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Poppy !
What We Like (Or, The Things We'll Miss During the Great '11-12 Season Shutdown): Gregg Popovich
By Rob Peterson
What We Like champions the unlikely things we'll miss if the league shuts down next summer. Rob Peterson is a FanHouse producer.
Initially, this was to be about how we love watch the way San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich stands at attention during the National Anthem. In part, it still will be. Yet, as the entry developed, it was easy to see this essay should be about more than how Pop stands. It should be about Pop.
Because, besides Suns fans, who doesn't love Pop? We're not just talking about his accomplishments such as the four NBA les and how he and Tim Duncan have forged the greatest coach-big man relationship this side of Red Auerbach and Bill Russell. We're talking about Pop life.
Let's start with his form during the Anthem. Everyone in the NBA has their way of standing during Francis Scott Key's ditty about American resilience during the War of 1812. Some sway. Some rock, shifting their weight from foot to foot. Some have their hands clasped behind them or a hand over their heart. That's each person's right as an individual.
For Pop, it's as if time stood still and he's still a plebe at the Air Force Academy in the late '60s.
Check out the photo. Textbook.
• Head erect and staring straight
• Heels together, feet turned out equally forming a 45 degree angle with the body weight resting equally on the heels and balls of the feet
• Keep legs straight without stiffening or locking the knees
• Hold body erect with the hips level, stomach in, chest lifted and arched, and the shoulders square and even
• Arms hang straight along the sides/seams; curling the fingers as if holding roll of quarters
Pop stands out because he stands still, and it's mesmerizing mostly because everyone else does move. Not Pop. He does not blink. It's as if one flutter of the eyelid would subject him to more abuse than any plebe should rightfully endure. He looks as if he's getting an earful from a cadet who just ate an onion and garlic sandwich with jalapeño relish and a sour pickle and Extreme Doritos on the side.
"If my breath is going to make a puke like you blink, what do you think the Soviets will do to you when they shoot you out of the sky?"
Speaking of the Soviets, Pop -- the only NBA coach to go to a military academy -- earned a degree at the AFA in Soviet studies. He wanted to use that degree to become Jason Bourne.
"Really, the only thing on my mind at that point was I wanted to be in counterintelligence and do whatever that meant," Popovich said in a 2005 interview.
One article even references him attending "spy school" where we're sure he tested well. Though, he wouldn't tell us if we asked and would have to kill us if he did tell us.
But instead of making a living (and possibly dying) in counterintelligence, he toured Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with the Armed Forces team. Because Pop isn't an NBA lifer who worked his way up through the ranks to become a head coach, the early part of his biography still maintains its mysterious and romantic allure. Players even allude to it, as Steve Nash did in 2008, saying Pop was an "American spy in Russia."
"He's absolutely correct," Popovich said. "I spent all my military time in Russian basketball courts and different cities collecting as many out-of-bounds plays as I possibly could. Now I finally get a chance to employ them."
But instead of becoming Bourne the spy, Popovich became Bourne's alter ego, David Webb the professor. That's another thing we love about Pop. He teaches, but he suffers no fools. He shuts down questions he considers a waste of his time and is famous for his contempt of on-court interviews.
Pop, however, isn't without wit. Remember when Shaquille O'Neal complained about the Spurs' Hack-a-Shaq strategery in the 2008 postseason, going so far as to call Popovich a coward?
How did Pop handle Shaq's whining? Brilliantly and hilariously.
Who better to handle Shaq than Popovich, who knows his wine from whine? Popovich is part-owner of an Oregon winery and has a 3,000-bottle above-ground wine cellar. He's probably the only coach who could quote Dorothy Parker while drinking wine with Robert Parker.
"Want a beer, coach?"
"No, make mine a Petrus."
Gladly. Let us all raise a glass and drink to Gregg Popovich, a rare NBA vintage whose bouquet only improves with age. (RP)
Poppy !
Pop FTW
goat
Is it allowed in this section?
(Pop is top 4 All-Time)
Nice read
erect
there is only one meaning of this in poland
or maybe not but the most popular and the others are not know to the people masses
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