Jurassic Park III is, frankly, a horrendous movie, but it’s a horrendous movie that I’ve seen more times than I’d like to admit. There are several instances in the film that shatter the unintentional comedy scale, which gives it a delightful rewatchability quality.
The antagonists in the movie (as is pretty much the case in all four Jurassic Park installments) are the velociraptors. A horrifying combination of size, speed and intelligence, the raptors prove a worthy adversary to the humans dumb enough to repeatedly try and engage them. You know, kinda like the San Antonio Spurs. About midway through JPIII, the humans realize that the raptors are able to communicate vocally with one another. “My god! They’re even more dangerous than we thought!” That kind of thing. Here’s a brilliant clip:
The Spurs have a loaded roster. It’s not farfetched to think that they currently have FIVE possible future Hall-of-Fame players (Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, LaMarcus Aldridge, Kawhi Leonard), and a top-five all-time head coach, to boot. With the core of the team having been together for so long, it’s only natural that there are instances in which they don’t really need Gregg Popovich to tell them what to do or where to be.
Late in Thursday night’s game against the Cavaliers, cameras caught the Spurs huddling during a timeout. Nothing strange about that, of course. But at the center of the huddle, leading the discussion, was Tony Parker, not Popovich. Instead, Pop was just kind of chilling off to the left, listening to his players coaching themselves:
This probably happens all the time during Spurs timeouts, but it’s still pretty cool to see. There’s something very velociraptor about all this, though. “My god! The Spurs don’t even need Pop! They coach themselves.” San Antonio would go on to beat Cleveland 99-95.
The Spurs remain terrifying, dangerous and totally fascinating. Just like raptors.