‘Embarrassed to be an American’
Four years later, Pop’s fears about Trump are realized
“My big fear is we are Rome,” Gregg Popovich proclaimed four years and two months ago, although he’d always hoped it wouldn’t come to this.
He will outlast the reign of the man he tried to warn everyone about, but he takes no solace in that fact, or in his now-certain belief that he was right to sound the alarm.
For almost two full days this week, according to a team source, Popovich was stuck inside a Los Angeles hotel room, like every other member of the Spurs’ traveling party. He’d spent his whole career extolling the importance of fellowship
and team dinners, but in California he had to order in for every meal amid restrictions stemming from a pandemic that killed a reported 4,021 Americans on Thursday and keeps getting worse.
So with no other options, this former Air Force officer sat in front of the television, hour after hour, and on Wednesday he watched a mob of insurrectionists hoping to overturn an election storm our nation’s Capitol. They climbed the walls, broke windows, and interrupted a joint session of Congress. Officials said five people died.
Was this Rome? That might be best left to historians’ interpretation. But Popovich was sure of one thing.
“That was America,” he said Thursday. “It happened here. That’s who we are. But we don’t want to be that.”
For all of the blistering barbs and oft-quoted insults Popovich has unleashed at President Donald Trump over the past four years, his outrage always has boiled down to those last two sentences. His message, over and over again, is that the country he loves never has come to terms with its roots in slavery, and it needs to acknowledge its shortcomings to become something better.
From the beginning, his criticism of Donald Trump has cen
tered around the contention that the president is stoking racism, and he saw more evidence of it this week. Popovich said he couldn’t help but compare the police’s treatment of the Trump supporters to the handling of George Floyd protests last summer.
“I think the big picture for me was that it just laid bare the blatant, dangerous, debilitating racism that is our country’s sin and has plagued us all these years,” Popovich said, speaking on a video conference with re
porters before the Spurs’ game against the Lakers on Thursday. “There can’t be a better, obvious example of a system that is not fair as far as justice and equal rights is concerned and protection of citizens. It was just right in your face, and anybody who can ignore that is a shameful individual, in my opinion. It is hard to deny that.
“And the second take was the fact that I believe with all my heart Trump enjoyed it.”
So, about that.
Now that Popovich’s rep
utation has become inseparable from his politics, it’s easy to forget how recent that notoriety really is. Before 2016, he’d never hidden his beliefs, exactly — anyone who knew him at all was well aware of which way he leaned — but he seldom, if ever, advertised those beliefs.
In fact, if five years ago 20,000 random Spurs fans had been polled and asked to guess whether Popovich identified as a Republican or a Democrat, it’s hard to say which choice would have gotten more votes.
A gruff ex-military man, known for being a disciplinarian? People who hadn’t been hanging on his every word for 20 years might have made an erroneous assumption or two.
It wasn’t until the rise of Trump that Popovich felt compelled to speak out about a candidate — and an ideology — that he saw as both dangerous and “beyond the pale,” and once he started, he didn’t stop. Before long, few sports personalities this side of Colin Kaepernick were more synonymous with political statements than Popovich.
For some in the sports world, it might have been a bigger risk. But no coach in basketball wields more power in his organization than does Popovich, whose five championships gave him unparalleled job security and whose age and bank account gave him the freedom to walk away for good if the owners got fed up.
They didn’t. Although records show the Holt family has made significant campaign contributions to Trump, Popovich said he never heard one word from them or anyone else in the organization about toning down his criticism of the president.
In San Antonio — a purple-toblue city surrounded by a red-tovery-red state — there was plenty of backlash from fans who wanted Popovich to shut up and coach, or to leave entirely. All the while, he was endearing himself even more to another contingent of Spurs supporters, not to mention casual sports fans across the country who came to adore him mainly for his social commentary.
He made an effective Trump foil, because like the president he was a white male senior citizen who’d benefited from immense privilege. One was born into a wealthy family and the other lucked into Tim Duncan, but only the latter seemed to recognize his good fortune.
Over time, Popovich’s venom spread from the president to those who the coach blamed for enabling him and for “throw(ing) fuel onto Trump’s fire.” Thursday night, he sounded not angry, so much, but profoundly disappointed.
Four years and two months ago, Popovich told the world exactly what he feared.
He can’t help wondering now if he really outlasted it.