One thing most NBA watchers agree on is that San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich is purposeful. That is, when Popovich does or says something, he has a reason. Pop’s idea may not be always great, but rest assured he has an idea that his statements are meant to help accomplish. The surefire Hall of Fame coach is also usually judicious in criticizing players in public — though he certainly doesn’t hold back from face-to-face critiques (ask Danny Green). It’s this background that makes Popovich’s recent post-trade assessment of former Spurs star Kawhi Leonard (“Kawhi was a great player, but he wasn’t a leader or anything”) such a mystery to many. Why would Popovich take a shot at Leonard’s leadership? Leonard is out the door, gone, no longer a Spur — what could Pop hope to accomplish?
Here’s one answer, arrived at by looking at exactly what Popovich said. Popovich didn’t just say Leonard wasn’t a leader — he named the players on the Spurs who did fill that leadership role. Specifically, Popovich said “Manu and Patty were the leaders.”
That’s Manu Ginobili and Patty Mills, of course. Only one of those players remains on the Spurs roster after Ginobili’s retirement. The arithmetic reveals that there’s a leadership role now available on the Spurs, someone to replace Ginobili — and do more than what Leonard did when he was in San Antonio. With that in mind, Popovich’s endgame in citing Leonard’s lack of leadership can be seen as an invitation to DeMar DeRozan, the wildly talented new Spur acquired in the Leonard trade, to take up that vacant leadership position — something Popovich is saying Leonard never did.
That gives DeRozan a chance to do more even that what he’s already doing for the Spurs by scoring about 25 points a game. Popovich is essentially inviting DeRozan to join the pantheon of great Spurs leaders: Duncan, Robinson, Ginobili, Parker. He’s saying to DeRozan: you can be greater than the guy we traded for you. That’s the most reasonable way to parse Popovich’s seemingly uncharacteristic statement on Leonard — it can’t be sour grapes (that’s too inefficient for Pop); it has to be meant to help the Spurs.
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