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Patty Mills Emerging as Sixth Man of the Year Candidate for Surging Spurs
- Updated: December 7, 2016
SAN ANTONIO — Patty Mills has played a significant role in the San Antonio Spurs 18-4 start this season, so it’s hard to recall the time when his status with the team was in limbo.
He had become—in the words of the only person who really matters when it comes to playing for the Spurs—“a little fat ass.”
That was in the aftermath of the Spurs’ crushing loss to the Miami Heat in The 2013 NBA Finals. Mills played only two games in that series before Gregg Popovich, author of the insult, lost him for the final four contests because of a foot infection that had developed into a painful abscess.
Popovich may, or may not, have used similar blunt language again when he advised Mills that he would have to shape up over the summer if he wanted to have a more significant role with the Spurs.
No matter how the coach phrased things, Mills spent the weeks that followed shedding weight and lowering his body fat from a couple of doughnuts above 12 percent to just under six percent.
“He was a little fat ass,” Popovich reiterated to Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News, near the conclusion of the 2013-14 regular season.
“He had too much junk in the trunk. His decision making wasn’t great and he wasn’t in great shape. He changed his entire body. He came back svelte and cut and understood you have to make better decisions, point-guard type decisions. He did all those things better and he earned it.”
When Mills showed up for pre-training camp workouts at the Spurs’ practice complex in September of 2013, his teammates barely recognized him. According to Danny Green, Mills spent a lot of time posing like a bodybuilder.
“He lost a little weight, showing off his guns, got his body fat down,” Green said then. “I don’t want to say he’s bragging. He’s worked hard all summer, and you can tell by looking at his body. I guess he’s enjoying people noticing his body change. He shaved (his beard), too. That makes him skinnier in the face.”
The payoff was Mills’ best NBA season, which he capped with standout play in the Spurs’ redemptive humbling of the Heat during their 2014 NBA Finals rematch. His 3-point shooting in Games 5 and 6 …
