Good article on how Pop acts. I clipped out the rest of the article, a spat between Pop and Calaneglo for picking Dukes Krysowski to coach the olymipic team.
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 titles 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 circumstance, 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 entitlements 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."
