Pop
He became so synonymous with the San Antonio Spurs that, like a Brazilian soccer star, one name is all you need when we talk about the legend who is finally leaving the Spurs' bench
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.
For nearly three decades, Pop seemingly controlled everything in the Alamo City. He joysticked the entire operation with a firmer grip on the franchise than any coach in the sport's history not named Red Auerbach.
Then a stroke last November robbed Pop of his 29th consecutive season as the San Antonio Spurs' head coach and ultimately convinced him that there was no way he could return for No. 30. Only then was the oldest coach #thisleague has ever seen, at age 76, forced to concede that not even he had the latitude or wherewithal to orchestrate a perfectly choreographed signoff to his X-and-O life.
Throughout his remarkable career, mind you, Popovich constantly called them "Os and Xs” … as the video below illustrates. Who was going to correct him or make him conform to everyone else's coachspeak?
Right. No one.
Before the highly unpopular decision to fire Bob Hill and install himself as San Antonio's coach in November 1996, Popovich was last in charge of a team at Pomona-Pitzer. Forget about how far removed from the NBA that was; Pop's school sat a mere 20 miles away from my beloved Cal State Fullerton and was invisible in our basketball shadow.
Yet for as long as I've had access to the Spurs' orbit, pretty much every major Spurs stakeholder ceded the lane to the screamer who loved to tell us that he was just a Division III coach at heart. From David Robinson to Tim Duncan to Victor Wembanyama …. from Manu Ginobili to Tony Parker … from Peter Holt to Peter J. Holt … from R.C. Buford to everyone in between with the solitary exception of Kawhi Leonard … somehow they would all be convinced (Kawhi aside) that Pop's way was almost always the best, wisest course.
His friend and mentor Larry Brown brought him to the Spurs for the first time in 1988. Apart from two seasons on Don Nelson's staff in Golden State, Popovich has been a Spur ever since. And a small-market team, under Pop's orchestration, gradually became NBA giants. A model franchise.
The safe presumption is that this organization will continue to operate in a similar manner now even as Popovich shifts to an Auerbach-like Patriarch of the Spurs role — with Mitch Johnson installed as his full-time successor after years of speculation and wonderment about who could possibly take over for a coaching institution.
Unlike Duncan's retirement in July 2016, which was announced in Typical Timmy fashion via press release that contained nary a word from Duncan himself, Popovich's exit Friday was, in truth, not terribly surprising. There had been rumblings in coaching circles for the past week that the ongoing uncertainty about a firm timetable for his return, coupled with a recent fainting episode at a local restaurant that led to ambulance intervention, had nudged Pop to the point that he realized he had little choice but to step aside and hand the team to Johnson after the assistant coach half his age did the job for 76 games this season.
The silver lining for the silver and black — if such a description can be printed on this somber occasion — is the state of the franchise as Popovich returns to strictly front office duty for the first time since the mid-1990s. I've written numerous times in recent years that the Spurs had to be watching their soccer counterparts from across the pond with dread as Manchester United cycled through manager after manager after the Pop of world football, Sir Alex Ferguson, stepped down following the 2012-13 season. Ruben Amorim is already Unifed's sixth full-time boss (and 10th overall counting interims and caretakers) in the decade-plus since Sir Alex walked away, but any such fretting in San Antonio about avoiding the same fate with its Popovich succession plan has begun to fade for some very valid reasons.
For starters: Wemby's arrival.
Also: They traded for De'Aaron Fox halfway through Wemby's second season.
And: They have a roster and a deep cache of draft assets that position the Spurs to be a factor in the trade chase for Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant or any other headliner they wish to pursue.
They are set up incredibly well to be good post-Pop and likewise still have Buford, his trusty co-pilot and team-building savant the whole time, in the promient position of Spurs CEO. So it's a good time to leave the bench grind and see how Johnson fares … even if the circumstances that led to the decision are rife with sadness for the countless Pop devotees leaguewide who were hoping he could make it back.
Not that Popovich is bound to be seeking any sympathy. The unconformtable exchanges with sideline reporters and post-game press conference eruptions are surely what you’ll remember, but his humility and self-awareness were plenty loud, too. I certainly can't forget the speech that the NBA's foremost wine conoisseur uncorked in Dallas late the 2022-23 season … roughly a month before the Spurs won the Wemby draft lottery that May.
The Spurs, he said then, "deserve no more luck ever again in the history of NBA basketball" after winning past lotteries that enabled them to draft Robinson in 1987 and Duncan a decade later.
He said "we" that night but I think he really meant "me."
"I just know that I've been the beneficiary of serendipity to a max degree," Popovich said in the above YouTube clip … which I urge you to watch in full for a 15-plus minutes glimpse of Pop's many sides.
"That goes from ownership on down,” he continued. "I'm not sure anybody had it better than I had it all those respects."
It's true.
Late in the game for him, after those five title runs with the Spurs and even before the Blessing of Wemby, Pop reconciled with USA Basketball and buried longstanding tensions with USAB chairman Jerry Colangelo to finally land his dream job. And then, after a nightmarish seventh-place finish at the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China when he was placed in charge of Team USA at last, Popovich found redemption (and his long-awaited gold medal validation) when the Americans rebounded to win the Tokyo Olympics that were contested in 2021.
He might not be the greatest coach of all-time on your scorecard ahead of Auerbach or Phil Jackson and, in recent years, was routinely greeted with far-less-than-unanimous approval on the many occasions he spoke out politically … especially in Texas. Yet Pop actually has lots in common with a certain LeBron James.
Which is to say that no one has done his work on hardwood better — for longer — than Gregg Charles Popovich … whether or not he ranks as your unquestioned GOAT.
I moved to Texas less than six months after he took over for Hill and have always considered the opportunity to cover the Popovich-helmed Spurs from close range to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. I had an up-close seat for all five championships, plus all the disappointments mixed in among them and a legit rivalry for the ages: Duncan-led San Antonio vs. Dirk Nowitzki's Dallas Mavericks.
There were whispers along the way, true or exaggerated, that the Spurs — at Pop's behest and in a nod to his reputed interest in pursuing a CIA career while enrolled at the U.S Air Force Academy — would bring in tutors from the world of espionage to teach San Antonio's front office operatives best practices for gathering NBA intel without giving any up. There were much stronger rumbles that the Spurs, when the Mavericks were in their building, occasionally taped and studied Nowitzki's pregame shooting sessions with his longtime German shot-doctor Holger Geschwindner in hopes of unearthing secrets from another continent. Anything for an edge.
All that said …
The reverence that so many of the combatants have for each other now, all these years later, tells you what kind of battles they were. Duncan and Nowitzki. Nowitzki and Popovich. It was largely the same after so many clashes between the Pop-and-Duncan Spurs and the Shaq-and-Kobe Lakers … after Pop, in the heat of battle, once likened O’Neal's 2004 departure from the purple and gold to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Today? Respect overflows.
"I love Pop," longtime Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban told me. "He's always done it his way.
"But it's standing up for what he believes that's been the most impressive."
If there were limits on imposing his will at the end … so be it.
Pop's impact and influence on the game is going to prove eternal even if the most serendipitous of coaching careers could not be.
This hit me hard, Marc — the “one name is all you need” line was perfect. Pop really does belong in that rare category. Been following your work forever, and this one really landed.
I’ve been a Spurs fan since I got to San Antonio in ’95, and reading your piece brought back a flood of memories. It actually pushed me to finally launch my own Substack, and I couldn’t think of a better way to start than by writing about Pop — what he meant to the team, the city, and to fans like me.
If anyone here’s interested in a fan’s lens on it all:
🪑 Part 1 – The Era Begins (firing Bob Hill, the Duncan “tank,” Avery’s jumper):
👉 https://tinyurl.com/Pop-era-Begins
🌳 Part 2 – Pop Built It All (culture, coaching tree, legacy beyond the rings):
👉 https://tinyurl.com/Pop-Built-it-All
Appreciate you always, and thanks for giving the green light to share.
— Xavier (@thexreport)
As a Pomona alum, I had a soft spot for Pop even before he established himself as the greatest coach of his generation in the NBA. He had left before I matriculated, but I learned about him writing a story for my school paper on Coach Kasiafiacas (Coach Kat), Popovich's replacement who was coming off only the 2nd SCIAC championship in Pomona-Pitzer history (the first having been under Pop).
Coach Kat talked about how he learned a lot for Pop, who at the time was working under Larry Brown as an assistant for the Spurs. I remember a few years later hearing form Mike Budenholzer (who was at Pomona the same time I was) about how Popovich was joining my favorite team (Golden State) as an assistant. So even though I never got to meet him (he did briefly visit the campus to give a talk to the team, but I only heard about it later), the fact that he was the coach at my alma mater and then an assistant for my hometown team, cemented me as a fan.
And while my Warriors scuffled over most of the next 15+ years after Pop took over the Spurs, I was a not so closeted fan of the Spurs not just because of the serendipitous connections I had to him, but because they were the team that was often challenging the Lakers for dominance in the aughts (and as a NorCal resident, liking the enemy of our 'enemies' in SoCal came naturally).
Sad to see him have to step away in a way I'm sure was not how he'd have preferred, but he deserves all the flowers he will undoubtedly get for a tremendous career. Respect