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Baxter Holmes
YEARS BEFORE RISING to the post of NBA commissioner in 2014, Adam Silver spent eight years as the president of NBA Entertainment, where he helmed the league’s marketing and production arm, charged with overseeing films, documentaries, highlight reels and more.
His tenure spanned eight years in the late-1990s through the mid-2000s, a stretch bookended by the end of the Chicago Bulls’ dynasty under Michael Jordan and the rise and fall of the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant era with the Los Angeles Lakers.
With those two storylines alone, Silver’s department lacked little in the way of compelling material to help grow the game: global superstars, major markets, outsized drama. But at that same time, a team that featured none of those characteristics emerged as an inescapable force upon the league: the small-market San Antonio Spurs, coached by a sharp-tongued former Air Force cadet named Gregg Popovich.
One day in the late 1990s, Silver told ESPN, the phone rang in his office — and Popovich, who became the Spurs’ coach in 1996, was on the other end.
ABC had just broadcast a promotional spot for a Spurs playoff game that featured one player above everyone else, Silver said, and Popovich had called to make his displeasure known.
“He yelled at me!” Silver said. “His point was you’ve never run a team and have no idea how even what seems like a small issue to you could disrupt the chemistry of my team.”
Silver was hardly the first, or the last, to feel Popovich’s wrath, one that was unleashed on Spurs players and staff, NBA referees, league officials, reporters and anyone else who entered his infamous crosshairs. But Silver, years later, considered the point Popovich sought to make.
“It spoke to Pop’s enduring belief that no individual player is bigger than the team, and the intensity and attention to detail necessary to win championships,” Silver said. “And in typical Pop fashion, he never sought credit for what his teams accomplished or the role he played in developing generations of players and coaches. The way he led with honesty and humility is a big part of his extraordinary success as a head coach in this league for nearly 30 years — although he certainly can be very direct when need be.”
Popovich’s 29-year run as the Spurs’ head coach formally ended Friday, when the 76-year-old Hall of Famer, five-time NBA champion and league’s all-time winningest coach announced his transition to focus on his role as the team’s president of basketball operations. His decision came after he suffered a stroke in mid-November, after which Mitch Johnson replaced him on the sideline, first on an interim basis, then taking over the permanent job on Friday.
As he steps away, Popovich’s impact on the game remains indelible. He led a sustained run of title-contending teams while others rose and fell, coaching the Spurs to an unprecedented 22 straight playoff appearances. He helped build an international scouting operation long before doing so became commonplace. He has won more games and has received more accolades and acclaim than perhaps any coach of any sport in American history. He built and led a revered culture that lasted decades in small-market San Antonio. Dozens of teams and executives across the basketball landscape — as well as businesses outside it — have tried to emulate it.
He began the charge to strategically rest players to prolong careers — years prior to “load management” becoming a leaguewide trend. He established a tree — or, perhaps more accurately, a forest — of coaching and front office disciples who have branched into every corner of the NBA.
And while he’d be loath to admit it, his willingness to speak openly about issues of race, multiculturalism and his passions away from the game inspired a generation of others to do the same.
Soon after the news arrived, tributes and memories flowed like a deluge, each one adding more texture and color to the overall portrait of one of the NBA’s most improbable and enduring figures.
In interviews with coaches, players, executives and league officials from throughout Popovich’s life, many struggled to fully capture what the iconic coach has meant to the league — so far-reaching is his impact, they said, that it seemed beyond the scope of immediate perspective.
But many were keen to trace the arc of his career, the ways in which it intertwined with their own, and what, to them, he leaves behind.
“He impacted more people in our game than anybody,” Mike Krzyzewski, the former Duke and Team USA coach, told ESPN.
Said Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who played under Popovich for three seasons in San Antonio: “I think everybody who’s come across him will talk about him for the rest of their lives.”
1:21
Gregg Popovich: I’ll do everything I can to help Mitch Johnson, Spurs
Gregg Popovich explains his decision to step away as Spurs coach, and new coach Mitch Johnson speaks about stepping into the role.
IN THE FALL of 1966 in a gym at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Hank Egan was serving as an assistant coach to Bob Spear, when Popovich, who had graduated months earlier from high school in Merrillville, Indiana, walked in with a group of other fresh cadets.
“We were trying to find out who could do what,” Egan told ESPN. “And he was feisty.”
A rust-belt son of a Serbian father and Croatian mother, the 6-foot-3 Popovich had been cut from his high school team as a sophomore but as a senior had led the Merrillville Pirates in scoring (15 points per game) while being named a Calumet Conference all-star in northeast Indiana.
He was well-rounded — a member of the speech and debate team, student council, and National Honor Society. He lettered in basketball, baseball and cross country. At the academy, Egan immediately saw how smart, competitive and driven Popovich was.
Popovich played for the varsity team his final two seasons, captaining the team as a senior. And throughout Popovich’s time there, the two would talk about the future, for a way for Popovich to remain in the game, even if it couldn’t be as a player.
“He came out of the chute looking for a job,” Egan said. “He didn’t ask me if he could do it; he told me what he was going to do.”
Egan sat Popovich down. “It’s not glamorous,” he told him. “It’s rewarding, but it’s not glamorous.”
Egan continued. The job is as much about people as it was about basketball. He’d be away from loved ones for weeks at a time. It’s a tough business — cutthroat, relentless. Egan warned him. There wouldn’t be much money. Popovich didn’t care, he told him. “He wasn’t in it for the money,” Egan said. “He was in it to learn the business.”
Egan had given this lecture before. It had scared many straight. But Popovich didn’t waver: He wanted in.
But before his coaching career began in earnest, Popovich still aspired to play.
In 1970, he barnstormed across Eastern Europe on the U.S. Armed Forces all-star basketball team. In summer 1972, the U.S. Olympic trials were held at the Air Force Academy, and, as ESPN recounted in 2016, Jack Herron Jr., then on the 1972 U.S. Olympic selection committee, pushed to make sure Popovich received an invitation. Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown, who had just retired from playing and taken the job as the head coach of the ABA’s Carolina Cougars, attended the workouts and saw Popovich, one of 56 players vying for 12 spots, for the first time. “He was really, really athletic,” Brown said. “Really, really competitive. You see him now? The same way.”
Popovich played on a trials team coached by Indiana coach Bob Knight but didn’t make the final roster. (“I’ve been aggravated about this for almost 50 years,” Herron told ESPN in 2016. “Gregg belonged on that team.”)
Two years later, Brown became the Denver Nuggets’ coach and, in 1975, Popovich tried out for them, too.
“I cut him,” Brown said with a laugh.
By then, Popovich was also serving as an assistant under Egan at the academy, his coaching career in its infancy.
But Brown always remembered Popovich, and when he became the head coach at Kansas in 1986, he called Popovich, who was then the head coach at Pomona-Pitzer, a Division III program outside of Los Angeles. Brown wanted Popovich to take a sabbatical season, he told him, and join the vaunted Jayhawks as a volunteer assistant coach.
Popovich agreed. That staff under Brown included Popovich’s future front office partner in San Antonio, R.C. Buford, future Hall of Fame coach Bill Self, and future NBA coach Alvin Gentry.
“Pop was a tremendous contributor,” Brown said. “There was no doubt in my mind that he was going to be a great coach. He cared about kids. He wanted to learn. He wasn’t afraid to share what he felt was right. We all benefited by having him around.”
After one season at Kansas, Popovich returned to Pomona-Pitzer. A year later, in June 1988, Brown called again. Brown had been hired to be the coach of the Spurs, and he wanted to see if Popovich would join him as an assistant on his bench.
“Pop didn’t have a great record at Pomona-Pitzer if you look at it,” Brown said. (The team went 2-22 during his first season, but, in 1985-86, he guided the Sagehens to their first conference championship in 68 years.) “But the fact that you have to coach Division III kids and guys at the academy, you’re at a disadvantage right from the beginning. You’ve got to spend all your time trying to develop players. And I think that’s one of his greatest gifts. He makes people around him that he coaches better.”
At 39, and having coached for six years at the academy and nine more at Pomona, Popovich accepted Brown’s offer.
“Obviously, this is a quantum leap from the NCAA Division III to the pros,” Popovich told the L.A. Times in 1988. “There were probably 5,000 people who would have wanted the job and 50 other people [Brown] knows whom he could have asked. But he asked me. So to get offered the job is quite flattering.
“It’s a pretty big leap, and I’m delighted,” Popovich said. “But at the same time, I’m scared to death.”
Popovich coached players hard, Brown observed, but he knew how to strike a balance.
“His greatest strength is he understood the difference between coaching and criticism,” Brown said. “With him, he could get on you, but you knew he cared. It’s something I always believe in. The greatest leaders in any profession care about the people they lead and the people that they lead know the caring is genuine. And I think that’s tough.”
Brown added, “When players know you care and genuinely care, I don’t care who it is, they’ll do almost anything for you.”
Popovich moved from California to San Antonio with his wife and two children — and began the start of his tenure with the Spurs, which, minus a short stint as a Warriors assistant from 1992 to 1994, would stretch almost three and a half decades.
IN JANUARY 1999, Kerr found himself in Popovich’s office in San Antonio, after agreeing to a sign-and-trade deal with the Spurs. Kerr had won three consecutive championships with the Bulls, who were dismantling their dynasty following Jordan’s retirement. Popovich, meanwhile, hadn’t won any. “He wasn’t ‘Pop’ yet,” Kerr told ESPN. “He was Gregg Popovich.”
“I instantly liked him. Everything that we know about him now was true then,” Kerr said. “He has this unique ability to connect with people of any background, any player, any person near him, he can relate.”
It was an unusual season shortened by the NBA lockout, and it didn’t begin until Feb. 5. The Spurs, with Tim Duncan and David Robinson, started slowly, posting a 6-8 record.
“By some accounts, [Popovich] was on the hot seat,” Kerr said. “I remember how well he handled that in front of the team, just not paying much attention to that and just getting us focused on how to get better. He was incredibly fiery, more so than a decade later, I would say, because it was a different era. It was a different time and never personal, but incredibly competitive and fiery and demonstrative and not afraid to light into Tim Duncan, David Robinson, the rest of us. But he had a unique way of doing it where you still loved him afterwards.”
The Spurs went on to win their first championship that season, and throughout the run his habit of deflection began to publicly emerge, pointing to the good fortune of having drafted Robinson, first, and later Duncan.
“I know that Phil [Jackson] was brilliant, and I know that Pop is brilliant and you have to have the talent,” Ker said. “But I love Pop’s humility. It has always been a huge part of his persona, his values. His ‘Pound the Rock’ motto is all about modesty, really. When you think about it, you can keep hitting that thing 99 times, but it’s the hundredth [that splits it]. It’s ‘slow and steady wins the race.’ Everything with Pop was values-based. He knew who he was. He knew who he wanted his team to be. And it all fit. Everything made perfect sense.”
Those values were many, but Kerr singles out two.
“His willingness to speak up on social issues,” Kerr said. “Particularly now.”
That was No. 1.
Athletes and coaches have spoken out on such issues for decades, Kerr said, but often, they’ve been Black, whether Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali or others. For an older White coach to do so, Kerr said, is different. There were others who came before Popovich on that front — Dean Smith at North Carolina and John Wooden at UCLA. But the list isn’t long.
“He’s a very unique American patriot.” Kerr said, “A lot of people who are on the other side of the political spectrum, they would take issue with that, but I don’t think you can argue it. He served in the Air Force, and he will tell you that was the most important experience of his life in terms of developing him as a person and his worldview and outlook on life and people and morality and everything else. And then he used that experience to not only become the coach he became, but also to complain about the politics of the very country that he served.”
The second, Kerr said, was Popovich’s interest in, and open-mindedness toward, sports science and health. He was, Kerr said, the first to strategically rest players.
It was an expensive strategy. In 2012, when the Spurs were fined $250,000 for sending their starters home ahead of a nationally televised game in Miami, Popovich didn’t flinch.
“The league has to understand that the science of what we do is a whole lot more sophisticated than it used to be, and we have definitely added years to people,” he told the San Antonio Express-News in 2017. “So, it’s a tradeoff: Do you want to see this guy in this one game, or do you want to see them for three more years of his career? And do you want to see him through the playoffs because he didn’t get hurt?
Years later, “load management” was born, the term and the practice, despite rule changes and resistance from the league itself. The movement, Kerr said, all points to Popovich.
“Rest in the NBA — that was all him.”
1:46
Richard Jefferson reflects on Coach Popovich’s impact on his career
Richard Jefferson explains why Gregg Popovich was such an impactful head coach for his players.
AFTER TEAM USA’S bronze medal finish in the 2004 Olympics, Jerry Colangelo knew change was necessary. Team USA’s showing had been a national embarrassment, far afield from the standards set by previous iterations that delivered gold every four years. And the loss was particularly stinging for Popovich, who saw it up close, as one of its assistant coaches.
So in June 2005, two months after becoming Team USA’s new director, Colangelo gathered the game’s luminaries at the Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in Chicago. The mission was to find a new head coach who could restore Team USA atop its place as the dominant global basketball power.
In a conference room, Colangelo looked at all the existing coaches who had played a part in Team USA dating back to the 1960s. He looked at players who had played on past Olympic teams. “The Michael Jordans, the Jerry Wests,” he told ESPN.
Colangelo displayed a board with college coaches and professional coaches. On the top of the college list was Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski. On the top of the list of NBA coaches, there was Popovich, who had been part of the 2004 staff under Brown. There was consensus across the room: Those two were the best candidates.
Colangelo called Popovich first, to gauge his interest.
“In my mind, he didn’t demonstrate a lot of enthusiasm,” Colangelo said. “First of all, that was his personality, which I didn’t know well, and, secondly, he was still hurting from the experience of the year before.
“Then, when I called Coach K, he almost jumped through the phone. He was full of excitement and enthusiasm. And so that was when I made the decision. I would meet with Coach K. We had dinner in Las Vegas at a restaurant, and by the end of the evening, I had basically made up my mind it was going to be him. But I felt I couldn’t go wrong either way.”
Colangelo explained his decision publicly, mentioning the uninspiring phone call with Popovich.
“That really upset him,” Colangelo said. “He sent me a letter. I didn’t knock him. It wasn’t that at all. But it hurt him to see anything like that, that kind of a reference. And although we were in the presence of each other for a number of years, we didn’t have any relationship.”
Krzyzewski coached Team USA to gold medals in the 2008 and 2012, with a coaching staff that featured some from the college and pro ranks, but not Popovich.
Then, in 2015, with Krzyzewski set to retire as the Team USA coach the next summer after the 2016 Rio Olympics, Colangelo wanted a successor. He called Popovich. The two men met at Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley in Northern California, near Colangelo’s home there.
“All it took was us getting together over lunch and spending a few hours together, and we patched everything up,” Colangelo said. “And he did want to think about it a little bit.”
Popovich called him after.
“If you want me,” he told Colangelo, “I’m in.”
It was an honor Popovich had spent the better part of the last 50 years trying to achieve — merging his love of the game with his love of country. And this time, he’d be leading it.
The next summer in Las Vegas, Popovich and Krzyzewski broke bread for the first time during a Team USA staff dinner at the Wynn hotel.
By the time they shared a table, their paths through the sport were eerily similar.
Both hailed from the Midwest. Both had attended service academies — Popovich the Air Force, Krzyzewski the Army. Both had played under Bob Knight — Krzyzewski at Army, Popovich at the 1972 Olympic Trials. Both had coached the same teams across decades, sustaining title-contending excellence throughout. Both had tremendous passions for food and wine.
And yet, despite the corollaries, and the distant mutual respect between them, Popovich and Krzyzewski had never spent much time together.
“I’d known him,” Krzyzewski told ESPN, “but we weren’t close.”
Then, they sat down in Las Vegas and talked.
“It was like they’d known each other forever,” Colangelo said.
“I think we were both waiting to become close friends,” Krzyzewski said.
Krzyzewski had been a keen admirer of Popovich for so many years, albeit from afar.
“I’ve always studied leadership my whole life,” Krzyzewski said. “I teach [at Duke] and I speak around the country on leadership and teamwork and, before I knew him, I admired his leadership.”
He saw how Popovich developed deep relationships with his players, how he worked with Robinson and Duncan and built a system where they played together and complemented each other, with the elder Robinson mentoring the younger Duncan, rather than the two competing against each other. He saw how, over the years, players took ownership of the culture that Popovich was trying to establish — how “The Spurs Way” became an ideal that veterans affirmed to new players. He saw how Popovich’s teams shared the ball, how he managed lineups.
Many of these ideals mirrored Krzyzewski’s at Duke.
“He impacted more people in our game than anybody,” Krzyzewski said. “He’s probably the most unique coach ever — pro, amateur. He’s as good as anybody, but I think you can’t be like him. He did so many things that it’s hard to believe one person could do all that.”
The two met in Las Vegas when Popovich was in town for Team USA’s training camp. Krzyzewski knew the pressure of the position as Team USA’s head coach.
“Unless you’re sitting in that seat, you don’t know how it feels,” he said. “Everyone is telling you it’s going to be a sure thing and all that, and it’s not a sure thing.”
He believed Popovich could handle it. And he was right.
On the game’s most prestigious global stage, Popovich coached Team USA to gold in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. After the gold medal game, an 87-82 win against France, avenging a loss in the group phase, Colangelo and Popovich found each other. Popovich knew what the moment meant — for him, for his country and for Team USA.
“Pop felt very relieved,” Colangelo said. “He felt incredible pressure, in my opinion, in the championship game. When it was over, he and I embraced, and it was a very emotional moment.”
2:03
Stephen A. reacts to Gregg Popovich stepping down as Spurs head coach
Stephen A. Smith details why he is happy that Gregg Popovich will still be in basketball as team president for the Spurs.
BROWN LIKES TO discuss one of the core tenets of his Hall of Fame coaching career, one that stretched nearly six decades before he stepped down from an advisory role at the University of Memphis in 2023 at age 82: providing opportunities to other coaches.
“You’re supposed to pay it forward,” Brown said. “That’s the whole key.”
It’s what a coach can leave behind beyond wins, losses and other accolades. And as Brown looks back over his own career, it’s perhaps the achievement that he appreciates most — with Popovich serving as one of several beneficiaries.
And as Brown evaluates Popovich’s career, he appreciates how his former assistant has achieved and prioritized the same, perhaps to a degree unparalleled in NBA history.
On rosters and in organizations throughout the league, Spurs disciples can be found, whether on coaching staffs, in front offices or in numerous other basketball operations departments. Throw a rock in any direction, and there’s someone who, at some point, passed through Popovich’s program in San Antonio.
Utah’s Will Hardy, Houston’s Ime Udoka, Kerr, Atlanta’s Quin Snyder and Milwaukee’s Doc Rivers all have ties to Popovich and the Spurs.
In terms of GMs, Oklahoma City’s Sam Presti and Brooklyn’s Sean Marks are both Spurs alums. And there are countless other assistant coaches, front office executives, scouts and basketball operations staffers whose early résumés included a stopover in San Antonio.
But as Colangelo looks at the game today, he considers another aspect of Popovich’s legacy — a different priority, but one that unquestionably changed the game.
“He was way ahead of most of the league regarding European players,” Colangelo said.
International players have been drafted into the NBA dating back to the 1960s, but doing so was rare and often heavily scrutinized. The Spurs, however, pioneered what would soon become the modern trend. They found future Hall of Famers in Manu Ginobili, an Argentine guard taken 57th overall — the next-to-last pick — in 1999, and Tony Parker, a French point guard taken 28th a year later.
As the years progressed, the Spurs continued to heavily invest in international scouting abroad, with their locker room featuring different cultures, backgrounds and languages, including players from Australia, China, Turkey, Serbia, Italy and Nigeria.
And the more the Spurs won, the more other teams copied them, trying to find their own hidden gems from across the world.
When the 2024-25 season tipped off, there were 125 international players — roughly a quarter of the NBA — from 43 different countries on opening night rosters. The past six NBA MVP awards have been bestowed to players born outside the U.S., a trend that is guaranteed to continue this year, with all three finalists — Denver’s Nikola Jokic (who is going for his fourth), Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo — coming from other countries.
“There were players all around the world, and people here in America just didn’t realize it or respect it — or both,” Popovich said in 2023. “In the ’80s, when I became an assistant coach and came over to find these players or to scout them … I was like a kid in a candy store. There were so many great players in that time.”
The Spurs, of course, remain at the forefront, with France’s Victor Wembanyama, the first pick in 2023, representing the future of the franchise and the league.
AFTER A DEFLATING Game 6 loss to the Houston Rockets at the Chase Center in San Francisco on Friday, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green sat on the postgame dias, addressing the defeat and its playoff ramifications.
But for as important as the Warriors’ game might’ve been, it felt insignificant. That morning, the Spurs announced Popovich was leaving his post as coach.
Draymond Green got emotional talking about Gregg Popovich tonight. pic.twitter.com/fALcQLqJV3
— Josh Paredes (@Josh810) May 3, 2025
For Green, the news hit hard. He had been coached by Popovich during the Tokyo Olympics, and the two had developed a bond. And after the loss to Houston, Green was so eager to pay his respects to the man that he cut off a reporter’s question and began explaining what Popovich meant to him.
Like so many others, Green sought to demystify the hard exterior for which Popovich has often been known, and instead reveal the humanity and generosity that lies beneath.
“He’s one of the most incredible human beings,” Green began. “You know, you get this wall that everyone sees …
“You ask a dumb question, he’s going to crush you,” he said. “It just appears as if he’s this mean old man. And he is the complete opposite. Like, complete opposite. The nicest person you ever want to be around. He cares about people so much.”
He paused.
“I was lucky enough and honored to have the opportunity to spend a summer with him and play for him,” Green said, his voice starting to break.
Green revealed that he gave Popovich the shoes he wore in the gold medal game in 2021 and said Popovich wore them the next time the Warriors faced the Spurs. Every hug since then, Green said, meant even more.
“It sucked playing against the Spurs this year, to look over and not see him there,” he said. “And to know that I’ll never get that opportunity again, I just wish I had one last time to go hug him on the sideline before a game. … I know I sound like he’s dead — he’s not.
“He’s meant so much to this league, and he means so much to me.”
Green paused again, gathering himself.
“Job well done.”
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