On March 8, Beijing time, the San Antonio Spurs defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 117-110 at home, thus ending a 4-game losing streak. After this game, Spurs coach Greg Popovich equaled Hall of Fame coach Don Nelson (1335 games) in wins, and the two tied for the first in NBA regular season wins in history.
From 1996 to 2022, 25 years, a quarter of a century, how did Popovich rise from a nobody to a monument in the basketball world?
On the second week of December 1996, a piece of news fell from the sky. The San Antonio Spurs head coach, a talkative, humorous and well-dressed coach, Bob Hill, was fired by the team's general manager, and he himself became the team's new coach. The response from most members of the NBA community outside of Texas, really, was fairly consistent, including mine.
"Who is TMD Greg Popovich?"
At the time, he was a guy Larry Brown brought in when he became Spurs head coach in 1988. Prior to that, Popovich had had a successful eight-season coaching at Pomona-Pitzer College in California's third-tier league, including a season as a volunteer assistant coach at Brown University in Kansas.
As a player, Popovich was heartbroken for not being selected for the U.S. Olympic team in 1972. At that year's Munich Olympics, the Soviet team defeated the United States in a controversial way. After joining the NBA, Popovich spent four seasons at St. Anthony before moving to the Golden State Warriors, where he spent two years as an assistant coach to Don Nelson before returning to the Spurs in 1994 to take on the position of general manager and vice president of basketball operations.
Hill only started with a 3-15 run after David Robinson suffered a back injury, but when Popovich took Hill's place, even his players didn't know what was going on.
Robinson told reporters that day: "I think if we have some difficulties, we should try to persevere and stick together, but there are a lot of things involved here, things that the fans don't know, maybe even I don't know." ...... Bob and I never had any problems. I love his love of victory. He does things meticulously. His job is well done. ”
Subsequently, Robinson also injured his foot, playing only 6 games that season. Without the future Hall of Fame center, Popovich's first season in charge was just 17 wins and 47 losses.
Greg Popovich, at the time, wasn't always Greg Popovich. He's not one of the 15 greatest coaches in NBA history. He wasn't always a favourite at Springfield, nor was he always the gold-medal head coach of the U.S. men's men's Olympic team. He wasn't always on the verge of breaking the league's all-time record of 1,335 coaching wins set by Nelson Sr. Popovich could probably tie the record at home against the Sacramento Kings and then break the record against the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday (not really, until yesterday against Lakers Popovich). He wasn't always the one who threw a tantrum at a sideline reporter during a nationwide live game, and he didn't always protest with a way that was enough to get himself out of coaching and being banished halfway through the game.
On the other hand, however, he was always Popovich: intellectually curious, empathetic, world-class wine lover (the term "sommelier" seems a bit pretentious, right?). ), erupting volcanic fury (at the Spurs, they call them "Serbs") and politically radical. Not only that, but as someone who has been deceived and offended, he is willing to talk openly about everyone's rights. It's an affirmation of the background in which he grew up, growing up in a multicultural community in East Chicago, Indiana, and then attending the Air Force Academy. He was a man who thought he understood everything, but he was also a man who could quickly make himself a joke.
He was the origin of the "coach tree," with two head coaches from last year's NBA Finals — Mike Budenholzer of the Milwaukee Bucks and Monty Williams of the Phoenix Suns, along with Golden State Warriors' Steve Kerr. There's also The Boston Celtics' Imme Udeka and Charlotte Hornets' James Borrego, former head coaches Mike Brown, Brett Brown and Jacques Vaughan. Danny Ferry, after playing for Popovich and working for Spurs management, built the Hawks into a 60-win team as president of the Atlanta Hawks. After gaining experience at the San Antonio workshop, Sam Presti created a monster at the Oklahoma Thunder (Presti was assistant to the Spurs' general manager and became general manager of the Seattle Supersonics in 2007). R.C Buford and Popovich have worked side by side to shape the Spurs' peak form in 20 years.
Popovich has been adapting and changing. The team that won San Antonio for the first time was a defensive behemoth, with everything coming together with Robinson and Tim Duncan, who were just as quick to get everything paid off. The next version was to use Duncan at halftime to handle everything. The next version relied on the offensive flair of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to embrace three-pointers. Although Popovich personally hated relying on three-pointers, he made bruce Bowen and others run near the bottom corner to pose a threat. Then, a championship team with Cowai Leonard at its core was born.
All along, Popovich has used his proverb, that is, to defeat himself.
"I think Bobo is a good proof that he always knows what the trend is." Avery Johnson said. He was Popovich's Spurs point guard when he first won the title in 1999 and came to San Antonio from golden state at the invitation of his coach.
"In the early days, the trend was discipline, defensiveness, responsibility." Johnson added, "It doesn't have as many passing balls. Basically, it's about doing what we're going to do to it well. Start by developing habits and defending. First, it's harder to train star players than they want to coach. Then, it becomes a little more creative in the offense. I'll be more flexible in principle, more flexible in terms of culture and communication. Maybe the way I communicated in 1999 was different from the way I communicated in 2001, 2011, and 2020, it's just evolving, but still having the same core values. ”
Popovich, 73, is still evolving. Before the start of last Thursday's game, the Spurs had a record of 24 wins and 38 losses, two games away from the Western Conference playoffs. They have an exciting young All-Star in charge of De chantai Murray, several qualified role players (such as Jacob Pelter and Kelden Johnson) and they expect rookie Josh Primo to be another piece of jade, and Popovich is as demanding of them as ever.
"Bobo doesn't fight like that," Murray said, "he hits something meaningful, the pattern is bigger, and everything he yells at, or everything he usually tells you, makes sense." ”
But first, look back.
Back in time for the first championship, the first year at the Spurs. In NBA legends, the Spurs have only a few tactics: It seems that there are only 5 or 7? Popovich simply instilled these things into the minds and bodies of the players, over and over again, through numbing repetitions until they could also execute tactics in their sleep.
"People always like to exaggerate," Avery Johnson said, "and I don't know if there are only 5 tactics." It feels like Bobo coaches the national team the same way as the Spurs. His tactic at the time was to give the ball to Kevin Durant and just wait for the show. What our previous tactic was, it was to give the ball to Tim Duncan and then the rest of us followed, and I do remember there was a tactic called 'four downs', which was that we desperately needed to score, or when other people were not playing well on the court, the ball would be given to Duncan, and that was our 'four down' tactic. ”
Back in 2003, Duncan, who won the regular season MVP for two consecutive years, was about to enter the free agency again, as he did in 2000, when he left Orlando 11 hours before the final decision, forcing up the chance to team up with Maddie and Grant Hill, opting instead to stay with the Spurs and Popovich. So if given another chance to coach Duncan, who has successfully entered the Hall of Fame, Popovich will surely have more respect for his superstar, imploring him not to test the free agent market.
"What I said to him that year was, 'I know you're MVP, but I'm not impressed.'" Popovich recalled.
Popovich never shied away from challenging Duncan, nor did he give him face, still scolding him in video lessons, and asking more and more, but Duncan accepted, year after year. That's what the Spurs live on, the alchemy between the coach and the players, the tacit understanding of each other. It was also how Cardinal Auerbach and Bill Russell solved the problem, thus building the backbone of the Celtic dynasty; how Pat Riley ruthlessly steered the Magic-led Lakers in the '80s; and how Phil Jackson confronted Michael Jordan in the bulls' head coach position, forcing him to reluctantly accept the triangular tactics, ultimately creating an invincible Bulls dynasty.
But even if a coach handles this relationship well, there are many kinds of relationships that are difficult to maintain. That's where Popovich excels. He revisited Jackson at a time when Stephen Jackson was already infamous, and the rejuvenated "Captain Jack" helped the Spurs beat the Nets in the 2003 Finals to win the championship. He allowed Gino Belgium to play out-of-control matches from time to time because he knew Ginobili would make up for it with five or six amazing plays after a bad performance. He also persuaded Ginobili to become the sixth man, and Ginobili could clearly start more than 20 teams, cutting down more gorgeous statistics.
"I persuaded a Hall of Fame player to go to the bench and he didn't apply for a trade because of it, he just said, 'Okay.'" Popovich recalled years later.
He gave the team control to 19-year-old Tony Parker, allowing him to play in mistake. At the start of the 2015-16 season, he brought in Olympian John Carlos, who was attacked by American sprinter Tommy Smith for wearing gloves to protest racism at the 1968 Mexican Olympics, and Popovich invited him to speak at the Spurs; he had told players before the 2014 Spurs and Heat Finals that June 3 was Mabo Day, a day in honor of Eddie Mabo, a native of the Torres Strait. For The Australian Aboriginal people to fight for the qualification of passing on the land to future generations, Eddie Mabo, the great-uncle of former Spurs guard Patti Mills.
Popovich, who started that season by having his team revisit the 2013 matchup with the Heat in Game 6 of the Finals during training camp, didn't run away from that devastating defeat but put the players up against it, which was perhaps his best coaching job.
Well, let's count on the next 10 days or so – from the 10 days or so from Mabo Day to the 2014 Finals.
In the AT&T center, the nearest corridor of the Spurs locker room smelled of champagne, the floor was damp, the wreckage of the Spurs' fifth championship, and they played a five-game ravaging of miami's super brotherhood, which was a real revenge, Mills frantically shooting three-point shots on the head of the helpless Heat, Ginobili dreaming back to the top, leonard playing a dominant performance and stepping into the ranks of superstars.
A few minutes after lifting the O'Brien Gold Cup, victorious head coach Popovich came.
"He said to me, 'Hey, if you want to, we'll get together in a minute.'" ”
By this time the Spurs had become an NBA champion, a team that had been together for decades — including Duncan. Inviting an outsider to a team celebration dinner and party doesn't do him much good, and certainly not good for his players or staff and the coaching staff, and no one needs to see my face because they have to vent their pressure and anger for a whole year. However, in his moment of triumph, he had a man who everyone thought Popovich least liked to attend— rather, this person represented the highest level of offense and questioning of Popovich's greatest love.
After an entire generation didn't know who Popovich was, most people in the NBA came to know this Popovich: someone who was comfortable with the color of his skin and life, someone who was willing to share it with others. If they won't tell you this story, maybe you'll never believe it.