It seem
s Ryan Richards is at odds with his Polish team, Asseco.
According to Polish site Sport.pl, Richards is in the outs with the team after a string of poor performances with Asseco Prokom Gdynia and mainly rides the bench. Because of this, the team is reportedly willing to look in another direction and replace Richards on the roster.
Drafted in 2010, Richards was looked to be a part of the San Antonio Spurs' future plans, even if he was seen as an extremely raw talent when the Spurs took him with the 49th overall pick.
This doesn't come as a surprise for Spurs fans as he's underachieved as shown immature behavior before. He left the Swiss Lugano Tigers team for "personal reasons" and abruptly quit the Great Britain national team to play for Jamaica instead.
With a pattern of immature and disruptive behavior while underachieving on the court with his many talents, these incidents will damage Richards' reputation if he ever wants to make it to the NBA.
The Spurs have had a history of drafting players and bringing them in or trading them when they had value (Manu Ginobili, Luis Scola, Tiago Splitter), but it seems Richards will not have the same future as those others. If Richards can't perform at a high level in overseas leagues, the Spurs and NBA teams will be weary to have him on their team against the best basketball players in the world.
Also factor in his attitude and willingness to quit teams when he's not happy, it would be unlikely an NBA coach would want him on the team to possibly cost him his job.
San Antonio has been known to mold players with bad reputations before (Glenn Robinson and most recently Stephen Jackson), but those players were at the end of their careers looking to win a ring while Richards is a young guy who doesn't seem to respect his coach, teammates, and the organization that's helping him make a living.
With those characteristics, it'd be hard to imagine Spurs coach Gregg Popovich to even think about taking an assignment of babysitting a 7 foot center while his team's core are at the end of their careers and looking to win a championship with no distractions. The Spurs took projects and chances during the early years of Tim Duncan's career because they always had a shot at winning a title with him playing as dominantly as he did. Right now, San Antonio needs a collective team to play together with no egos and no drama, exactly the opposite of what Ryan Richards is known for.
