We have completed our 2026 summer project of determining who the biggest Spurs Villain of all time is, and while the result shouldn’t be at all surprising when taking in context with the timing, I’ll admit it wasn’t the result I expected when we first concocted this idea a little over a month ago (more on that below). Beating out Zaza Pachulia (the dirtiest player to ever face the Spurs) to win the entire tournament is the person who played an even bigger role in the franchise’s downturn: the infamous
Dennis Robertson: uncle to Kawhi Leonard and destroyer of two franchises (and-counting).
Uncle Dennis first came into the purview of Spurs fans during the 2017-18 season, when shocking rumors started to swirl that Leonard was unhappy, claiming that they had misdiagnosed a quad injury — which mind you was unrelated to the Pachulia foul — as a chronic issue. They allowed him to seek a second medical opinion, and away he went to New York for “rehab”, hardly ever returning and even hiding in a closet when Spurs representatives came to check on him. As the negative reports kept trickling out all season, everything was being referred to has coming from “Kawhi’s group”, which we would soon learn was his agent at the time, Mitch Frankel, and uncle and representative, Dennis Robertson.
As rumors kept swirling and the media seemed to be taking Kawhi’s side on everything, the Spurs finally revealed their side of things through Michael C. Wright of ESPN, who wrote in part:
After Leonard and (former agent Brian) Elfus parted ways, Robertson and Frankel took over the day-to-day communication with the Spurs, and the relationship hasn’t been nearly as healthy, according to Spurs sources.
Multiple league sources also told ESPN that the Spurs have grown worried that Leonard’s group has an ulterior motive to fray the relationship and get Leonard traded to a larger market such as Los Angeles (Leonard’s hometown) or New York or Philadelphia (Robertson lives in New Jersey).
By that point, it was clear who was running the show, and we all know what happened from there. (If you really want to relive the whole saga that was 2017-18, go back and checkout the entire timeline of events. That was just my second season covering the Spurs here at PtR, and I remember being both honored and terrified that J.R. Wilco gave me that project. But his words were prophetic: he told me we‘d need it to reference back to both for ourselves and to show to doubters in the future, and I still use it plenty.)
It was clear everything evolved around what Dennis wanted, and Kawhi was just along for the ride. That continued to be the case as he allegedly demanded impermissible benefits from at least the Raptors, Lakers and Clippers during 2019 free agency. As we now know, the Clippers acquiesced, much to their own determent, and it didn’t even pay off! The Spurs’ were proven right about Kawhi’s health issues being chronic; the Clippers never reached the finals with him or desired running mate of Paul George, who they traded away future MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for. (They reportedly demanded the Spurs trade for PG as well, but they said no since they had just gotten LaMarcus Aldridge.)
Uncle Dennis is a villain who helped send the Spurs from seemingly set to keep contending after the Big 3 era to stuck in mediocrity and eventually rebuild mode. Sure, we could say, “but we wouldn’t have Wemby, Castle or Harper now,” and while likely true, the amount of luck involved especially with Wemby can’t be overlooked, and with a different bounce of the lottery balls, the Spurs could still be in purgatory. The fact is many of their sterling records were broken, such as the 50-game streak and 22 straight years in the playoffs, and their number of years outside the playoffs grew by 250%, from four to ten before they returned this year.
Now here is where the surprise comes in. Back in the Final Four, I said it was up to the voters to decide if they blamed Uncle Dennis for influencing Kawhi to make all this happen, or if Kawhi was to blame for going along with it. Based on the boos and Kawhi at least publicly being Villain #1 over the last nine seasons, I thought for sure he would win, so the fact that not only did he not make the finals surprise me, but also the finals ending up putting him in a victim role was more than a bit ironic.
But that just goes show how manipulative a human being Uncle Dennis is, and you all aren’t wrong. Whether or not the Aspiration Scandal — which had nothing to do with the Spurs — played a role in his victory here is beside the point. He ended up being a terrible role model for his nephew, who was just looking for a father figure and someone to trust after he tragically lost his own. Robertson took complete advantage, all while being so good at keeping a low profile that I had to recycle the same header photo from a few articles ago because it was one of only a handful of photos I could find of him, and this is the only one that either didn’t have text on it from a social media post or wouldn’t come out blurry on our site.
So congratulations, Uncle Dennis: you are officially the most villainous character in Spurs history, and that is saying A LOT considering some of the competition you had to compete with.
Once again, we want to thank everyone who participated! I know some see this as simply space filler for the offseason, and it would be a lie to say that isn’t at least part of it, but there is also much more to it than that. It gives us something fun to team up on after what can be a very long 9-10 months of covering the regular season, playoffs, draft, free agency and Summer League. It also allows us to let out our creative sides a bit, and it makes for some fun teamwork and conversation during the dull time of the year. A special thank you also goes to Jesus Gomez, Jacob Douglas and Bill Huan for helping with the posts; with my current (other) work schedule, I never would have gotten this done in a timely manner without them.
We’re almost there, Pounders. Media Day is next Monday!
