A statistical ode to Pop
With a huge assist from my colleagues at Basketball Reference, here is a by-the-numbers look at the remarkable 29 seasons that Gregg Popovich spent on the San Antonio bench
Regular readers know by now that we love to assemble our weekly Numbers Game compilations filled with statistical goodness to anchor the Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza.
Yet we obviously needed to do something truly special, detailed and separate to properly reflect on Gregg Popovich's nearly 30 seasons on the bench as coach of the San Antonio Spurs.
Part 1 of that effort was Saturday's reaction column on the morning after it was announced that Pop was indeed leaving the bench for a strictly front office role for the first time since the mid-1990s:
Pop
If any coach in modern NBA history appeared destined to walk away from the bench in precisely the manner he wanted to, it figured to be Gregg Popovich.
Part 2 is a comprehensive statistical ode to Pop's coaching career that could only be compiled in conjunction with my ever-reliable colleagues at Basketball Reference.
I asked them to hit me with as many data-based illustrations of Pop's impact, influence and success that they could muster. Not surprisingly they sent me more than I even expected.
The standout stuff from their tremendous research:
🏀 .617
The Spurs' regular season winning percentage during Pop's 29-season run as head coach, if we include the entire 1996-97 season, was .617.
🏀 50
The next most successful NBA franchise in that span sits 50 percentage points behind the Spurs: Miami at .567.
🏀 6
Pop won more games in his career — good for an NBA-record 1,422 — than six other NBA franchises have won in their histories: Orlando, Minnesota, Charlotte, Toronto, Memphis and New Orleans.
🏀 5
Pop is one of only five NBA coaches to win at least five championships.
🏀 4
The other four are Phil Jackson (11), Red Auerbach (nine), John Kundla (five) and Pat Riley (five) …
🏀 4
… with one of Pop's favorite former players, Golden State's Steve Kerr, sitting just one title away from joining the club.
🏀 5-1
Pop made six trips to the NBA Finals and failed to win it all only once when the Spurs, holding a 3-2 lead and nearing a clinching Game 6 win on the road, wound up losing the 2013 Finals in seven games to the LeBron James-led Heatles.
🏀 8
Pop ranks as one of only eight figures in NBA history to win a championship as both a coach and an executive.
🏀 1
Miami's Riley is the league's only other active member of the same club.
🏀 4
Pop is one of just three NBA coaches to win Coach of the Year three times and the list grows to four if Larry Brown's three COYs in the ABA are factored in. Brown and Don Nelson, of course, are two of Pop's closest friends in the game and both rank as former bosses he coached under as an assistant.
🏀 20
In his most successful Spurs stretch, Popovich recorded a winning percentage of at least .600 in 20 consecutive seasons.
🏀 16
That streak, remarkably, is longer than all but 16 other coaches' entire NBA careers.
🏀 2
Only two coaches in NBA history have won a championship in three different decades: Pop and Phil Jackson.
🏀 22
Pop's 22 winning seasons are tied for second all-time with Jerry Sloan, whose Utah teams were regarded by Spurs officials as the original model for their small-market organization. Larry Brown — who brought Popovich to the NBA in 1988 as an assistant coach after they became friends while Pop spent time studying under Brown at Kansas while on sabbatical from Division III Pomona-Pitzer in 1986-87 — has the most winning seasons with 24 with his ABA time included.
🏀 19
Pop posted a league-record 19 seasons with at least 50 wins.
🏀 6
He also had six 60-win seasons ... trailing only Jackson and Riley and their seven each.
🏀 5
Using the Win Shares metric, Manu Ginobili is the fifth most valuable player in league history who was selected in the second round of the NBA Draft or later. The future Hall of Famer was selected by the Spurs with the 57th overall pick in 1999. (PS — Have to say that this whole list, predictably topped by Denver's Nikola Jokic as the 41st overall pick in 2014, had me captivated and will be something we come back to for sure.)
🏀 28
Using the same Win Shares metric, Tony Parker is the third most valuable player in league history selected at No. 28 or later in the NBA draft ... with Ginoblli not far away in sixth place. Parker was drafted No. 28 overall by the Spurs in 2001; he is also a Hall of Famer like fellow Popovich-era stalwarts David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Ginobili and Pop himself.
🏀 303
This one actually comes from my pal Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press ... but it had to be included just in case you missed Reynolds' thought-provoking tweet last Friday: The NBA's other 29 teams have made 303 coaching changes after Pop took over as Spurs head coach on Dec. 10, 1996.
🏀 32-45
Just a reminder: Mitch Johnson went 32-45 last season as San Antonio's interim coach after Popovich suffered a stroke last Nov. 2 ... but those wins and losses, according to NBA bookkeeping rules, went onto Pop's ledger.
🏀 1,422-869
With last season's record factored in, Pop finished his NBA coaching career at 1,422-869.
🏀 170
He also won 170 playoff games to rank third all-time and thus boasts a combined total of 1,592 career victories.
🏀 229
Phil Jackson tops the playoff wins list at 229, with Pat Riley narrowly ahead of Popovich (171).
🏀 108.7
The Spurs' offensive rating of 108.7 points per 100 possessions across Pop's 29 seasons is good for seventh in the NBA in that span. San Antonio led the league once in that category under Popovich (2011-12).
🏀 104.8
The Spurs' defensive rating of 104.8 points allowed per 100 possessions during Pop's 29 seasons is, to no one's surprise, No. 1 in the NBA in that span.
🏀 7
San Antonio led the NBA in defensive rating a whopping seven times under Popovich: 1998-99, 2000-01, 2003-04, 2004-05, 2005-06, 2015-16 and 2016-17.
🏀 2021
Popovich won an Olympic gold medal as head coach Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics contested in 2021 after previously knowing only disappointment in his USA Basketball career. The Americans finished a humbling seventh under Popovich at the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China ... after a bronze medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004 when he served as an assistant under Larry Brown ... after a sixth-place finish in 2002 at the Worlds in Indianapolis when Popovich was an assistant to George Karl ... after he was a late cut as a player in tryouts for the 1972 Olympic team representing the U.S. Air Force Academy.
🏀 76-129
Popovich was 43 games under .500 in his previous head coaching stint before taking over for Bob Hill in San Antonio, going just 76-129 at Division III Pomona-Pitzer for a winning percentage of .371.
🏀 68
The Sagehens, however, did win their first conference championship in 68 years under Popovich and earned their first Division III tournament berth during his eight-season stint as Pomona-Pitzer's coach.
It's an amazing career by the very definition of that word. And speaking of Tony Parker, did you know he should have been an Atlanta Hawk in that 2001 Draft? I wrote a couple of stories about how that was one of Pete Babcock's top regrets in his career as Hawks GM.
Had to basketball reference John Kundla!