Does slapping and popping effect bass string performance?
Absolutely. Each time a string is pulled outward and released, it stretches and collides into the frets (i.e. string pop). This continuous impact into a fret of harder metal eventually beats the string windings to death. Thumb slaps do a similar effect but with less force than a string pop. The brilliance decay of a continuously popped string is much faster than strings that are not popped.
