SIMMONS AND VOULGARIS DISH ON THE MAVS

[mavsluvr]

I don't like the idea of an organization not being able to tell a superstar what he needs to hear. Maybe I'm outa touch, but I don't think you can be afraid of people based in their status. That's a bad way to run things, and folks that are scared to tell people what they need to hear become enablers.

Agreed. 

I think his point was a bit more nuanced than that. It was more like an explanation of why Luka's conditioning seems to be a lot more worrisome to the fans than it does to the team. I think this is his general line of reasoning --

1. Whose job is it to hold Luka accountable for his conditioning? That is not his teammates' role, so you can't blame them for the issue. 

2. So you go to the coaching/training staff. What are they going to say to him? If Luka were red-faced and winded and unable to make it up and down the court at the ends of games, they could point that out to him and show him how he is hurting the team. But the fact is that few of Luka's struggles this season have anything to do with his conditioning. If he were to play himself into peak form in (for example) three weeks instead of six, it would likely make very little difference in the overall team performance.

3. So, when the staff can't point out problems that his conditioning is causing, they don't have much to complain about, and ordering him to step up his conditioning would be akin to telling him, "Dude, your girlfriend sucks. Work on getting a new one." They would risk offending him, and to what end, if whatever he is doing is not causing an on-court problem? Therefore, since he has a history of playing himself into top shape, it may well be the best decision just to let him complete that effort on his own, without harassing him about it.  

I did not take Bob's comments as a statement that people were afraid to talk to Luka about deficiencies that were causing an actual significant problem.