Many of you may know he is the owner of the Spurs. He bought the team from a real loser in my opinion, a car salesman named Red McCombs (same one with the Vikings). This happened in '93. A year or two prior to that McCombs actually "fired" Brown from the Spurs though it was debatable exactly what happened.
The other thing that happened in '93 was Rodman being traded to the Spurs for Sean Elliot. Not sure about this but I'm pretty sure this was on McCombs watch but it turned out to be a huge headache for the new owner. Rodman fought with their head coach Lucas in '94 and then eventually feuded with Robinson and was such a distraction in their '95 playoff run that Lucas' replacement, Bob Hill actually refused to play him in a playoff game because he'd taken his shoes off during a preceeding game among other things (usually it's a last straw kind of thing). You may know that when the Spurs won their first championship that lo and behold Sean was back on the team and his jersey is retired, he now does color commentary for their games and is a beloved member of the SA community.
They got rid of Rodman but he wasn't their first problem child. Rod Strickland was another one and there was Willie Anderson who allegedly raped a woman and Alvin Robertson's battery against wife and girlfriends (some of this happened in SA though i believe he wasn't actually on the spurs roster at the time. And there was David Wingate indicted for raping a 17-year-old girl (oops) and that spurred (pun intended) another woman to file rape charges. By the way, practically all of the players responsible for this were from McCombs tenure. So did he think football players would be easier to deal with??
Point to all this is the Spurs haven't always had an extremely clean cut image even during the Admirals duration on the team, and Holt et al eventually made the decision to get people that would fit in and get along (and try to stay out of police line-ups).
Of course, getting Duncan didn't hurt matters any but they almost lost him to Orlanda in '01 or '02 so give Holt credit for talking him into staying in San Antonio which nothing personal, but is not the most attractive city to play in the NBA.
Another thing he did which is now becoming obvious is his look toward the international market and also locking players up at a young age for long contracts.
So when you talk of why the Spurs have been successful though Pop is a very good coach and Tim is the magnet for players wanting to win a championship with, I'd say Holt is mainly responsible.
The other thing that happened in '93 was Rodman being traded to the Spurs for Sean Elliot. Not sure about this but I'm pretty sure this was on McCombs watch but it turned out to be a huge headache for the new owner. Rodman fought with their head coach Lucas in '94 and then eventually feuded with Robinson and was such a distraction in their '95 playoff run that Lucas' replacement, Bob Hill actually refused to play him in a playoff game because he'd taken his shoes off during a preceeding game among other things (usually it's a last straw kind of thing). You may know that when the Spurs won their first championship that lo and behold Sean was back on the team and his jersey is retired, he now does color commentary for their games and is a beloved member of the SA community.
They got rid of Rodman but he wasn't their first problem child. Rod Strickland was another one and there was Willie Anderson who allegedly raped a woman and Alvin Robertson's battery against wife and girlfriends (some of this happened in SA though i believe he wasn't actually on the spurs roster at the time. And there was David Wingate indicted for raping a 17-year-old girl (oops) and that spurred (pun intended) another woman to file rape charges. By the way, practically all of the players responsible for this were from McCombs tenure. So did he think football players would be easier to deal with??
Point to all this is the Spurs haven't always had an extremely clean cut image even during the Admirals duration on the team, and Holt et al eventually made the decision to get people that would fit in and get along (and try to stay out of police line-ups).
Of course, getting Duncan didn't hurt matters any but they almost lost him to Orlanda in '01 or '02 so give Holt credit for talking him into staying in San Antonio which nothing personal, but is not the most attractive city to play in the NBA.
Another thing he did which is now becoming obvious is his look toward the international market and also locking players up at a young age for long contracts.
So when you talk of why the Spurs have been successful though Pop is a very good coach and Tim is the magnet for players wanting to win a championship with, I'd say Holt is mainly responsible.
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