And now, as reported on the Sports Illustrated website, Gregg Popovich responds to the critics who claim the San Antonio Spurs are too nice to compete in the NBA:
"We've changed our rules. Now, if a player does not have an altercation on or off the court once each month, we fine him. I've tried to get this into the press, but people just won't pay attention. And the guys who are our top four scorers, each of them will be required once every two months to appear on MTV.
And the guys who shoot the worst free throws over a one-month period, the next time we have a TV game, they are required to look into the camera and beat their chests after they make a good play. I think then we will have a little bit different reputation. But I think I'll have to force-feed that because the guys won't do this on their own.
They're very hard to coach and very difficult to get along with. So I'm going to do the opposite way. just lie my [butt] off and tell everybody that nobody is getting along. I don't really want to coach here, they don't really want me to coach here, the players don't like each other and we got a lot of bad stuff going on. I think the ratings will go up then."