DeRozan defends Popovich, Hammon

Spurs star DeMar DeRozan defended coach Gregg Popovich and assistant Becky Hammon for standing during the national anthem Friday while the rest of the team knelt to protest systemic racism.

“With Pop and Becky standing, I have no thoughts (opposing the) belief that it is all out of genuine (conviction), out of a positive side of their heart,” DeRozan said after leading the Spurs to a 129-120 win over Sacramento at the NBA bubble in Florida. “Same way we kneel. Don’t take away nothing from those guys.

“I have no (doubt in what Popovich and Hammon believe). Pop speaks out. When it comes to Becky, she has been on the front line fighting for equality since I’ve been a fan of hers playing in the WNBA. So everybody has their own right to make a statement, and you can’t vilify nobody for not doing what the other group is doing. I am all for it.”

After the game, Popovich spoke about the importance of the NBA staying focused on the Black Lives Matter movement but declined to say why he chose to stand.

“I’d prefer to keep that to myself,” he said. “Everybody has to make a personal decision. The league has been great about that.”

Popovich long has been an an outspoken critic of America’s failure to address what he calls its “original sin” of racism.

Asked last week what the social justice movement means to him, Popovich said, “It’s no different for me than it is to anybody else who cares about justice and who can be empathetic to the fact that justice has been denied to a group of people for far too long. And enough is enough. Everybody’s tired of it, especially the group that has been degraded and savaged for so long.

“People who don’t understand Black Lives Matter or are offended by it are just ignorant.”

Popovich is an Air Force Academy graduate who ended active duty in 1979 as a captain. Throughout his decades-long tenure with the Spurs, which began as an assistant coach in the late 1980s, he has stood ramrod straight during the playing of the anthem.

“Everybody has the freedom to react any way they want,” he said Friday night. “For whatever reasons I have, I reacted the way I wanted to.”