29 seasons, 5 championships, 1,422 wins – the most of all time.
Quite the legacy for San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who made made his first public comments after suffering a stroke in November yesterday. Citing his health as one factor, he said it was time to make the change.
So what’s next for Popovich and the Spurs?
Carolina Teague, who runs the Spurfect blog, joined the Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
Texas Standard: Popovich is, what, 76 years old now, and like we mentioned, he’s had some recent health issues. Before we talk about his transition from the sidelines to the Spurs front office, let’s talk about what an incredible career he’s had and his impact on professional basketball.
How would you describe it to someone who doesn’t keep up with basketball?
Carolina Teague: He is the greatest coach of all time. That is the best way I could describe to somebody who doesn’t keep up with who he is to the NBA.
When you say the greatest coach of all time, in what sense?
The greatest coach, not only when it comes to accolades, but his impact on basketball, his coaching tree. You can pick from anybody on the Rolodex, whether it be Becky Hammon or Coach [Mike Budenholzer] Bud or any other coach that he’s been able to work up from the bottom to the top.
And also his impact on the players. Yesterday, Dejounte Murray, who plays for a whole entirely different team, flew down to see him give his speech and watch Mitch Johnson be crowned as head coach.
And his impact on the media – making them stronger people, like myself. And his impacts on the fans of San Antonio and the fans of the San Antonio Spurs and the NBA as a whole.
So his impact is vast and it makes him the greatest coach of all time and he has the hardware to back it up.
He coached six Hall of Famers with the Spurs, two of whom were with him yesterday – Tim Duncan was there, Manu Ginóbili, right? It speaks a lot to his coaching style, or do you think it more speaks to him as a person and his relationship with his players?
Definitely as a person. There’s a lot of coaches who are great coaches, but they don’t have that personal relationship with the players once everybody moves on with their lives.
Yesterday, when I was at the press conference for Mitch Johnson’s introductory head coach conference, everybody was there and they made it clear it was because of family. What people didn’t see in that press conference was there was a sea of not only players, but family as well, and it really was a testament to the Spurs organization’s continuous kind of theme that they’re a family and everybody is together.
You can’t really buy that type of support. It has to come with all the amount of love and advice that you give throughout the year. So it’s definitely more of a personal thing than it could be professional in any way, in any sense of the form.
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You know, you think of the era of big money, multi-million dollar salaries, the sort of corporatization of the NBA. The Spurs sort of seemed to be a different kind of team, and maybe you touched on it when you said “family” there.
With five championships, it was like you’ve got to take these guys seriously. They were a team made up of international stars, more so than maybe any other NBA team. It was almost as if Coach Pop was looking for those bright shining lights out there and wanted to bring them to the big show, if you know what I mean.
There was something different and uniquely special about the Spurs organization under Coach Pop, don’t you think?
Absolutely. And you mentioned the corporatization of the NBA, and I really don’t feel that as I’ve been covering the Spurs for about six years. I have had the blessing of covering many teams, but the Spurs are a little bit different in that sense, because they’re built, not bought.
And you can look at it as how are they built, not bought? And, usually for their successful duration that Coach Popovich was head coach of the Spurs, they were building their team through the draft and their development in the G League. They weren’t necessarily bringing down players with big contracts.
But not only that, some of the players during the Tim Duncan era also took pay cuts in order to make that team work. And it doesn’t happen now. And we really haven’t heard it now with this current team.
But the fact of the matter is I’ve heard multiple stories about how players now, today, really want to stay with the Spurs organization and are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that they stay in San Antonio for a long time.
What’s next for Coach Pop?
He’s the head of basketball operations now, and it’s gonna be hard to stop saying “former head coach,” but we can all refer to him as “El Jefe” now.
I’m sure I’ll be seeing him around the practice facility every now and then, and I’m hoping he can make an appearance from time to time and give the media a tough time.
