Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images Where there’s a Wills, there’s a way In 1976, Maury Wills published his first book. Entitled How to Steal a Pennant, it served as Wills’ manifesto for turning bad and underachieving baseball teams around, and in it, Wills made the bold assertion that he could take any last-place team and turn them into champions in just four seasons of coaching. Wills had wanted to be a baseball manager for some time, and after receiving no real offers after his retirement as a player hoped to help his case by publicly illustrating his thoughts on how to build a title-winning team. The funny thing is it actually worked. While many in baseball rolled their eyes at the braggadocio of Wills’ claim, there were some who were intrigued, and some of those people owned professional baseball teams. And while we could certainly have a lengthy conversation about how desperate people have a habit of making equally desperate decisions, the fact remains that as a result of his book Maury Wills was offered two jobs in Major League Baseball. The first, a one-year contract offer from The San Francisco Giants, insulted Wills in its brevity, and was turned down. The second, however, was a two-year offer from the somewhat newly minted Seattle Mariners, and Wills jumped at the chance. And so began one of the most bizarre managerial careers in MLB history. The 1980 Mariners were not good. Maury Wills had asked for a last-place team, and he’d gotten one. As a new expansion team they were thin on talent, but they had set the franchise record for wins (67) under their previous manager, so they were not totally devoid of it either. The chance for Wills to put his lofty baseball theories to the test was at hand, and after his first game with the team, Wills declared to the local reporters that the Mariners had a lot of “confused talent”, and that it was his job to unconfuse it. By the end of the month Wills had permanently benched his starting center-fielder Juan Beniquez, then attempted to fine and suspend him for not substituting into the game, just days after Wills had told him that he’d never play for Wills again. Within a week or so, Wills was complaining about his players. He accused them of softness, of a lack of mental toughness, of not intuitively comprehending his progressively confusing instructions. Near the end of the season, against seemingly all odds, the Mariners went on a six-game win streak. They then lost their last eight games in a row. By the Winter Meetings, things had not improved. In his first press junket since the end of the season, Wills bragged to reporters about the talent and desire of his new center-fielder, Leon Roberts. This probably would have been a positive development if not for the fact that Roberts had recently been traded to the Texas Rangers. Embarrassed, Wills pivoted to a declaration that he would bring real discipline to the team. He set a strict training schedule, with practice every day from 9am to 4pm. He lectured in the evenings for 2-3 hours on the fundamentals. He declared that the team would play every preseason spring training game to win, as if it were life-and-death. By the time his team made it to spring training, they were exhausted. They lost 17 spring exhibition games. Reporter Peter Gammons publicly wagered that Wills would be the first manager fired in 1981. Wills lasted 24 games and was fired on May 6th. All-in-all, he coached less than a full season. His record was 26–56, at that time the worst for a non-interim manager. According to the account of then Mariners beat reporter Steve Rudman, by the time he was fired Wills had: Accidentally made a lineup that consisted of two 3rd basemen and no center-fielder. Held a game up for 10+ minutes trying to pick a pinch-hitter. Removed his starting pitcher before realizing that no relievers were warmed up. Twice bragged about a player no longer on the roster. Left the middle of a spring training game to fly to California. Left batting practice (multiple times) to deal with his on/off ‘psycho’ girlfriend. Ordered the grounds crew to paint the batters boxes a foot longer than regulation in an attempt to give his team a batting advantage. (Outside of the obvious fact that the opposition also stood in the the same batting boxes) “Permanently” moved his 2nd baseman to shortstop, then 24 hours later moved him back to 2nd base, permanently. (Per Rob Neyer, who dedicated an entire chapter to Wills in his excellent Big Book of Baseball Blunders, this is only a partial list of Wills’ blunders/abuses/insanity) And what does this have to do with the San Antonio Spurs? Well, it turns out that winning is hard. Building winning teams is also hard. This would be a pretty funny anecdote in-and-of-itself if Wills had just been some sort of highly persuasive and passionate fan who was given control of a team, but Maury Wills was a baseball great. He was a former MVP. He was a critically contributing three-time World Series Champion. He was the first MLB player to steal 100 bases in a season, in spite of having nothing approximating the speed of Rickey Henderson, Vince Coleman, or Lou Brock (all of whom would later break his record). He is *still* in consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame as a player. It turns out that even when you’re an expert, winning (and coaching) is really, really hard. Sure, it probably didn’t help that Wills had never managed at the Major League level (though he had managed a Mexican League team to a title). And sure, he did not have anything approaching a baseball equivalent to Victor Wembayama, or an ownership group remotely resembling The Holt Family (George Argyros’ personal motto ‘Patience is for losers’ was printed on a sign hung in his office in the Kingdome). And sure, it probably didn’t help that to lessen the pressure of the job, Wills turned to the pleasures of Bolivian Booger Sugar. (I’m only allowed one cocaine joke per article, and honestly, it’s getting harder to make them look organic) However, Wills’ story is a reminder to us all about precisely how hard coaching is, as opposed to how easy and/or straightforward it might look. As well as a commentary on how much worse things could be. Wills’ team lost almost 70% of their games under him, and this was well before the modern concept of tanking. They won almost 50% of their games without him. The manager they’d had before him had won a pennant with the Red Sox. Wills’ hiring (and Darrell Johnsons’ firing) had been rash reactions to a team that wasn’t quite ready to win yet. Wills actively made his team worse. And yet, it wasn’t for a lack of knowledge. His former players and coaches claimed they found him to be one of the most knowledgeable people in baseball. I suppose it’s hard to know what makes someone a truly great coach. I suppose you know it when you see it. Twenty-three years later Wills’ knowledge would result in another World Series title, and the breaking of one of baseball greatest ‘curses’. Dave Roberts, who credited Wills with teaching him how to better steal bases, stole perhaps the most critical base in MLB history as the New York Yankees attempted to close out the Boston Red Sox with a 3-0 series lead. It led to a critical rally that led to an improbable four straight wins. Twenty-one years after that, the same Dave Roberts would manage the Los Angeles Dodgers to their 2nd World Series title under his tenure, also against the New York Yankees. I’m not sure what we learned from last night’s loss. We already knew that the Spurs were slumping, that they lacked depth, that they’ve been pretty banged up this season and have been missing starters more often than not. We already knew that none of their backup big men are really playable against top-end talent, and that they’re at least one player (and a couple of developments) away from being a consistent force. We already knew that they’re being led by an inexperienced coach and are without their guiding compass of 30+ seasons. I suppose it’s possible that, like Roberts, we learned things that have yet to reveal themselves until the right time. Maybe that time just isn’t here yet. Maybe the solution to all of these problems is something we can’t yet see. I’ll bet the solution’s not cocaine though. (Ok, I lied about the one joke thing) Takeaways I think we have to talk about Devin Vassell again. I’m a big fan of this kid, but his slump is starting to get more concerning. Over the last 10 games he’s shooting 37% from their field, and 22% from three. What’s making it look even worse is that he’s also taking even more shots in what appears to be an attempt to shoot himself out of it. Over the last 4 games he’s taken 16, 20, 14, and 17 shots, all at atrocious shooting percentages (though he did finally crack 30% from three last night, on 9 shots). This sort of thing might be offset if Vassell was playing outstanding defense to make up for it, but his activity on that end has been inconsistent as well, and I’m starting to think he needs to come off the bench again (where he had some of his best performances of the year). Mitch Johnson seems determined to play him with the starters, which when combined with Sochan’s non-shooting woes, greatly stagnates the starting lineup offensively relative to lineups earlier in the year. In an ideal world, both players would start, but until one (or both) begin to serve as shooting threats, that spacing is going to be ugly, and against teams like Milwaukee, that just won’t work. The same may need to occur for rookie standout Stephon Castle, who in spite of other merits, ranks as one of the NBA’s worst shooters this season by a couple of measures. Though promising, Castle is not ready to run the point alone, and plays just as well with Tre Jones at the point as he does with Chris Paul. Seeing as this is the time of year that rookies start to wear down a bit, it might not be bad idea to play him against other 2nd units to give him a confidence boost and a couple extra minutes of rest per game. The rest won’t hurt, as Castle is blazing his way up the Spurs’ all-time rookie minutes list. Seeing him get a lot of play is great — as long as his body is ready for it. Call me lame, call me unfun, call me a square from Delaware, but I do not like those alternate uniforms. Boo! Bring back the Fiesta colors, cowards! Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening: Cocaine by Eric Clapton