Was there chatter over the last 7-8 years regarding the assistants and how they were complicit in slide into tanking? I didn’t follow the collapse. Did people just say “oh well KL left and the timeline shifted” or was there blame put on the coaches along the way?
Pop's wife died in 2018 and after that his focus shifted to raising the character of young players rather than hold them to a high standard of basketball play. We lost some good assistant coaches and we seemed to only promote people who were raised in Pop's coaching tree; like Will Hardy as "video intern" to "video coordinator" to assistant coach, before losing him to Boston and then Utah.
As wary as I was about Brian Wright being promoted to GM in 2019 (and as much as Pop still had his hand in things), I feel like he's gotten better at his job every year. It was him, in 2022, who decided our future core (Dejounte Murray, Derrick White, Devin Vassell, Keldon Johnson and big men combo Jakob Poeltl / Zach Collins) just wasn't going to be enough. He lined up the Dejounte trade, but still had to ask Pop for permission to pull the trigger because it would mean starting over and tanking rather than fighting for the play-in each year.
The next year was interesting (not only because we got Wemby), but because almost our entire roster was made up of undrafted or waived players who were actually getting their shot in the NBA. We all had somebody we were rooting for. The coaches and assistants were allowed to do their best, and the players obviously were playing 100% for their career... but our starting lineup was Tre Jones, Vassell, Johnson, Sochan and Collins. And Pop still cared more for building character than teaching defense.
I am SO excited for Mitch to have full control now (he's fighting for his career now). I also love the new assistants who are coming in with experience from outside of Pop's coaching tree.
