San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘THE STANDARD’
On way to record, Popovich has become every NBA coach’s favorite coach
On the afternoon of March 1, 1999, Spurs players boarded a short flight bound for Houston and a future unknown.
A team with championship aspirations had begun the lockoutshortened season 6-8.
Rumors were swirling that if the Spurs didn’t pull out a victory over the Rockets the next night, their head coach — a relatively unknown 50-year-old in his second full season named Gregg Popovich — would be handed a pink slip.
Scuttlebutt was strong that management even had a replacement coach in mind: popular former player turned team broadcaster Doc Rivers.
Among those in the Spurs’ traveling party who had heard that bit of gossip: Doc Rivers.
“I thought it was awful,” recalled Rivers, now coach of the Philadelphia 76ers. “I hated it.”
At the time, nobody could have known the basketball history saved by the Spurs’ 99-82 victory in Houston.
The Spurs went on to win the NBA championship that season, the first of five Popovich would claim with Tim Duncan at his side.
The wins kept stacking up from there.
On March 11 of Popovich’s 26th season, the Spurs rallied for a 104102 victory over Utah that was the his 1,356th of his career in the regular season. That pushed Popovich past his friend and mentor Don Nelson atop the NBA’s all-time charts, rendering him the league’s all-time wins king.
“It’s just a testament to a whole lot of people,” Popovich said. “Something like this does not belong to one individual . ... It’s not mine. It’s ours, here in the city. That’s the joy of it.”
Popovich’s historic victory left Rivers, for what feels like the umpteenth time in the past two decades, celebrating the head coaching job he did not get.
“They made a pretty good decision,” Rivers said of the Spurs.
Popovich’s contributions to basketball go beyond mere numbers and records.
He is the longest-tenured active coach in North American sports. At 73, he is the oldest coach in NBA history.
Chances are, he is also your favorite
NBA coach’s favorite NBA coach.
“He’s the standard for me when it comes to coaching,” said Phoenix’s Monty Williams, a former Spurs player and staff member. “Any time somebody gives me a compliment about my coaching, I measure myself against Pop and think, ‘You guys have no idea what you’re talking about.’ ”
Popovich’s roots run deep in the NBA coaching fraternity. Seven active coaches have direct ties to Popovich, either as a player or an assistant.
Others, like Sacramento’s Alvin Gentry and New York’s Tom Thibodeau, crossed paths with Popovich before he became a head coach.
It seems most every NBA coach — even those without a pre-existing link to the Spurs — has a Pop story to tell.
A perpetual sounding board
Like many before him, Denver coach Michael Malone began his relationship with Popovich over a cellar’s worth of wine.
The two first met in Argentina in 2005 at a Basketball Without Borders camp.
Malone had just been fired in New York along with the rest of Lenny Wilkens’ staff and was looking for a new NBA gig.
“I just had a feeling about the guy,” Popovich said.
Popovich helped Malone land a job in Cleveland under another Spurs expatriate, Mike Brown. That helped put Malone on a path to earn his first head coaching job in Sacramento in 2013.
When that season began to go south, as tends to happen to most Kings coaches eventually, Malone found himself calling Popovich for advice.
“The best thing about it is, like my father, he was never going to tell me what I wanted to hear,” Malone said. “He was going to tell me the truth and what I needed to hear.”
Malone eventually landed in Denver, where he coaches a team vying for the Western Conference crown. In 2019, Malone’s Nuggets beat the Spurs in a first-round playoff series.
“He said to me one time, ‘Malone, I have no idea why I keep helping get you jobs because you’ve never helped me win a damn game,’ ” Malone said.
It turns out, Popovich had little trouble doing that on his own.
Malone does not mince words when talking about Popovich’s influence on his life and career.
“Me, my wife, my girls, we have a little shrine for Coach Popovich in the house,” Malone said.
Don’t call him Coach
Chicago’s Billy Donovan was still a college coach at Florida in 2014 when he first met Popovich. Curious to pick Popovich’s basketball brain, Donovan cold called the Spurs coach.
Popovich texted back
“He said, ‘If you want any of our stuff on defense or offense, I can send it to you,’ ” Donovan said. “That’s not really what I wanted.”
Donovan was more interested in the psychological aspects of the game. The Spurs had just come off a two-year mental carnival ride, losing the 2013 NBA Finals to Miami in a heartbreaking seven games, then rebounding to beat the Heat in five games a year later.
“I was fascinated with the mental part of that whole year,” Donovan said.
So Popovich invited Donovan to San Antonio for three days to hang out in coaches meetings, watch the Spurs practice and break bread at night. Popovich gave Donovan only one rule.
“I kept calling him Coach,” Donovan said. “He told me I wasn’t go
immediately.