FINGER

respect a line that does not exist and never has, just so a few people can feel comfortable while they watch a relatively trivial athletic pursuit, but he reminded us again Saturday he has no interest in pretending.

“I don’t have all the answers,” Popovich said in a video conference from the Spurs’ team hotel at the NBA restart in Florida. “It’s of course frustrating, but think about how frustrating it is for black people. My frustration is totally meaningless. My frustration has to be turned into taking every opportunity that arises to call out what needs to be called out in that regard. Basically take no prisoners, so to speak.”

There will be those who insist this is neither the time nor the place, and that Popovich should stick to his own area of expertise, and that he should refrain from crossing that imaginary wall between sports and public policy.

Somehow, though, that wall does not apply to the senator who this week issued a public letter criticizing the NBA for allowing certain social statements on players’ uniforms.

Somehow, the wall does not apply to another senator who

this week criticized the WNBA’s support for Black Lives Matter.

And somehow, the wall between sports and politics does not apply to a president who, in Twitter posts this week, criticized NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag and suggested that the pro baseball team in Cleveland and the pro football team in Washington should not change their names.

Considering the track records of the Confederacy and the two franchises in question, at least there was no favoritism shown toward sides known for winning.

It’s never made any sense that the entire world can opine on Popovich or LeBron James, while Popovich and James are expected to shut up about the rest of the world. To their credit, neither man has been cowed by those who’d prefer they shut up and dribble (or whistle), and neither stuck to basketball during news conferences from Disney World on Saturday.

“It’s a seminal moment,” Popovich said, referring not to the NBA reconvening, but instead to a social justice movement and a pandemic happening at the same time. “We have an opportunity to do something transformative if we have the courage.”

Courage, of course, is not about building a “bubble” at a theme park and finishing a basketball season. The NBA is doing this not because it is noble, but because the league is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise with bills to pay. And the millionaire players who agreed to participate did so in no small part because they want their money, too.

But if they’re going to do this, defying logic and coronavirus odds in the process, how ridiculous would it be if nobody inside the bubble tried to make the whole absurd spectacle mean something more than just another set of TV ratings, just another playoff run, or just another championship?

As Popovich noted Saturday, he’s a 71-year-old man, and he asked himself, “Is this where I want to spend my time? Doing this, in these circumstances?”

Unless there’s more to the endeavor than figuring out how to get Lonnie Walker IV isolated on the wing, so the Spurs might be able to move into ninth place in the Western Conference, the whole thing is insane.

Now, this is not to say the Spurs don’t want to win, or that Popovich will not try to get them into ninth place, or higher. He said he didn’t watch one bit of film during the lockdown, but only because he was confident all of the basketball stuff can be picked up quickly again, “like riding a bicycle.”

“I didn’t see much reason to do something for no gain,” Popovich said.

And doesn’t the same theory apply to the NBA’s restart as a whole? What is the point of this if the players and coaches don’t at least try to enrich or improve something other than their own wallets?

“People will enjoy the games, the athleticism and the losses and the wins and the excitement,” Popovich said. “(But) the message the league wants to send is one of equity. No injustice for anyone. Making sure people have to think about it every day. It’s the momentum that we have to keep.”

And to keep that momentum? Popovich doesn’t need to bring politics to the sports page. He just needs us to remember it’s always been here.