President Popovich
Columnist Nancy Armour says the Spurs head coach is uniquely qualified for the job,
The election is over, and we are as bitterly divided as ever.
Well, I have a solution: Gregg Popovich.
Hear me out. The San Antonio Spurs coach has been as eloquent as he has been outspoken in his disgust with the election, its results and Donald Trump’s first moves as president-elect. That alone will endear him to half the country.
“It’s still a disorienting situation when you thought you lived in a certain kind of country with certain values that were held in esteem and find out those values aren’t very important to half the country,” Popovich said this week when asked if his views had softened since his post-election rant.
But look closer at Popovich’s background, as well as what he has said and done throughout his career, and you’ll find someone who appeals to everyone. Yes, even Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors fans.
The country has made it clear it’s fed up with the establishment, and Popovich is about as much of an outsider as you can find. He has spent the majority of his career in San Antonio, a small-market city that will never have the cachet or influence of a New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. While Phil Jackson and Pat Riley were as much celebrities as they were coaches, being one of the NBA’s poster boys holds as much appeal for Popovich as a halftime interview.
An Air Force graduate, he has military experience. He knows diplomacy, too, having juggled lineups of NBA players and their egos for 20 years now. What? You think it was easy keeping Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili happy?
Speaking of that, international relations will be a breeze after coaching the Spurs. Popovich’s rosters usually rival the United Nations for diversity, with players from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, France, Italy, Slovenia and Turkey playing alongside guys from New Mexico and New Hampshire.
And while he has ties to Russia, they’re not the scary kind.
Popovich’s undergraduate degree was in Soviet Studies, and his active duty tours took him to Russia. Should Vladimir Putin and the Wikileaks folks decide to continue messing with our political institutions, they’ll have met their match. Popovich was trained in intelligence gath- ering, and he once considered a career with the CIA.
You might wonder what a “lowly basketball coach” — his words — might know about the plight of middle-class Americans, but Popovich has felt its pain. The Rust Belt isn’t just a swath of key states to him, it’s home. His hometown, East Chicago, Ind., was built by the steel industry, and the city was left reeling as mills closed and manufacturing jobs disappeared.
He knows how to work a budget, too. He hasn’t had a choice given the NBA’s salary cap.
He’s not a misogynist — sad that that’s now a character trait worth mentioning, but here we are — having hired the first fulltime female assistant coach in any of the major sports. And he has proved he can get along with all types of personalities and people. Except maybe Dennis Rodman, though that actually counts in Pop’s favor.
But, most important, Popovich knows how to win. Not in that Electoral College or half-the-people-who-voted way. I mean really, really win. The Spurs have won five NBA titles since 1999 and reached the Western Conference finals four other times.
Sure, it helps when you’ve had Hall of Famers such as Duncan, Parker and David Robinson on your roster. But that’s more than the three titles the Lakers managed while Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were together.
Popovich would surely hate being president, which is yet one more reason for the country to get behind him. There was no shortage of people who wanted the job this time around, and we still spent the last six months asking how we ended up with the candidates we did.
But the ultimate selling point for Popovich is that we’d be able to say President Pop. It’s impossible to say it without smiling or laughing, and God knows we all could use that right about now.