Pop tinkered with microball 5-mans earlier in the season, and, surprisingly, with decent results. If you go here, you’ll see that various microball combinations have a decent Win%. Short stints of, say, Hill, Ginobili, Mason, Gooden, Thomas will probably happen in the coming weeks.

Hopefully Manu can get however much practice he needs with both the new-look bench squad and the starting team. Depending on everybody’s health, how close the games are, and Pop’s playing time machinations, we may not see Manu out there with the starters very often.

It’ll also be interesting to see who brings the ball up for the Spurs, in all the various lineups we’ll see… some of which apparently might have George Hill, Mason Jr. and Ginobili, any of whom could assume that responsibility .

Or have to adjust their game to it being placed on someone else, the pessimist would say.