Sports
San Antonio Mission
Gregg Popovich is the winningest coach in Spurs history—and the only one to have won an NBA title. This year his team is making another run at the championship. So why do so many of his critics think he's mediocre?
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Popovich’s ruling principle, that the Spurs are a “real team deal,” echoes throughout the organization. Yet to a man, his players and his staff describe Popovich as the central organizing force behind the team’s success. Some credit his personnel decisions and evenhanded treatment of all his players more than his nuts-and-bolts coaching—”His greatest strength,” says Robinson, “is bringing in complementary players”—but all attribute the team’s focus and consistency to the direct influence of Popovich and his administrative and coaching assistants, most of whom have worked with him for years. It is certainly testimony to Popovich’s ability to nurture relationships that his own college coach, Hank Egan, has been a Spurs assistant since 1994.
New team members Derek Anderson and Danny Ferry credit Popovich’s presence with having much to do with their decisions to join the Spurs. Even more important to the team’s immediate future was Tim Duncan’s decision not to leave when he became a free agent at the end of last season. Certainly the city’s recent vote to build a new arena had an effect, but Duncan says he concluded that this team remains the right place for him and that Popovich’s personality was part of that. “Pop’s a great guy,” Duncan says. “I like playing for him; I like how honest he is and how up-front he is.” Popovich says bluntly, “Tim decided based on basketball. He wanted to be in the place where he thought he had the best opportunity to be successful, basketballwise. And in the end, that’s what he made his decision on.”
Yet it’s also reasonable to conclude that “basketballwise,” Popovich has been central to the players’ general level of comfort and commitment. One recent test of the coach’s skills was Sean Elliott’s prolonged kidney illness, which required a transplant and ended with the forward’s seemingly miraculous recovery. Throughout Elliott’s convalescence, Popovich refused to speculate about the speed of his recovery or his potential return to the team, repeating simply that Elliott’s health was the only priority. Elliott says he appreciated how Popovich handled the situation, especially when the coach was criticized for being overprotective. “He was misunderstood in a way, that he was trying to keep me from playing,” Elliott says. “But he was being cautious and really trying to protect me.”
As reluctant as he can be to talk about himself, Popovich opens up quickly when he begins to talk about basketball. He comes by his professional obsession naturally. He was born in the basketball hotbed of East Chicago, Indiana. The town was home to the perennial champion East Chicago Washington High School Senators, in a state where high school basketball is as important as high school football is in Texas. “If you grew up in East Chicago and if you thought sports, you thought basketball,” Popovich says. “All I cared about, through about age eleven, was if I was going to be an East Chicago Washington Senator. I wanted to play for [legendary Washington coach] Johnny Baratto.”
To the youngster’s chagrin, his family moved to suburban Merrillville when Popovich was in the sixth grade. “I was crushed. My mom had to beat me with a broom to get me out of the house,” he says. “I remember that. I was out in the garage one night, and she came running out with a broom, just beat me over the head, kicking my butt out into the street because I would not leave, because I just wanted to go back and play ball.” Popovich never played for Baratto, but he returned for pickup games whenever he could. He became a high school star and was recruited by the Air Force Academy, where he became the leading scorer during his senior year. In 1972 he was the captain of the Armed Forces team that won the Amateur Athletic Union championship.
At his now stratospheric professional level, Popovich still obviously relishes “teaching basketball,” although he shies away from the public relations demands of a business that is simultaneously private and public. “All the hoopla and the stuff that goes with it is tiresome,” he says. “It’s something I don’t enjoy, but because it is a business, I understand it completely, and you need to embrace it.” He laughs resignedly. “I’m telling you very honestly that I don’t like all that. But you have to embrace it.”
But will he be able to embrace another championship? So far this season nearly everything is clicking. With a new arena (complete with $100,000 luxury boxes) under construction, Duncan re-signed, Robinson healthy, and Anderson and Ferry working out well, Popovich has ample reason to be happy, if not content. Young center-forward Malik Rose has developed into an impressive force, and Steve Kerr, often neglected last season, has found his way back into the rotation. Kerr was traded to the Spurs from Chicago two years ago, where he played for Phil Jackson. He says that while Jackson and his “Zen-mystical” psychologizing worked well for the often soap-operatic Bulls, Popovich and the Spurs are clearly a good, if different, fit. “Pop is just much more straightforward: What you see is what you get,” he says. “He’s not going to mess with your head; he’s not going to play mind games.” And the coach’s personality, Kerr says, is reflected throughout the franchise. “The one thing that struck me immediately here was how smoothly the whole operation ran.”
Yet as they approached the All-Star break, the Spurs clearly remained a work in progress. Comfortably dominant at the Alamodome, they were playing below .500 on the road, a mark of vulnerability come playoff time. Injuries to Avery Johnson, Elliott, and Rose were constricting the offense, and more than once Popovich blasted his squad for being soft on defense—a charge that has dogged the Spurs over the years. The low point was a 105-104 December defeat to Chicago, in which the Spurs’ lackadaisical defense handed the Bulls only their fourth victory of the year. Luckily for the Spurs, the other Western Conference favorites—the Lakers and the Portland Trail Blazers—had their own problems, and no team had pulled away from the pack. By mid-January, the Spurs were still fighting for first place in the Midwest Division with Utah, Minnesota, and (surprise!) Dallas. The Spurs remain confident they have the talent to win another championship, but all admit they still lack consistency.
That inconsistency has frustrated Popovich, but it hasn’t detracted from his love of the game. “I know this sounds corny, but there’s a certain smell to practice,” he told Johnny Ludden at midseason. “Every time you go, you feel like an eighteen-year-old kid lacing up his sneaks again. And as long as you feel like that, why would you want to stop?” I asked him if the game has changed in larger ways, if he feels he is sometimes a long way from those pickup games in Indiana. Popovich smiled wryly. “Well, I think a lot of the innocence is gone, in the sense that it has become a lot more ‘entertainment-involved.’ So I think you have to work a little harder as you get older to make sure that you remember we’re still playing basketball. I think the people who are playing it are still learning it out on the street, the way we did, and enjoying it growing up, and getting that pure joy out of it.”
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