Spurs coach deflects notion of his brilliance
Popovich would rather talk about Dean Smith
Gregg Popovich spends a great deal of time trying to convince the world that he rarely thinks, and does nothing. Before his San Antonio Spurs played the Toronto Raptors on Sunday, he blew off the notion that sitting on the precipice of 1,000 career regular-season wins, a mark only eight other coaches have reached.
“Pffft. Give me a break,” Popovich scoffed before his team lost 87-82 to the Raptors.
He does not spend time watching film on other teams, he says, because the Spurs make too many mistakes to allow him to focus on his opponents. And when his own players get better, he wants you to know that he has nothing to do with it.
“The individual is the one that has to put in the work, has to understand the vision, has to believe how good he can be and make it happen,” Popovich said, speaking of Canadian Cory Joseph, a Spurs reserve, in this case. “Coaches can talk all they want, show film and do drills. Players have to do it.”
This, of course, is a quintessential half-truth. The Spurs continuously find excellent role players, and draft exceptionally well despite their continued success that sticks them at the bottom of the draft. This is not out of pure luck. No, the Spurs’ structure is so sound that a player’s job immediately becomes immaculately defined. Popovich might deflect to owner Peter Holt or general manager R.C. Buford, but the coach, along with Tim Duncan, is most responsible for building that structure.
“He’s the brains behind it,” Joseph said. “Obviously, we’ve got to go out and perform, but he puts us in the best situation every night to succeed.”
Popovich donned his typical grumpy persona for the game, despite — or perhaps because of — sitting at 999 wins as a coach. The only time he really felt like expanding on anything was when he discussed the death of North Carolina coaching legend, Dean Smith. Popovich attended and coached at the Air Force Academy, where Smith also served as an assistant.
“His passing is a loss for a lot of people,” Popovich said. “He did a lot of things off the court that are even more important than what he did on the basketball court that probably nobody will know about. He was an iconic figure in the game. He was a wonderful human being to a lot of people.”
All of that made Sunday a perfectly good day to ask a timeless question: What do we want from our coaches? Like so many college coaches, Smith was known for a rigid on-court system and a strict moral code. Within basketball circles, more people will remember Smith’s graduation rate, or his emphasis on character, than his “four corners” offence.
Meanwhile, in the second half of his career, Popovich has become known for the Spurs particular brand of offence, an attack that killed off The Big Three Heat and exposed the Raptors in the second quarter. It was not always like that, though.
“He’s evolved as far as the game has evolved,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “He really became more of an uptempo coach, open up the floor, shooting the three versus getting inside to Tim or to David [Robinson] and the style of play that he used to run and was very successful with at that time. He’s very innovative.
“He’s done a good job of adapting to that change of the game. It’s difficult to do.”
One of the criticisms of Casey is that he does not share that flexibility. Throughout his Raptors tenure, he been loath to let his teams push the pace, and hesitant to allow young players to play through their mistakes. Recently, he has neglected to use James Johnson as much as some fans and outside observers would prefer. On that front, he relented against the Spurs, with Johnson starting at small forward, and Greivis Vasquez sliding to the bench.
With Casey, the reasoning regarding Johnson was never personal; it was in deference to his defensive system. For all Johnson’s attributes, he gets lost in pick-and-roll coverage frequently, negating some of his value as a oneon-one defender and off-ball cutter. Perhaps Casey should be more accepting of Johnson’s flaws, considering what he brings to the floor — and it appears that he is on his way there — but asking that of Casey is essentially asking him to change his belief system.
“I spend most of my time trying to figure out what we need to do,” Popovich said. “Once you get on the court, it’s all the same. It’s basketball. There is no new pickand-roll defence. There is no new post defence. There are no magic plays. The guys that compete and execute the best for the longest period of time win the ball game.”
To sum up: We want coaches to have a deeply held sense of right or wrong, but we also want them to placate transcendent talent, no matter the behaviour. We want them to have an intricate system that for on-court style, but we want them to bend that system to their players. No wonder Popovich does not want to get into his basketball philosophy: expanding on it does not really seem like a winning proposition.