take/a/ride

“That’s family stuff,” Gregg Popovich said, in his most telling three words of this series. Pop had been asked what it was he told Manu Ginobili before the game, and his answer was both sufficient and true.

My favorite moment of last night was after Danny Green’s final dagger, when he made his way back toward the bench and Tim Duncan stood waiting for him at the free throw line. What happened there wasn’t a celebration, but an actual embrace — Duncan putting his hand on the back of Green’s head in a moment of genuine affection. Family stuff.

I don’t think members of a professional sports team have to like each other (Kobe Bryant said last week that the best teams he’d ever played on were such because they weren’t that way), but I know that I love it when they do. The first words from Tony Parker’s mouth at his postgame press conference were a half-joking scolding of a reporter for doubting that Manu would be Manu. Both Pop and Parker’s words instantly brought me back to this. With regard to legacies, there’s plenty on the line for the guys populating the Spurs’ sideline in this series, but as much as this is about Pop being the best coach ever, or Duncan being the best player of his generation, or Manu and Parker again elevating their place in history, I’ll remember these Spurs for the way they enjoyed playing basketball — together. That, as much as everything else, is what doesn’t come around very often.

via Grantland

“Can’t you give me two lines, just two lines of recommendations without any hints at ‘what a great man the boss is’ and what poor fishes they are in comparison” — Schindler to Wright, while attempting to apply for his license to practice architecture

“My dear Rodolph Schindler: … I am in receipt of a letter from the Board asking if you had made designs for me. The answer to that is, — No you didn’t. Nobody makes designs for me. Sometimes if they are in luck, or rather if I am in luck, they make them with me. … Nevertheless, I believe that you now are competent to design exceedingly good buildings. I believe that anything you would design would take rank in the new work being done in the country as worthy of respect.” — Wright to Schindler, July 1929

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