Pop Go the Spurs

By MARK HEISLER

June 25, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK —

It has been a remarkable season, or at least a remarkably short one, which is how Gregg Popovich, coach and general manager of the nearly champion San Antonio Spurs, went from endangered to the brink of a dream in three months.

It’s a happy story, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

OK, maybe it could.

With apologies to Frank Perdue, it took a tough guy to get this team beyond being so tender, and Popovich was just the man for the job.

He has been their general manager for five seasons, coach for the last three. In his first season, he was ordered to rein in Dennis Rodman, which, as Laker fans have learned, is either difficult or impossible, and blew up the Spurs similarly in the 1995 Western Conference finals.

In Popovich’s third season as general manager, he fired coach Bob Hill, who had won 121 games in two seasons, but started 3-15 without David Robinson--pulling the trigger as Robinson came off the injured list, which was . . . how to put it . . . a bit unseemly.

Even in down-home, friendly, fiesta-loving, Spurs-adoring San Antonio, this has never been forgotten. It didn’t make it any better when Robinson’s back went out again and they finished 20-62. Of course, everyone cheered up when the Spurs, who had the third-worst record, jumped over the Boston Celtics and Vancouver Grizzlies and won Tim Duncan in the lottery.

What no one realized was that Popovich already had begun toughening up the soft Spurs, setting the stage for the turnaround they could cap tonight.

“We were in a position that year, guys were dropping like flies,” says Will Perdue, one of the four survivors, with Robinson, Avery Johnson and Sean Elliott.

“And the one thing he tried to instill in us, he started with a defensive philosophy. You know, pounding that into guys’ heads--even though we were winning one out of every five, six games.”

Says Popovich: “Overall, the philosophy we have is, all the talk about defense is just that. Unless your team really commits down deep in their gut, and to each other, that defense is what they’re going to hang their hat on, it’s not going to work.

“We tried to do it by demanding it, giving minutes according to defense, doing whatever we had to do to make sure people understood they could not be in the program if they didn’t buy that philosophy. And now we’ve got a group of guys that buy it, big time. That’s what sustains us.”

Perfect he may have been, but likely?

Popovich is a graduate of the Air Force Academy who majored in Russian studies and worked in U.S. Air Force intelligence after graduation.

(The New York Daily News recently suggested he was CIA, a notion he pooh-poohs: “There’s nothing there, I’m just a jock.” Tabloid competition being what it is, we might not have heard the end of it. If this series lasts, someone else may suggest he’s a Communist double agent.)

Popovich’s first coaching job was at Division III Pomona-Pitzer, where he made $17,000 and lived in a dorm with his wife and two children, serving as the house parents. If you want to really know who he is, they loved it. He walked his kids to nursery school in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon. They usually had their meals in the school cafeteria.

Said Popovich to the San Antonio Express-News: “We thought we lived pretty high.”

Even higher living loomed. A meeting with Larry Brown turned into an offer to be a volunteer assistant at Kansas, then an assistant in San Antonio (Brown, of course, got around.) Then Popovich went to Golden State under Don Nelson, picking up administrative experience since Nelson, who was general manager too, farmed out duties to assistants.

Finally, on a recommendation from Nelson, Popovich returned to San Antonio as boss and the fun started.

Four years of painful rebuilding later, the Spurs started 6-8 this season, amid reports Popovich would be asked to go back upstairs and hire a coach to succeed himself, or worse.

“We never really worried about proving this, that or the other, right or wrong, or vindication or all that sort of thing,” he says. “We honestly knew that we would be a good basketball team if we had time to put it together.”

Or maybe he worried a tiny bit.

“Well, if you’re a human being and you’re 6-8, you sort of go like this [swiveling his head] a little bit,” he says. “You look around. But ownership was great. They didn’t come down and say, you better get off your ass or we’re going to trade six players, we’re going to get new coaches.

“They didn’t do anything like that. [Owner] Peter Holt came down and he said, ‘Are you going to get this done?’

“I said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to get it done.’

“ ‘Well, go get it done.’

“That was it.”

That may not have been it, completely. The Express-News reported feelers went out to Doc Rivers, who lives in San Antonio and broadcasts Spur games.

Just as Popovich said, the team righted itself, with a vengeance, finishing the season 31-5, blitzing through the playoffs. A victory tonight would tie them with the 1990-91 Chicago Bulls at 15-2 for the second-best percentage, behind the ‘82-83 Philadelphia 76ers, 12-1.

Is that tough enough?

Popovich is one of a kind, without pretension but with attitude. When you meet him, he introduces himself--”Hi, I’m Gregg Popovich”--and talks lyrically. Then, often after games when the adrenaline is still coursing through his system, he may guffaw, roll his eyes and/or sneer at questions, as if asking, “OK, who let the idiot into the room?”

It’s not only strangers. He used to terrorize beat writers, and a San Antonio TV guy says: “I just walk away from him when he does that. I tell him, ‘If I want to take that kind of abuse, I can go home.’ ”

Popovich, however, inspires fierce loyalty from people who have broken through, some of whom are in the press, who prize his honesty and humility. He’s almost too real. Uninterested in fame, riches and public relations, he tells it the way he feels it and makes up with whomever later.

Life is full of people who want it both ways. Tim Duncan, for example, shy guy from the islands, is still working out this privacy-notoriety thing. His eyes roll back when the press comes around in packs, but then you turn on the TV in San Antonio, and there he is, doing commercials for car dealers.

Popovich, however, wants it only one way.

Everything around coaching, except basketball, he says, is “relatively unenjoyable. I just say no.”

To everything?

“Yes.”

Might that ever change?

“No.”

Why?

“I’d rather have a life,” he says. “I mean, I want to go to work and do my job the way you do, but I’d rather not spend the rest of my time away from the family, away from what I want to do personally, just to satisfy a lot of other people who don’t really give a damn about me.

“So, why not just take care of your own life? That’s what everybody here does. So I’m going to do my best and not be affected by anything else that goes on.”

It’s going to be harder because more is going to be happening, but one thing looks as sure as anything: Gregg Popovich is going to stay Gregg Popovich.

Take a good look, Laker fans, you could be seeing a lot of this guy.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SPURS UNDER GREGG POPOVICH

Regular Season: 110-86

Playoffs: 18-7

NEW YORK vs. SAN ANTONIO

Spurs lead best-of-seven series, 3-1

Tonight: at Knicks

6, TV: Channel 4 (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Popovich’s Career BACKGROUND BORN: January 28, 1949, East Chicago, Ind. HIGH SCHOOL: Merrilville (Ind.) COLLEGE: Air Force ‘72-73 through ‘77-78: Assistant coach, Air Force ‘79-80 through ‘85-86: Head Coach, Pomona-Pitzer college (69-110 record, .385) ‘88-89 through ‘91-92: Assistant coach, San Antonio Spurs ‘92-’93 through ‘93-94: Assistant coach, Golden State Warriors 1994 to present: Named executive vice president of basketball operations/general manager, Spurs 1996: Replaced Bob Hill as San Antonio head coach, with record of 3-15 and club in seventh place.

SPURS UNDER POPOVICH

REGULAR SEASON

*--*

Year W L Pct. ‘96-97 17 47 .266 ‘97-98 56 26 .683 ‘99* 37 13 .740 Total 110 86 .561

*--*

PLAYOFFS

*--*

Year W L Pct. ‘96-97 - - - ‘97-98 4 5 .444 ‘99* 14 2 .875 Total 18 7 .720

*--*

*Finals not finished

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

San Antonio vs. New York