Popovich has become NBAs Bill Belichick

[Demo Dick Marcinko]

Popovich may or may not be the best Xs and Os coach in the NBA, but he is the best leader. Considering the wide range of ages and background that teams are dealing with today, that is much more important to long-term success.

The old truism is in fact true: the best leaders lead by example. The fact that Popovich has changed over time and adapted is not lost on the players.

I forget how the cliche goes but "pop is not so much an x's & o's type of coach, he's more about the Jimmy & the Joes." His forte is not so much about game planning and scheming but about motivating and leading his troops and influencing them and getting them to do what he wants them to, that is his strenght, not to mention he knows his wines like a mofo.

[GrandeDavid]

Finally last month, Popovich ripped off a stern letter to Colangelo, copying it to the highest levels of the NBA hierarchy. Those who have seen the letter say that Popovich's message to Colangelo was clear: Stop talking about USA Basketball and me. Popovich told him his side of the story, and told him that he didn't need to respond. Just knock it off.


I'm so glad Pop cut into Colangelo. What bullsh!t by Colangelo.

[GrandeDavid]

Belichick is the Popovich of the NFL.

In all seriousness, Pop has much more couth on the court than Belichick on the field. Pop would never run up scores, but he can be a smart ass with the press. Pop is also self-depracating while Belichik is arrogant. But they are both winners and big on the team concept.

[degenerate_gambler]

Colangelo's lucky Pop didn't decide to dig into his old military intelligence contact's list of spooks...

or we'd be talking about the mysterious disappearance of one Jerry Colangelo instead.

[samikeyp]

we'd be talking about the mysterious disappearance of one Jerry Colangelo instead

[urunobili]

i would like to have him as a father...

[Trainwreck2100]

Pop don't run up the score Pop don't get caught cheating

[TwoHandJam]

Wasn't the fist-pump that Pop did in these last playoffs after the series with the Suns? Guess that had meaning on more than one level.

You don't have to know much about basketball to see that choosing a college coach to head team USA over one of the most accomplished and respected (both by the players and other coaches) NBA coaches in the business is lunacy. Correction - lunacy by design because of a childish agenda.

[smrattler]

Am I the only one that reads Colangelo's position and alleged remarks and see it as basically saying Pop's "get over yourself" at ude was not "ass kissing" enough for him?

Mike must have puckered up really good for him.

[Strike]

Colangelo is a chode. Plain and simple.

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

Colangelo's lucky Pop didn't decide to dig into his old military intelligence contact's list of spooks...

or we'd be talking about the mysterious disappearance of one Jerry Colangelo instead.

I think it's far more gratifying for Pop to orchestrate his very public disapearance in May.

[Spurs Brazil]

Pop is the best

[timvp]

More ammo to use against the Suns. Nice.

Don't forget that Team USunsA were also the ones who cut Bowen from the team. And really, what has Colangelo done to show he knows how to win at anything? Team USA might as well went with Isiah Thomas ... at least he won something as a player.

[spurscenter]

i didnt want to start a new thread, so im dumping it in here but


Former Suns owner Jerry Colangelo will be inducted into the team's "ring of honor" at halftime of Sunday night's game against Cleveland


THE PHOENIX SUNS RING OF HONOR (too funny)

probably next to GORILLA, Tim Hornacek and Tim Perry
and this is as glamourous as perhaps the Rivercenter Mall Ring of Honor for best performing store or some

I think Jerry nominates himself to like this. Didnt he get intot he HALL OF FAME last year as an owner?

Any non player that gets into the hall of fame before POP has an asterick. Im calling it.

[Jimcs50]

Sources have said that Jerry acquiesced, and stopped talking about how Pop was not that interested in the job, only after waking up one morning with a Sun's head in his bed.

[T Park]

Funny, but Popovich has always said that he'll follow his superstar out the door when he retires. Now, Duncan has signed up through 2012, so there was Popovich holding that framed cartoon strip on Tuesday night and laughing and saying, "He screwed me."

Classic. Yeah, like Pop is ready to retire too. All that is bull as well

[TampaDude]

Former Suns owner Jerry Colangelo will be inducted into the team's "ring of honor" at halftime of Sunday night's game against Cleveland.

I hope LeBron hangs 40+ on the Suns tomorrow night.

[FromWayDowntown]

I had figured that it was Pop's close association with Larry Brown, coupled with the bad taste of 2004 -- and only those things -- that had caused USA Basketball to gravitate to Coach K. I can, however, completely see someone like Colangelo finding reasons to doubt Pop's enthusiasm for a project. I don't get the sense that Pop would be the sort of person who would just be gushing in a conversation about a job like coaching USA basketball; I somehow believe that he would be earnest about his willingness to take the position and frank about his needs in that position.

What's always been remarkble to me is to see Pop interact with players who have never been Spurs, but who were on teams that Pop coached. You see guys from the 2003 qualifying team and the 2004 Olympic team making a specific point to go by the Spurs bench before games to give Pop a quick hug and to say something. It always appears to be a warm exchange and mutually respectful. You see it too, I think, with the way that Pop deals with PR situations involving opposing players -- his lashing out at fans for booing Kobe in 2003-04; his immediate withdrawal from the Pop Show after Walter and Vex unfairly portrayed Allen Iverson. Pop's a coach who definitely has the backs of players and they, in turn, appreciate him for that. In a day and age where players are routinely ripped for defying authority figures, Pop is one authority figure who seems to have earned fairly-universal respect. To miss out on the opportunity to have that guy lead your team because he didn't kiss your ass enough is probably, as much as anything, an indictment of the failed bureaucracy within USA Basketball.

I'd love to read what Pop wrote to Colangelo.

Colangelo is undoubtedly an extremely successful businessman. His business has mostly been sports, specifically the Suns, and he grew that franchise into one of the winningest clubs in the NBA during his ownership, even without winning championships. But, I'd agree with the notion that success in that realm is substantially unrelated to success in resurrecting an endeavor like USA Basketball, where a le is the only acceptable result. I wonder why so many find Colangelo to be such a go-to guy on projects like that. It doesn't seem that he has a resume to create such wide-spread support. And passing on Pop under these cir stances just looks foolish.

[spurscenter]

great post fromwaydowntown

[clubalien]

I want pop fired like everyone else. But I would like to correct something. POp will screw players by trading them, low balling their contracts and all that "Business" side of basketball. But he has class enough to not blow out teams like bellicheck. He doesn't cheat like belicheck. Point is in the "Game" pop shows respect to the other team and is a class act. No matter how bad a coach he is. How stubern and how not will,ing to change to win the game. He has never been on the court an disrespectfull unclassy asshole. Asshole all the same to players, but he did it with class.

Bellicheck doesn't deserve anything the way he is acting.

only because I love and respect Pop so much


Great Read



Popovich has become NBA's Bill Belichick
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports


SAN ANTONIO – Before the San Antonio Spurs' championship ring ceremony on Tuesday night, Gregg Popovich stood in the hallway outside his office, clutching a cartoon strip that's been framed on his desk for years. There's a superstar player sitting behind the big desk, and a sad-sack coach waiting for an appointment to meet with him.

"The franchise will see you now, Coach," the secretary says in the caption.

Oh, how Popovich's eyes glistened when he was showing it off, how one of the greatest coaches in the history of basketball understands about the reality of the genius assigned to him.

"That's how we work around here, if anybody wants to know the truth," he said.

His superstar, Tim Duncan, had left $11 million on the negotiating table with his contract extension, passing on max-out money so the Spurs could surround him with championship talent well into his mid-30s. This was a Brady-esque move for the New England Patriots of the NBA, one that reaffirms for basketball's Belichick why he's the most blessed sideline soul in the sport.

Twenty-four hours earlier, Popovich was wearing his baseball cap and training camp stubble at the Spurs' suburban practice facility. As always, he looked far more comfortable with a coaching shirt and gym shorts than a suit. On the eve of the season, Popovich was delivered this query: After four NBA les in the past nine seasons, constructing the sport's greatest dynasty since the Jordan Bulls, why hasn't he followed the rest of his peers on the coaching Rushmore and turned his spectacular successes into his own personal Pop, Inc.?

Where are the private jets to the corporate speaking gigs to spit out coaching clichs for $75,000 a shot, the self-help guru book and autobiography and commercials for brokerage firms?

He lifted his cap and laughed that he suspected someday, someone would ask him this question. He knows the drill: Win games and you're supposed to pretend that the secrets to life have been unlocked to you. Through that grumpy disposition, the tell-the-truth-til-it-hurts persona, Gregg Popovich is starting to look like the last honest coach of the great ones.

"I feel like I've arrived where I am as much out of cir stance, as out of ability," Popovich said.

Deep down, most coaches know that, but don't dare say it to puncture a hole in the mythology that they've carefully created for themselves. That's why the rest of Popovich's profession is so narcissistic and empty, so blinded by the fleeting, superficial excesses that they treat like en lements to the winning. Nothing is ever enough.

He still spends his offseasons reading his Soviet literature, trying new wines and retreating with his wife to his summer house in New England. "I'd rather spend my time doing those things, than other things that people think you should be doing because you've arrived at some station in life," Popovich said. "I just cannot convince myself that that's there's anything I can write that anybody would want to read. I don't think of myself as someone who has the answers to A, B, C and D. I'm just trying to do well what it is that we do here.

"Doing commercials, or going to speak in difference places, holds absolutely no interest to me."

Popovich and his general manager, R.C. Buford, are the Bill Belichick-Scott Pioli of the NBA. Around the league, people are fascinated with how they do business here. Owners want to hire their disciples. Their payroll discipline and ability to get players to subjugate themselves for the greater good of winning make the Spurs a model franchise. Duncan allows them to do it, but Popovich has created a structure – a world that shuts out all the demons that undo other franchises – and sustained greatness when it's been a vapor for so many without San Antonio's staying power.

Larry Brown gave Popovich his big break in basketball, turning a Division III coach into a fast-tracker at the University of Kansas. Here's the thing, though: Popovich took all the fantastic X's and O's from Brown, the defensive principles, and yet left with his mentor the insecurities, deceit and wanderlust that always leaves Larry wanting, leaves him empty.

"Listen," Popovich said, "it's a player's league. I think it's very important for a coach to make sure that his players believe 100 percent – and not with lip service – that it's about them. Coaches are going to do everything they can to create that environment for them. It's not about creating an environment for us. It's a privilege to be able to coach these guys. We make enough money.

"The other stuff to me is just a waste of time as far as talking about quality of life."

As Spurs owner Peter Holt said: "Pop's one of those guys who says, 'Get over yourself.' He doesn't just spout that off to his 20-year-old players who've got big egos. He also believes it for himself. He thinks that the big key for not only himself, but our whole team, is keeping this stuff from going to our heads.

"I guess a lot of those guys (with books and speeches) have messages to deliver, and I think Pop would tell you that, 'My message is: Get over yourself.'

"And you can't write a book about that."

There's one thing that Popovich has a hard time getting over, one thing beyond the Spurs universe that desperately appealed to him: Coaching Team USA in the 2008 Olympics. He wanted the job badly, yes, but he could live with the disappointment of Jerry Colangelo passing him over for Mike Krzyzewski. This had nothing to do with the Duke coach's credentials, sources said, but everything to do with Popovich's belief that the Team USA managing director, Colangelo, a past Phoenix Suns CEO, had needlessly cast doubt on the sincerity of something that Popovich held sacred.

First of all, sources say Popovich was frustrated two years ago that he never had a chance to sit down and meet with Colangelo about the Olympic job. They had one telephone conversation, and Popovich had been told that a face-to-face discussion would follow it. Yet Colangelo traveled to see Krzyzewski, and the coach that Colangelo confesses now was always "his first choice" was soon chosen for the USA reclamation project.

In explaining his choice of Krzyzewski over Popovich, sources say, Colangelo infuriated the Spurs coach with the public suggestions that he wasn't as enthusiastic about the job as Duke's coach, that he didn't seem to want it as badly.

The residue of Larry Brown's embarrassing behavior as coach in Athens didn't help Popovich's case, either. For USA Basketball, though, Popovich was the voice of reason on the bench in those Olympics, an anchor for a Brown on the lunatic fringe. In this instance, his association to Brown was no benefit to his immediate future with Team USA.

Just this summer, Colangelo told me, "I think (Popovich) had a bad taste in his mouth regarding his most recent experiences with USA Basketball, some bitterness, and that came out in my conversation with him. He seemed burned out by it. … He just wasn't as enthusiastic as Mike."

Popovich wanted to respond to those assertions over a year ago, but resisted the urge. Then, this summer, Colangelo started telling those tales again, and Popovich was irate, sources said. Popovich was an Air Force Academy graduate, a Russian studies major who did tours of duty as an intelligence officer in Eastern Europe and Russia. As a coach, he had spent several summers of his professional career on USA Basketball staffs. So, the last thing that he was willing to accept was a public perception that, somehow, he was ambivalent over the opportunity to coach the U.S. in the Olympics.

Finally last month, Popovich ripped off a stern letter to Colangelo, copying it to the highest levels of the NBA hierarchy. Those who have seen the letter say that Popovich's message to Colangelo was clear: Stop talking about USA Basketball and me. Popovich told him his side of the story, and told him that he didn't need to respond. Just knock it off.

"I honestly do not believe that Jerry thought he was taking shots at Pop when he said those things," one source familiar with Colangelo's thinking said. "But it's hard to blame Pop for feeling the way he does."

Neither Popovich, nor Colangelo, would discuss the letter, but Buford did say, "With all the respect that Pop has for USA Basketball and the players involved, all the time that he has devoted to the program, it would surprise me if he would be disrespectful enough to seem uninterested."

Colangelo hasn't backed down privately from his version of the conversation with Popovich, but he will honor the coach's wishes and discuss it no more. Perhaps, the Spurs-Suns rivalry precluded Colangelo truly considering Popovich for the job, but as one common friend of the two men said, "It's a shame that two guys who have been so successful for so long in the league never really had a chance to get to know each other."

Still, there's momentum within influential parts of the NBA and USA Basketball to make Buford and Popovich the G.M. and coach combination for the 2012 London Games. With a gold medal in Beijing, there's a strong su ion that Colangelo will ride off into the sunset, which is the only way it would ever work with the architects of the Spurs dynasty.

Maybe Popovich needed to deliver those thoughts to Colangelo, get it off his chest, so he could then turn back with a clear conscience to the job that no one can ever deny him. He is back coaching the Spurs, back with his boss, Tim Duncan. Funny, but Popovich has always said that he'll follow his superstar out the door when he retires. Now, Duncan has signed up through 2012, so there was Popovich holding that framed cartoon strip on Tuesday night and laughing and saying, "He screwed me." On the night the Spurs raised another banner, Gregg Popovich, self-proclaimed champion of cir stance, laughed again.

[Phil Hellmuth]

the spurs/patriots comparison is getting old. writers need new material.

[TampaDude]

Actually, I consider it an insult to Pop to compare him to Belicheat.

Spurs >>> Pats

[clubalien]

More ammo to use against the Suns. Nice.

Don't forget that Team USunsA were also the ones who cut Bowen from the team. And really, what has Colangelo done to show he knows how to win at anything? Team USA might as well went with Isiah Thomas ... at least he won something as a player.

coach pop had a chance to coach TEAM usa to gold medal and didn;t do to good.

I think we are forgetting that maybe someone thought the other coach was capable and might actual be a good coach and wasn;t malice towards pop.

Pop's admits his sucuess is because of Tim. 1: Tim was getting fouled and generally wasn't good in team usa ball. Therefore the basis of pops winning was in question. 2: pop had a chance to coach team usa and his team didn't win a gold medal which should always be the standard in internal compitations we hold ourself to.

Some times you hire someone not because they couldn't do the job but ther eis only one job and thought someone could do it better.

Wade phillips is the coach of the cowboys... not parcells now.. Does that mean parcells wasn;t a good coach nope.. Does it mean he hasn't earned mroe than wade phillips... Maybe jerry thinks wade phillips 6-1 ercord is a better coach for cowboys then hall of fame parcells

[ancestron]

Popovich may or may not be the best Xs and Os coach in the NBA, but he is the best leader. Considering the wide range of ages and background that teams are dealing with today, that is much more important to long-term success.

The old truism is in fact true: the best leaders lead by example. The fact that Popovich has changed over time and adapted is not lost on the players.

Thats a very good point.

[boutons_]

"remarkable ... to see Pop interact with players who have never been Spurs"

... evident when Pop coached the West All-Stars a couple years ago, even if that activity is pretty much a love-fest anyway.