Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich has been bench boss longer than any other working coach in the major North American pro sports.Jason Miller/Getty Images
Gregg Popovich is terse and gruff, thoughtful and wry.
The 65-year-old San Antonio Spurs coach, in his 19th season, has been bench boss longer than any other working coach in the major North American pro sports. He has been an innovator and an experimenter, guided his team to five championships – a feat achieved by only four other NBA coaches – and the Spurs have put together the best regular-season record, by far, during this tenure.
The one thing he hasn't accomplished is back-to-back titles, and that is the mission of 2014-15. On Friday morning in Minneapolis, before the Spurs easily defeated the Minnesota Timberwolves 121-92, the legendary coach, now sporting a white beard, held court for a spell.
He was asked about how his relationship evolved with Argentine star Manu Ginobili. Popovich spoke about coaching – and not coaching.
"Closing your mouth sometimes is better – letting that gifted player show you what he can do and how he can help your team win. There's times I learned to not speak if [there was] a defensive play he wanted to make to get a steal or whatever, because he does things that wins games. He taught me to watch him a bit more and not be so micromanagement. I don't know if that took six months or 2 1/2 years, but that was the process. Because he plays a whole lot better without me nagging him – which has been proven."
On Becky Hammon, a new assistant Spurs coach, the first female full-time assistant coach in the big four North American sports. He was first asked if she brought a unique perspective.
"I don't know that the perspective is unique. It's women instead of men but it's the same game. Becky knows what to do on a pick and roll just as much as Tony Parker knows. So I don't think it's unique at all. I guess it's unique to the public that there's a woman who's an assistant on the men's team, I guess. But her knowledge and ability to lead and teach is the same as a guy."
He was then asked whether Hammon commanded the same respect of players as male coaches.
"I wouldn't have hired her if I didn't think she'd get that respect. She's a firecracker. She takes no prisoners. She's got a great personality, she knows her stuff. And she was with us all last year, during our championship stuff. She was in every coach's meeting – not just in the final, the whole year. She was there giving me her ideas and telling me what she didn't like about what I was doing and what she did like about what I was doing and so on and so forth. So she's for real."
In the off-season, the Spurs overhauled their medical services team – and made a key hire in Canadian Marilyn Adams as director of rehabilitation.
"Really expert hands. She's a great physical therapist. Very incisive and very observant, on what we can do to improve our chances of not having an injury, and once we do have an injury, how to get people back quickly. So she's very gifted in that regard."
Adams's main experience had been in freestyle skiing and snowboarding – where the athletes are often one foot shorter than some of the Spurs. Asked about the transition, it was vintage Popovich, wry and dry.
"Well, I figured that snowboarders and so on and the basketball players have the same kind of bones, and about the same amount of bones, they're in the same places, connected the same way. So I figured she could probably do it."
David Ebner