• In NBA-speak, "player development" is like world peace: There’s universal support for the concept, but great divergence in how it should be achieved.
  • You don’t draft in the late 20s or worse, as the Spurs have done constantly over the past 20 years, and still mine the Tony Parker’s and Manu Ginobili’s unless you’re great at improving the guys you drafted.
  • Triano said the most important element of player development, even with a team deep in rebuilding mode, is not sending the message to young players there aren’t playing-time consequences to their mistakes.
  • Consider how Borrego described his mentor, Spurs legendary coach Gregg Popovich: “He does a great job of holding players accountable – of coaching them, but still loving them – and I will take that with me.”
  • I asked Borrego to detail his approach to player development. What I heard in reply was a “less-is-more” concept: Don’t flood young players with so much correction they are overwhelmed, but still hold them to expectations.
  • “We get lost as coaches in trying to create this incredible player overnight, and we end up losing our player. ...We’ll identify a few areas, two or three areas, that we want to focus on right now in the summertime and we’ll work on those.”