the bench to get some meaningful rest.

The endless rotations and close outs to keep Wemby at the rim and cover all of NY’s shooters was taxing and unlike NY, SA’s best player was responsible for so much defensively that they couldn’t generate enough offensively in the 4th.

I don’t know why so many of these threads are phrased as Spurs losing it rather than Knicks winning it. Knicks were just better conditioned and deeper.

Wemby 19 points on 19 shots, the “goat” couldn’t close out the Knicks.

I think people are confused as to how wemby is getting no flack for how ooorly he closed every game. He was a ghost 

Not hacking Mitch at all while letting Brunson pour in 45 points had me scratching my head last night.

Though, it wasn’t the coach that fouled Brunson on 2 3PA though in the 4th… those hurt bad. And Mitch didn’t give up an offensive rebound on a FT

What adjustments do you think he should’ve made?

Those long 2s made my skin crawl. What an awful showing he had.

Wemby’s been pretty terrible in the clutch too

Spurs fans went from saying he was robbed of MVP and is the best player in the world to “he’s just a poor young player trying to figure things out don’t be too harsh 🥺🥺🥺”

Their entire team including the coaching staff played like rookies. It happens. I think people are just looking for someone to blame their sorrows on like the Knicks didn’t earn that title. The Spurs lost with the refs on their side too which is frankly hilarious.

Genuinely the only game the Spurs won this series was because they played keep away from Wemby in the clutch for that game lmao

Need an actual term for that Game 5 FT rebound.

Not sure I’ve ever seen a center use the ‘reverse position’ like that on a FT rebound - just an absolutely bizarre decision. He basically made it impossible for him to secure the rebound, as his back was to the rim, and it made it much easier for Mitch to move him under the rim.

There’s a sports phrase that I can’t think of - maybe from NFL or UFC, about giving up leverage. (Or I could be imagining things)

It’s hilarious how’s he’s catching no flak in the series. People bring up 26-14 and the 3 blocks but don’t even bring up the percentages, he’s an 8 ft alien and he shot 53 TS for the whole series plus all the unclutch things you just mentioned. He gets all the credit and none of the blame especially if you’re the supposed best player in the league.

When the Spurs win, Wemby’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. When they loose, he’s only 22, lmao!

Not really. The entire spurs team is Bull Buckner. Today, at least. We’ll see how they respond next year with the experience.

As a heat fan I’m sorry. I can’t let 6 man of the year 3.8ppg in the finals Keldon Johnson slide. Take back that fucking trophy and give it to Jaime at this point.

Castle this series :
• ⁠Game 2: ⁵⁄₁₄
• ⁠Game 4: ²⁄₇
• ⁠Game 5: ¹⁄₁₀

Wemby this series :
• ⁠Game 1: ⁶⁄₂₁
• ⁠Game 4: ⁹⁄₂₅
• ⁠Game 5: ⁷⁄₁₉