Gregg Popovich understood the world.
That goes back long before the basketball world knew who he was. It probably can be traced to at least Popovich’s time at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he majored in Soviet studies and was on his way to becoming a spy.
He became an icon instead.
ended Friday, six months after a stroke essentially ended his tenure 鈥 in that capacity, anyway 鈥 without him knowing it. He stepped down, from acting coach to head coach, and just like that, the
Popovich isn’t going anywhere. He’s still the team president. He’ll be around. He’ll have influence. His role going forward is probably largely up to him, a right that he’s earned over the last 30 or so years. His view of the world shaped many of the things that the Spurs are today. Same goes for the rest of the league as well, and as proof, look at any roster these days.
in the game 鈥 Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Spurs’ own franchise player in Victor Wembanyama among them 鈥 were born outside the United States. Would they have been in the league without Popovich? Almost certainly, yes. But did Popovich and the Spurs help create the path that saw more international players get into the league? Most definitely.
鈥淭hey were a pioneer around the international game,鈥 NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said of the Spurs 鈥 specifically Popovich and his longtime right-hand man, team CEO R.C. Buford 鈥 earlier this year. 鈥淭hey were scouting internationally in a deep way long before many other teams.鈥
Basketball is played all over the world, and Popovich 鈥 forever the student 鈥 wanted to learn about all of it. He was finding players in Europe in the late 1980s, long before it became common. As the stories go, Popovich still can’t walk around places like Belgrade without being recognized. That’s probably not much of an exaggeration, either.
Just look at the roster of all-time Spurs greats: France鈥檚 Tony Parker and Argentina鈥檚 Manu Ginobili formed one of the league鈥檚 all-time Big Threes with Tim Duncan 鈥 another player whose view of the world was perhaps a bit different, having grown up in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Boris Diaw, Tiago Splitter, Marco Belinelli, Beno Udrih, Jakob Poeltl, Fabricio Oberto, Pau Gasol and many more were part of the Spurs program as well. Popovich had international coaches 鈥 Italy’s Ettore Messina made big headlines in Europe when he joined the Spurs, for example. And Popovich picked the brains of others when he was coaching the U.S. national team, including former French national team coach (and Wembanyama’s coach) Vincent Collet, someone he went at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
鈥淭here are smart people everywhere,鈥 Popovich once said, around the time he was taking over as the U.S. coach. 鈥淣one of us has it all figured out. Everybody brings something to the table that you might not have thought about.鈥
If anyone came close to having it all figured out, it was Popovich.
He’s a Basketball Hall of Famer. The NBA’s all-time win leader. A five-time champion with the Spurs. Coached the U.S. to Olympic gold. And that’s just the stuff everybody knows about. Ask the people who operate the San Antonio Food Bank what Popovich has quietly done for them and the answers will take a while. Same goes for the Innocence Project and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, two other causes he supports.
Popovich was more than a coach. He was a guy from Indiana who could shoot the ball well and was smart, parlayed that into an Air Force education, should have made the 1972 U.S. Olympic team as a player, took some of the disappointment from that and began learning how to coach instead, took over a Division III team in California that had lost 88 consecutive conference games and turned it into a champion, kept climbing the ladder and here we are.
The Air Force Academy 鈥 a place he would return to many times after his graduation 鈥 taught him countless lessons, including to embrace different views and to never stop evolving.
鈥淲hat you learn there is to get over yourself,鈥 Popovich said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not about you.鈥
He never stopped learning, either. He changed the Spurs. Changed the NBA, too. Forget the championships and records and one-liners and everything else. Popovich helped change the NBA.
That’s his legacy.
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