Plotting the dream offseason for the San Antonio Spurs

Find a Chip Engelland replacement

For Spurs fans that have been around longer than a few years, Chip Engelland is like a household name. You can search for him on basketball reference all day, but he never played a single possession in the NBA. Instead, he made remarkable achievements to the Spurs on the coaching side of things.

Beginning as an assistant under Head Coach Gregg Popovich before the 2005-06 season, Chip would go on to contribute toward two Spurs championship seasons in 2007 and 2014. Focusing on player development, Engelland made huge contributions in ways that many fans never actually got to see.

To get an idea of the kind of impact Chip's player development had, let's take a look at Kawhi Leonard. Coming into the league, Kawhi did not have much of an offensive game. He was criticized for his bad jumpshot throughout the draft process, and it was part of the reason he was drafted at the end of the lottery. But by the end of his time with the Spurs, Leonard was known as a sharpshooter.

Much of this had to do with Engelland's methodical process in tweaking players' shots and making them better shooters. He was a massive part of San Antonio's reputation for making internal improvements to their players, and a big hole was left when he went to go work for the Thunder in 2022.

The Spurs currently rank second-to-last in the NBA in three-point percentage for both open threes (no defender within 4-6 feet) and wide-open threes (no defender for 6+ feet). Bringing in a shooting guru to begin to correct players' shot form could make a big difference over the course of several years.