Greg Popovich
A Ledgend With Spurs On His Boots
Gregg Popovich’s basketball journey began in Indiana, where he graduated from Merrillville High School in 1966 before attending the United States Air Force Academy
Gregg Popovich’s Division III Succes Leads him To Dean Smith and Larry Brown’s Coaching Staff
During the 1985-86 season, Popovich’s seventh at the helm at Division III Palmona-Pitzer, those many years of hard and diligent work came together in a championship. The Palmona Sagehens won their league, the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, outright for the first time in 68 years. That earned them a spot in the NCAA Tournament, where they were blown out 89-59 by Nebraska Wesleyan in a game that Popovich told reporters “didn’t think that this would happen in my worst nightmare.”
The Change …
After that run, the gears that led Popovich to basketball immortality were put into motion.
With the encouragement of Pomona athletic director Curt Tong, a former Division III coach himself, Popovich took a sabbatical. Rather than going abroad somewhere or taking time away from the game to avoid burnout, Popovich got a basketball education in which he was able to view the game through a lens that was previously unavailable to him.
While still a player in the early and mid-1970s, Popovich developed a relationship with legendary coach Larry Brown, who was twice a part of staffs that cut Popovich – first for the U.S. men’s national team for the 1972 Summer Olympics and then again in 1975 while Brown was the head coach of the Denver Nuggets, then of the ABA.
The two stayed in touch and following the 1985-86 season, Popovich went to learn under Brown.
He spent October and November of the 1986-87 season at North Carolina, Brown’s alma mater, under Dean Smith before going through the rest of the season with Brown and Kansas, serving a key role on the Jayhawks’ bench and coaching a group of players, most notably Danny Manning, that would lead the program to the NCAA championship the following season.
After Popovich’s sabbatical his heart led him back to Pomona-Pitzer.
“I’ve been spoiled at North Carolina and Kansas,” he said to the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “When I get back to Pomona, I’m going to have to be careful not to be someone else other than me. I know I’ll be more efficient and I’ll have a computer bank of knowledge that should help my teaching techniques. I’d be a fool to say it isn’t a thrill to watch and help players of Division I caliber develop into great players. But I think at this point, the small-college level is the place to be if you want to coach and not have droves of people who want a piece of you. That’s more consistent with my personality.”
In his brief time away, though, circumstances had changed. Shortly after Popovich got back to Pomona-Pitzer, Voelkel died and school leadership that succeeded him wasn’t as invested in his program’s success. By the end of the 1987-88 season, he began thinking of life away from the community he loved.
While at a cabin in the summer of 1988, news broke that Brown, months after leading Kansas to the national title, had been named the Spurs’ head coach. One of his assistants, Lee Wimberly, suggested Popovich call him to see if he’d bring him along to San Antonio. Popovich had his doubts.
What followed, as they say, is history, with Popovich spending four seasons with Brown in San Antonio, leaving to work as an assistant under Don Nelson for two years with the Golden State Warriors and returning to the Spurs to become their president of basketball operations and general manager in 1994.
Pop’s Players Love Him
Pop’s Players Love Him
… … … but not all of ’em
&
most of ’em, did NOT love him ALL the time!
Greg Popovich never proclaimed to be the ‘right‘ basketball Coach for every basketball player. He never told players they were doing something correctly, when he observed and thought it should be performed otherwise. And, he seldomly held back from verbally telling players what he had determined was correct and necessary. What he knew would move the team closer to victory was going to be performed his way.
This method of coaching is difficult for most all professional basketball players who have already reached a top skill level and an NBA professional career.
Coach Popovich’s methods were strongly influenced by his many years at the United States Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, CO. He was a player and later an assistant coach of the basketball program at Air Force, the United States premier school of military training for the branch of the military that flies planes. Attending the ACademy is not a path suitable for most young men and women. A place of academic and athletic challenge and excellence. The university education that prepares boys to be men.
Just like the Air Force Academy, playing basketball for Popovich was not suitable for all professional players.
Everyone who completes the rigors of the Academy flies. All cadets can be seen floating in glider airplanes above the foothills of the Colorado mountains, all Academy cadets are taught to fly, all graduating cadets reach a level of success. But only a select view are chosen to attend and even less complete the demanding four years of education and trials of becoming a man ready to lead other men into war.
Greg Popovich expected no less from his professional basketball players at San Antonio.
His methods could be compared to the legendary Indiana University Coach Robert (Bob) Knight, who coached at another military academy West Point.
Coach Knight won three NCAA championships, tons of Big Ten conference champion ships, more college games than but a handful of other coaches, and most importantly, if you survived four years playing for Coach Knight, you had a college degree.
However, Coach Knights career ended in an abrupt controversial manner, as he was fired by Indiana University of decades of success.
Nobody was ever strongly convinced that Coach Knights style and techniques would be effective in the professional level NBA. As one of only a few who had tried, Coach Popovich proved a discipline, direct and military style method of coaching could function in the NBA. This was proven by the five championship trophies now on display at the Frost Center, home of the San Antonio Spurs.
UNDER PRESSURE
Game Four 2026 Western Conference Finals
“Backs Against The Wall”
Date: May 25, 2026
By: Mr. Fat Hat
The 2026 NBA Western Conference Playoff Finals between San Antonio and Oklahoma City.
Location: San Antonio , Texas, USA
After the lose of the Spurs to the Thunder in game three of the NBA playoffs, the fandom and the entire city of San Antonio sensed a pressure for a need to win game four. Some said the pressure was palpable throughout the city. But this pressure wasn’t the heaviest most influential emotion surrounding the team between games three and four. It was the post game return of ‘Pop‘ (a.k.a. El Jefe,) into the Spurs locker room.
Since Coach Greg Popovich’s recovery from a severe stroke in November 2024, the San Antonio Spurs five time NBA Championship winning coach, ‘Pop’, has made his way back to verbally advising the team. On a few occasions, Popovich has made his way, slowly walking unassisted with a few former players escorting from behind, into the Spurs practice facility. He often sits watching on the sideline and has a few short one-on-one conversations individually with players and coaches. He doesn’t instruct as a floor coach nor interrupt the activities. Those days of physical activities are over. Despite Coach Popovich’s physically limitations, his mental capacities remain intact. He may have lost his speedy step, but he didn’t lose decades of knowledge about how to play NBA championship basketball.
After the dismal disappointing game three playoff loss of the Spurs, for the first time ‘Pop’ walked into the locker room. The locker room doors were sealed, the room was filled with only members of the Spurs organization, And then, as he has been well known to do, ‘Pop’ cut loose – I mean footloose – with his honest and verbally brutal assessment of the players effort and performance in game three.
During Coach Popovich’s long and successful career, similar such verbal escapades occurred. Coach has a famous successful reputation for confronting players verbally and mentally, pushing players with what he says, sometimes to the point when these gifted well paid millionaire basketball players literally would stand right up with their backs against the wall and argue with coach Pop. Just ask Hall of Fame and NBA Championship player, Manu Ginobili, about the pressure ‘Pop’ can express and apply in a closed post game locker room after a bad loss. Coach Pop has himself stated in hindsight, that he was ‘very very hard‘ on Tony Parker.
Coach Popovich is often in the modern ‘softer’ less physically era of the NBA basketball league called ‘Ole School’. Well, Coach Pop was always and remains ‘Ole School’. His age never determined his school of thought, correctness and perfection was the objective and motivation. The 2026 Spurs team got an ‘Ole School’ forthright direct honest truthful verbal lecture direct from ‘El Jefe’! The room listened in silence, but the pressure of truth was made apparent to all those present. Game four results would indicate that the message resulted in a change in behavior and performance.
Prior to game four, it was NOT the pressure from the Spur fans and the media hype outside of the locker room which was most felt by the team and organization, it was the critical but factual words of Coach Popovich which struck deepest.
The message to the team from Coach Pop, drilled into him from his days long ago at the Air Force Academy, you might lose a basketball game, you might lose something important in life, but you do NOT suffer that loss without being absolutely 100% certain you ‘GAVE EVERYTHING YOU CAN POSSIBLE GIVE’ to avoid loosing. If you do this, in that case and situation, the results will eventually become acceptable.
Sounds like an appropriate verbal message coming from an Air Force Cadet on Memorial day weekend, doesn’t it.
Top secret military information: Coach Greg Popovich, is also known as ‘The General’ .
Yes. (a.k.a.) Pop, (a.k.a.) El Chefe, (a.k.a.) Coach Pop, is also (a.k.a.) ‘The General of NBA Championship Basketball, (a.k.a.) General Hoops Popovich’
Above Videos, Coach Greg Popovich and Hall of Fame Basketball Player Tim Duncan attending game 4 of the Western Conference finals in San Antonio, TX, May 24, 2026 / David Bowie and Queen Live performance, ‘ Under Pressure’ , Wembley Stadium London 1989
THE GENERAL
Greg Popovich attended the United States Air Force Academy. He played on the academy’s Air Force Falcons men’s basketball team, and in his senior year was the team’s captain and leading scorer. Popovich completed his required years of service in the military after graduation.
He graduated from the Academy in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in Soviet studies. Popovich underwent Air Force intelligence training and briefly considered a career with the Central Intelligence Agency. To the benefit of the sport of basketball Popovich return to be an assistant basketball coach at the Air Force Academy after his service time expired.
In 1979 – after six years as an assistant coach at his alma mater, The United State Air Force Academy – a 30-year-old Popovich was named the head coach at Pomona-Pitzer, a hiring that was largely relegated to the agate pages or as a bullet point in notebooks in a small handful of California newspapers.
Greg Popovich played at the United States Air Force Academy for Bob Spears. Coach Spears hired Dean Smith as an assistant basketball coach at the Air Force Academy. Dean Smith coached Michael Jordan at the University of North Carolina.
Greg Popovich
A Ledgend
With Spurs On His Boots
Pop’s Players Love Him
Pop’s Players Love Him
… … … but not all of ’em
&
most of ’em, did NOT love him ALL the time!
Despite being respected by his players and the Spurs organization, Greg Popovich had to win two NBA titles before the general sentiment about his coaching would become positive.
In Dec. 1996, then-San Antonio Spurs general manager Gregg Popovich made what would become one of the shrewdest moves in NBA history, firing coach Bob Hill after a dreadful 3-15 start to the season and inserting himself into the position.
You probably know what came next.
The Spurs became one of the longest-running and unlikeliest dynasties in NBA history, winning five championships over a 15-year stretch while experiencing significant roster churn and employing wildly different playing styles from their first title to their last. And at the head of it all was Popovich, the wise and wry basketball genius who cemented his place as one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.
Watch Video Below Titled: ‘Nobody, Snake, to the G.O.A.T’ of coaches.
In 1979 – after six years as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Air Force – a 30-year-old Popovich was named the head coach at Pomona-Pitzer, a hiring that was largely relegated to the agate pages or as a bullet point in notebooks in a small handful of California newspapers.
The school he arrived at, Pomona College, is one of the top liberal arts schools in the country, but it had an enrollment of just 1,400 students. It was so small that a decade before Popovich was hired, it had combined its athletic department with Pitzer College, a newer, decidedly crunchier liberal arts college less than a mile from its campus and a fellow member of the Claremont Colleges consortium.
For as academically rigorous as the schools were, and perhaps because of it, they didn’t exactly churn out great athletes. Players at Pomona-Pitzer didn’t just lack the size and girth of their Division I contemporaries – that’s to be expected at the Division III level, where excellent, albeit smaller, basketball is played – but they were, for lack of a better phrase, not very good. In a 1986 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Popovich likened his first team to an intramural club.
“On that team, we had maybe four or five guys who had been starters in high school,” Peter Osgood, a player on Popovich’s first team, said to Grantland in 2015. “Most of the team wasn’t even good enough for that.”
Given what he inherited, Pomona-Pitzer’s climb under Popovich would be slow, steady and arduous.
In 1979-80, Popovich’s first season, the Sagehens – yes, that’s their real name – went just 2-22, with the nadir coming in a loss to Caltech that snapped its 99-game conference losing streak and handed the Beavers one of just two conference victories they enjoyed between 1971 and 2011.
For much of the season, they struggled to have enough players for 5-on-5 scrimmages in practice as some members of the team had quit and, depending on the day, others were tied up with classroom obligations.
Recruiting proved to be a grind, albeit one Popovich embraced. Long before the days of easily accessible highlight reels, Popovich penned lengthy, personalized hand-written notes in which he’d discuss a prospect’s on-court goals and academic ambitions. He’d call them to talk about their classes and families. Popovich and his staff did all of this while having to identify potentially impactful players from an extremely small subset of the high-school-aged population – recruits who could conceivably compete at the college level, but also have the grades to get into a school as selective as Pomona or Pitzer, institutions that didn’t offer the same kind of admissions wiggle room that many of the most academically prestigious Division I colleges enjoy. They tried to rely on local high school coaches to guide them in the right direction, but were more than occasionally misled. As Jordan Ritter Conn described it in his 2015 piece in Grantland, the Pomona-Pitzer coaches were frequently recommended “star players with B averages or geniuses who could barely mak
Early in his tenure, he lived in a dorm apartment with his wife and two children. He’d walk around the Claremont Colleges to look at various art installations. He and his kids would eat in the dining halls together. He attended lectures. He chaired a committee aiming to get rid of fraternities on campus. He’d hang out with professors to debate politics and philosophy over a glass (or several) of wine
Gregg Popovich’s Division III breakthrough
Over time, the Sagehens’ fortunes improved.
They went from 2-22 in Popovich’s first season to 10-15 in his second and finished .500 in their conference in his third season. The program’s trajectory was decidedly up, in part because of some of the skill its young coach had displayed in getting it there.
In a cold-hearted-but-ultimately-effective move, Popovich made every player from his first team try out to be a part of his second, with only two making the cut. He’d bring in more freshmen than he realistically would have needed, if only to increase his odds of stumbling upon a hidden gem or two. He formed a JV program, giving Pomona-Pitzer some much-needed depth and a developmental pipeline. From his first year to his second, the team’s average height rose three inches, from 6-foot-2 to 6-foot-5.
His tactical brilliance was put on display, too, often due to desperate circumstances. In those 4-on-4 scrimmages in his first season, he realized the Sagehens played better with two fewer players on the court at a given time, opening up lanes and spacing the floor. With not much to lose, he decided to try it out in a game, having four players come up the floor on offense while one lagged behind near midcourt, bringing a defender out to keep an eye on him. They’d play a four-out offense with nobody in the post and even when teams adjusted to bring the fifth defender into the fold, Pomona-Pitzer would have their wayward fifth man jump into an open spot at an opportune moment, transforming their offense from a horrid unit to something significantly more passable.
“He was pulling rabbits out of a hat,” Osgood said to Grantland. “He was like a magician, trying to find any way to make us good.”
Though he was sometimes led astray, Popovich remained a relentless recruiter, following every tip he got and every so often striking gold, just as he did with 6-foot-5 forward Dave DeCesaris from Riverside Community College, who chose Pomona over several Division I offers and went on to set most of the Sagehens’ all-time scoring records.
He benefited from a supportive administration, which is seldom a given at Division III schools where sports play a significantly smaller role in campus life. Specifically, there was Pomona’s dean, Bob Voelkel, a former Division III All-American basketball player who liked athletics and aimed to foster the success of his school’s teams.
During the 1985-86 season, Popovich’s seventh at the helm, those years of hard and diligent work came together for a run that Pomona-Pitzer had never seen to that point.
With DeCesaris leading the way averaging 22 points per game, the Sagehens won their league, the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, outright for the first time in 68 years. That earned them a spot in the NCAA Tournament, where they were blown out 89-59 by Nebraska Wesleyan in a game that Popovich told reporters “didn’t think that this would happen in my worst nightmare.”
Still, a group that he described before the tournament as “one talented person and 10 overachievers” reached a point few, if any, would have imagined two years earlier, let alone when Popovich was hired.
“We didn’t really care [about the NCAA Tournament loss,” Popovich said to The Student Life. “We’d have rather won, but we were so excited about winning the conference championship for the first time in so many years that it didn’t even feel like a loss.”
The invariable exit
After that run, the gears that led Popovich to basketball immortality were put into motion.
With the encouragement of Pomona athletic director Curt Tong, a former Division III coach himself, Popovich took a sabbatical. Rather than going abroad somewhere or taking time away from the game to avoid burnout, Popovich got a basketball education in which he was able to view the game through a lens that was previously unavailable to him.
While still a player in the early and mid-1970s, Popovich developed a relationship with legendary coach Larry Brown, who was twice a part of staffs that cut Popovich – first for the U.S. men’s national team for the 1972 Summer Olympics and then again in 1975 while Brown was the head coach of the Denver Nuggets, then of the ABA.
The two stayed in touch and following the 1985-86 season, Popovich went to learn under Brown. He spent October and November of the 1986-87 season at North Carolina, Brown’s alma mater, under Dean Smith before going through the rest of the season with Brown and Kansas, serving a key role on the Jayhawks’ bench and coaching a group of players, most notably Danny Manning, that would lead the program to the NCAA championship the following season.
Greg Popovich Wikipedia
Gregg Charles Popovich (born January 28, 1949)[1] is an American professional basketball executive and former coach who is the president for the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was the head coach of the Spurs for 29 seasons from 1996 to 2025, during which he won five NBA championships, and was the longest tenured active coach in the NBA as well as all other major sports leagues in the United States. He has been a member of the Spurs organization since 1994, originally as president of basketball operations and general manager, before taking over as coach in 1996. Nicknamed “Coach Pop“, Popovich has the most wins of any coach in NBA history,[2][3] and is widely regarded as one of the greatest coaches of all time.[4][5]
Popovich led the Spurs to a winning record in each of his first 22 full seasons as head coach, surpassing Phil Jackson for the most consecutive winning seasons in NBA history. During his tenure, the Spurs have had a winning record against every other NBA team. Popovich has been a key figure in the sustained success of the Spurs in the 1990s, the 2000s, and most of the 2010s.[6] Popovich has led the Spurs to all five of their NBA titles, and is one of only five coaches in NBA history to have won five titles. He was also the head coach of the U.S. national team at the 2020 Summer Olympics, leading the team to a gold medal. In 2023, Popovich was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.[7]
After 29 seasons as head coach of the Spurs, Popovich stepped down in 2025 and transitioned into a front office role as the team’s president of basketball operations.
Early life
Popovich was born on January 28, 1949, in East Chicago, Indiana, to a Serbian father and Croatian mother.[8][9][10] He graduated from Merrillville High School in 1966.
College career
Popovich attended the United States Air Force Academy. He played on the academy’s Air Force Falcons men’s basketball team, and in his senior year was the team’s captain and leading scorer.[11] He graduated from the Academy in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in Soviet studies. Popovich underwent Air Force intelligence training and briefly considered a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.[12][13][14]
Popovich served five years of required active duty in the United States Air Force, during which he toured Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with the U.S. Armed Forces Basketball Team.[14] In 1972, he was selected as captain of the Armed Forces Team, which won the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championship.[15] This earned the 6-foot-2-inch (1.88 m) guard an invitation to the 1972 U.S. Olympic Basketball Team trials.[16]
Coaching and executive career
Pomona-Pitzer and early career (1973–1994)
In 1973, Popovich returned to the Air Force Academy as an assistant coach under the school’s head basketball coach Hank Egan. Egan later became an assistant coach under Popovich for the San Antonio Spurs. During his time as an assistant coach at the Academy, Popovich earned a master’s degree in physical education and sports sciences from the University of Denver.
In 1979, Popovich was named the head coach of the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens, the joint men’s basketball team of Pomona College and Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Popovich coached the Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball team from 1979 to 1988, leading the team to its first outright title in 68 years.[17]
During his time as head coach at Pomona-Pitzer, Popovich became a disciple and later a close friend of head coach Larry Brown at the University of Kansas. Popovich took off the 1985–86 season at Pomona-Pitzer to become a volunteer assistant at Kansas, where he could study directly under Brown. Popovich returned to Pomona-Pitzer and resumed his duties as head coach the next season.
Following the 1987–88 season, Popovich joined Brown as the lead assistant coach for the Spurs. From 1988 to 1992, Popovich was Brown’s top assistant, until the entire staff, including R. C. Buford, Alvin Gentry and Ed Manning, were fired by owner Red McCombs. Popovich moved to the Golden State Warriors for a brief stint in 1992, serving as an assistant under future Hall of Famer Don Nelson and bringing with him Avery Johnson, who had been cut by the Spurs.
San Antonio Spurs (1994–2025)
In 1994, Popovich returned to San Antonio as the general manager and vice president of basketball operations after Peter Holt purchased the team. Popovich’s first move was to sign Avery Johnson as the team’s starting point guard. Another one of Popovich’s early moves in San Antonio was to trade Dennis Rodman to the Chicago Bulls for Will Perdue.[18]
After the Spurs had a 3–15 start in the 1996–97 season, with David Robinson sidelined with a preseason back injury, Popovich fired coach Bob Hill on December 10, 1996, and named himself head coach.[19] Robinson then broke his foot after only six games and was lost for the season. Sean Elliott was also limited to 39 games due to injury, and Chuck Person missed the entire season. With a reduced roster that included an aging Dominique Wilkins, the Spurs struggled and won only 17 games for the remainder of the season for an overall record of 20–62. The Spurs’ disastrous season allowed them the first overall pick in the 1997 NBA draft, which they used to draft Tim Duncan out of Wake Forest University.
The Spurs blossomed as the 6’11” Duncan teamed up with the 7’1″ Robinson in a “Twin Tower” offense and defense for several years. After recovering to win 56 games in 1997–1998 (Popovich’s first full year as coach), the Spurs won their first NBA title in 1999.
In 2002, Popovich relinquished his position as general manager to R. C. Buford, who had served as the team’s head scout. Popovich and Buford were both given their starts in the NBA in 1988 as assistants on Brown’s coaching staff with the Spurs.
Popovich has won five championships with the Spurs—1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014. He was named NBA Coach of the Year in 2003, 2012, and 2014.
On April 4, 2008, Popovich returned to the U.S. Air Force Academy to receive the academy’s award of Distinguished Graduate. Despite his four NBA titles at the time, Popovich said it was the most meaningful award he had ever received.[20]
On May 2, 2012, Popovich won his second Coach of the Year Award for the 2011–12 NBA season.[21]
On November 29, 2012, Popovich sat out starters Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginóbili, and Danny Green for a nationally televised game against the Miami Heat. Popovich frequently sat out his starters on road trips over the years to ensure they have enough rest for the playoffs; the Spurs’ roster was among the oldest in the league. NBA commissioner David Stern was outraged by this and said on the night of the game that it was “unacceptable”, and “substantial sanctions [would] be forthcoming”.[22] On November 30, Stern fined the Spurs $250,000 for what he called “a disservice to the league and the fans”. According to Stern, Popovich had not informed the Heat, the league or the media in a suitable time frame that the four players were not making the trip to Miami.[23] Stern’s decision was criticized by commentator Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.[24]
Popovich led the Spurs to the 2013 NBA Finals to face the Miami Heat. The series lasted seven games, but the Spurs had their first-ever Finals loss.
On April 22, 2014, Popovich was awarded the Red Auerbach Trophy as he won the NBA Coach of the Year for the third time.[25] He also won his fifth NBA championship with San Antonio that season, beating the Heat 4–1 in the Finals.
On February 9, 2015, Popovich became the ninth coach in NBA history to win 1,000 games when the Spurs defeated the Indiana Pacers 95–93. He and Jerry Sloan are the only two coaches in NBA history to win 1,000 games with one franchise.
On August 1, 2015, Popovich served as Team Africa’s head coach at the 2015 NBA Africa exhibition game.[26]
In the 2015–16 season, Popovich led the Spurs to a franchise-high 67 wins, but he and the team lost in the conference semifinals against the Oklahoma City Thunder in six games.
On February 4, 2017, Popovich recorded his 1,128th regular season win with one franchise, surpassing Sloan.[27]
On April 13, 2019, Popovich surpassed Lenny Wilkens and became the all-time winningest coach in NBA history with his 1,413th win (regular season and playoffs combined).[28]
On January 26, 2020, the Spurs hosted the Toronto Raptors just hours after a California helicopter crash claimed the lives of nine people, including NBA legend Kobe Bryant and his 13–year-old daughter Gianna, and Popovich proposed that both teams take an intentional 24-second shot clock violation on each of their first possessions to pay homage to Bryant’s jersey number 24, which he donned from 2006 to 2016. This violation tribute would subsequently be repeated at the beginning of nearly every game around the league over the rest of that day and the following days.[29]
On March 27, 2021, after leading his team to a 120–104 victory against the Chicago Bulls, Popovich won his 1,300th regular season game and became the third NBA coach to reach the milestone.[30]
On March 11, 2022, Popovich surpassed Don Nelson for most regular season wins of all time, notching his 1,336th regular season victory with the Spurs.[31] Popovich needed 370 fewer games than Nelson to achieve this record.[32]
On July 8, 2023, Popovich signed a five-year contract extension, keeping him with the franchise through the 2027–28 season.[33]
On November 2, 2024, Popovich suffered a stroke. Two days later, it was announced that he would take an indefinite leave of absence from the team, with assistant Mitch Johnson stepping in as interim head coach.[34] In a meeting with Spurs players on February 27, 2025, Popovich confirmed that he would not coach the team for the remainder of the season.[35] The Spurs would post a 34–48 record, but with Popovich only coaching five games that season, the NBA later announced that they would adjust Popovich’s career total by crediting the 32–45 record of the remaining 77 games to Johnson.[36]
On May 2, 2025, the Spurs announced that Popovich would step down as coach of the Spurs after 29 seasons and would transition to a new role as president of basketball operations.[37] Johnson was promoted to succeed Popovich as the Spurs head coach.[38]
National team career
Popovich served on the coaching staff for the U.S. men’s national team during the 2002 FIBA World Championship (assisting George Karl),[39] during the 2003 FIBA America Men’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament, and during the Athens 2004 Olympic Games (assisting Larry Brown), where the U.S. team won the bronze medal.
On October 23, 2015, Popovich was named the head coach of the U.S. men’s national team, taking over from Mike Krzyzewski after the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.[40]
At the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup, the U.S. national team finished in seventh place, its worst finish ever in international competition.[41]
With Popovich serving as the head coach for the U.S. men’s national team, he led the team to a gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, going 5–1 and defeating France 87–82 in the final.[42][43]
Personal life
Popovich was married to Erin Popovich for 42 years until her death on April 18, 2018; the couple has two children.[44]
Popovich is a serious wine collector and an investor in Oregon’s A to Z Wineworks.[45]
On November 2, 2024, Popovich had a stroke. He later took an indefinite leave from the Spurs to recover.[34]
On April 15, 2025, Popovich reportedly fainted at a restaurant before being taken to a hospital by ambulance. Within days, he had returned home.[46]
In 2020, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified the gene responsible for nectar spur growth in Aquilegia (columbines). The researchers behind the paper agreed to name the gene POPOVICH because one of them, Evangeline Ballerini, wanted “to name it after Gregg Popovich, in part, because the gene plays a regulatory role in spur development, kind of like a coach controls the development of their team”.[47]
Political views
On multiple occasions, Popovich has spoken out on behalf of social justice issues. He expressed support for the 2017 Women’s March.[12] He also repeatedly criticized the behavior of U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term in office.[48][49][50] Popovich endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.[51]
Humanitarian work
Popovich has spent considerable time and money working with several charities and nonprofits such as the San Antonio Food Bank and the Innocence Project. He also took part in Shoes That Fit, an organization that aims to deliver shoes to more than 200 students at Gates Elementary School affected by Hurricanes Irma and Maria.[52] Popovich is helping raise funds for J/P HRO, a disaster relief program that operates in Haiti, and various disaster relief organizations in the U.S. and Caribbean
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