Gregg Popovich spent a minute before Monday’s game lamenting the existence of the three-point line, then its first 24 pretending it wasn’t there.
“I hate threes; I don’t like ‘em,” he said in a vaguely familiar riff. “It’s not real basketball. Why don’t we have a four-point shot? Let’s have a five-point shot and make it real fun for the fans.”
Pop’s view could be construed as heresy in the modern NBA, and yet it aptly contextualizes a Spurs team built around a troika of blasphemers. On the same night the Warriors made more three-point history, the Spurs attempted just three in the entire first half.