Popovich changed the Spurs and NBA | The Arkansa's democrat gazette

Gregg Popovich understood the world.

That goes back for a long time before the basketball world knew who he was. It can probably be attributed to Popovich's time at the US Air Force Academy, where he studied Soviet studies and was on the way to becoming a spy.

Instead, he became an icon.

Popovich's time as a coach of the San Antonio Spurs ended on Friday, six months after a stroke, without ending it in this capacity without knowing it. He stepped back, Mitch Johnson was promoted by the incumbent coach to head coach, and that's exactly how the Spurs started a new chapter.

Popovich does not go anywhere. He is still the team president. He will be nearby. It will influence. His future role is probably largely due to him, a right that he has earned in the past 30 years. His view of the world has shaped many of the things that are the Spurs today. The same applies to the rest of the league and look at every list these days.

Some of the best players in the game Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Spurs' own franchise player in Victor Wembanyama born outside of the USA. Would you have been in the league without a popovich? Almost certainly, yes. But have Popovich and the Spurs contribute to creating the way where more international players get into the league? In any case.

“You were a pioneer in international game,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver about the trace especially Popovich and his long-time right man, Team CEO RC Bufford-start of this year. “They searched internationally in a deep way, long in front of many other teams.”

Basketball is played all over the world, and Popovich – forever the student – wanted to learn everything more than anything. He found players in Europe in the late 1980s, long before it came together. In the course of the stories, Popovich still cannot walk through places like Belgrade without being recognized. This is probably not an exaggeration either.

Just take a look at the list of sizes of all time: France's Tony Parker and Argentina's Manu Ginobili formed with Tim Duncan one of the great threesome of the league-one of other players, whose view of the world may have been a little different and grew up on the American maiden islands.

Boris Diaw, Tiago Splitter, Marco Belinelli, Beno Udrih, Jakob Poeltl, Fabricio Oberto, Pau Gasol and many more were also part of the Spurs program. Popovich had international coaches – Italy's Ettore Messina made big headlines in Europe when, for example, he came to the Spurs. And Popovich chose the brain of others when he trained the US national team, including the former coach of the French national team (and Wembanyamas trainer) Vincent Collet, with whom he met in 2021 at the Tokyo games at the Tokyo games against Olympic Gold.

“There are smart people everywhere,” said Popovich once when he took over as a US coach. “None of us found everything. Everyone brings something to the table that they may not have thought about.”

If someone came to find out everything, it was Popovich.

He is a Famer basketball hall. The NBA winner of all time. A five -time champion with the Spurs. The United States trained after Olympic gold. And that's just the stuff that everyone knows about. Ask the people who run the San Antonio Food Bank, which Popovich has done quietly for you, and the answers will take a while. The same applies to the Innocence Project and the St. Jude's Children's Hospital, two other causes that he supports.

Popovich was more than a trainer. He was a guy from Indiana who was able to shoot the ball and was smart, which was in an air force training that the US Olympic team had made in 1972 as a player, part of the disappointment from this and began to learn how to train instead, take over a team from Division III in California, which had lost 88 conference games in a row, to a champion that climbed into a champion and here.

The Air Force Academy – a place to which he would return many times after graduation – taught him countless lessons, including other views and never stop developing.

“What you learn there is to get over yourself,” said Popovich. “It's not about you.”

He never stopped learning. He changed the Spurs. Also changed the NBA. Forget the championships and records and individuals and everything else. Popovich has contributed to changing the NBA.

This is his inheritance.