Gregg Popovich

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Gregg Popovich was born on the 28th of January 1949 in East Chicago, Indiana, the son of a Serbian father and a Croatian mother. Decades later, a group of scientists would name a plant gene after him. The gene, discovered in columbine flowers, controls the development of spurs. Researcher Evangeline Ballerini chose the name POPOVICH because, as she put it, the gene plays a regulatory role in spur development, kind of like a coach controls the development of their team. It is a quietly fitting tribute. Popovich spent 29 years shaping one franchise, the San Antonio Spurs, into the most consistently winning team of its era. He coached more regular-season victories than any coach in NBA history. He guided the Spurs to five championships. He is one of only five coaches in league history to win that many titles. Yet the story of how a kid from Indiana with a degree in Soviet studies and a detour through Air Force intelligence ended up becoming the most decorated bench coach the sport has ever produced is stranger and more layered than any trophy count suggests.

• 2. The Making of a Coach

  ›

  Popovich graduated from Merrillville High School in 1966 and enrolled at the United States Air Force Academy, where he became the team captain and leading scorer of the Air Force Falcons basketball team in his senior year. His degree, earned in 1970, was in Soviet studies. He then underwent Air Force intelligence training and briefly considered a career with the Central Intelligence Agency. Instead, he served five years of active duty, during which he toured Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with the U.S. Armed Forces Basketball Team. In 1972, he was selected as captain of the Armed Forces Team, which won the Amateur Athletic Union championship. That achievement earned the six-foot-two guard an invitation to the 1972 U.S. Olympic Basketball Team trials.

  After his military service, Popovich returned to the Air Force Academy in 1973 as an assistant coach under Hank Egan, the man who would later serve as an assistant under Popovich in San Antonio. During those years at the Academy, Popovich pursued a master's degree in physical education and sports sciences from the University of Denver. In 1979 he became head coach of the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens, the joint men's basketball program of Pomona College and Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He coached that team for nine seasons, long enough to lead it to its first outright title in 68 years.

  The pivotal relationship of his early career formed during his time at Pomona-Pitzer, when he became a disciple and then a close friend of Larry Brown at the University of Kansas. In the 1985-86 season, Popovich took a leave from Pomona-Pitzer to serve as a volunteer assistant at Kansas, studying under Brown directly. That apprenticeship set the course for everything that followed. When Brown joined the San Antonio Spurs, Popovich followed as his lead assistant, a role he held from 1988 to 1992.

• 3. Taking the Wheel

  ›

  On the 10th of December 1996, the San Antonio Spurs stood at 3-15. David Robinson, their franchise center, had been sidelined with a preseason back injury. Popovich, then the team's general manager, fired head coach Bob Hill and named himself head coach. The situation promptly worsened. Robinson broke his foot after only six games and was lost for the year. Sean Elliott played in just 39 games due to injury. Chuck Person missed the entire season. With a roster that included an aging Dominique Wilkins, the Spurs won only 17 games after Popovich took over. Their final record of 20-62 was dismal. It also gave them the first overall pick in the 1997 NBA draft.

  With that pick, the Spurs selected Tim Duncan out of Wake Forest University. The six-foot-eleven Duncan paired with the seven-foot-one Robinson to form what became known as a "Twin Towers" offense and defense. The turnaround was swift. Popovich's first full season as coach produced 56 wins. The following year, in 1999, the Spurs won their first NBA championship.

  Popovich had returned to San Antonio in 1994 when Peter Holt purchased the team, joining as general manager and vice president of basketball operations. Among his early moves was signing Avery Johnson as the team's starting point guard. He also traded Dennis Rodman to the Chicago Bulls for Will Perdue. In 2002, he handed the general manager duties to R. C. Buford, who had joined the Spurs in 1988 as part of Brown's same coaching staff alongside Popovich. That handoff let Popovich concentrate on the sideline, where he would remain for more than two decades.

• 4. Five Rings and the Records Behind Them

  ›

  Popovich won his five NBA championships in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014. The 2014 title came against the Miami Heat, a 4-1 series win that avenged a seven-game Finals loss to Miami the previous year. That same season, he won the Red Auerbach Trophy as NBA Coach of the Year for the third time, having previously won the award in 2003 and 2012.

  The Spurs reached a franchise-high 67 wins in the 2015-16 season, though they lost in the conference semifinals to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Across his first 22 full seasons as head coach, Popovich led the Spurs to a winning record every year, a streak that surpassed Phil Jackson's record for the most consecutive winning seasons in NBA history. The Spurs also recorded a winning record against every other team in the league during his tenure.

  On the 9th of February 2015, Popovich became the ninth coach in NBA history to win 1,000 games when the Spurs defeated the Indiana Pacers 95-93. On the 4th of February 2017, his 1,128th regular-season win with one franchise moved him past Jerry Sloan. He and Sloan remain the only two coaches in NBA history to win 1,000 games with a single franchise. On the 13th of April 2019, Popovich surpassed Lenny Wilkens to become the all-time winningest coach in NBA history, counting both regular season and playoff games combined. On the 11th of March 2022, he passed Don Nelson for the most regular-season wins of all time, reaching 1,336, doing so in 370 fewer games than Nelson required to set the mark.

• 5. Controversies and Convictions

  ›

  On the 29th of November 2012, Popovich sat out starters Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Danny Green for a nationally televised game against the Miami Heat. This was not an aberration. Popovich had long rested players during road trips to preserve them for the playoffs, a strategy shaped in part by the Spurs carrying one of the oldest rosters in the league. NBA commissioner David Stern called the decision "unacceptable" on the night of the game and warned that substantial sanctions would follow. The next day, Stern fined the Spurs $250,000, citing what he described as a disservice to the league and the fans and arguing that Popovich had not given the Heat, the league, or the media adequate notice that the four players would not make the trip. Commentator Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports was among those who criticized Stern's response.

  Popovich's convictions extended beyond the court. He expressed support for the 2017 Women's March. He repeatedly criticized the conduct of U.S. President Donald Trump during Trump's first term, and he endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. He contributed time and money to organizations including the San Antonio Food Bank, the Innocence Project, Shoes That Fit, and the disaster relief program J/P HRO, which operates in Haiti.

  On the 26th of January 2020, hours after a California helicopter crash killed nine people including NBA player Kobe Bryant and Bryant's 13-year-old daughter Gianna, Popovich proposed that both the Spurs and the visiting Toronto Raptors take an intentional 24-second shot clock violation on each of their first possessions. The tribute honored Bryant's jersey number 24, which he wore from 2006 to 2016. The gesture spread; by the end of that day and through the following days, nearly every team in the league repeated it.

• 6. The National Stage

  ›

  Popovich first joined the U.S. men's national team coaching staff as an assistant to George Karl at the 2002 FIBA World Championship. He later assisted Larry Brown at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, where the American team won the bronze medal. On the 23rd of October 2015, he was named head coach of the national team, succeeding Mike Krzyzewski after the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

  His first major test as head coach came at the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup, where the U.S. team finished seventh, its worst result ever in international competition. Two years later, at the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo, Popovich guided the team to a gold medal. The Americans went 5-1, defeating France 87-82 in the final.

• 7. The End of an Era

  ›

  On the 2nd of November 2024, Popovich suffered a stroke. Two days later, the Spurs announced he would take an indefinite leave of absence, with assistant Mitch Johnson stepping in as interim head coach. At a meeting with Spurs players on the 27th of February 2025, Popovich confirmed he would not return for the remainder of the season. Because he coached only five games that year, the NBA adjusted his career totals by crediting the remaining 77 games and their 32-45 record to Johnson.

  On the 2nd of May 2025, the Spurs announced that Popovich would step down as head coach after 29 seasons and move into a front office role as president of basketball operations. Johnson was promoted to the head coaching position. In 2023, before the stroke, Popovich had been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. That same year, he signed a five-year contract extension that would have kept him with the franchise through the 2027-28 season.

  Popovich's wife, Erin, died on the 18th of April 2018, after 42 years of marriage. The couple had two children. He had undergone hip replacement surgery and two heart procedures in 2014, and on the 15th of April 2025, he reportedly fainted at a restaurant and was taken to a hospital by ambulance before returning home within days. He also found one other form of distinction outside basketball: a serious wine collector, he became an investor in Oregon's A to Z Wineworks. On the 4th of April 2008, when the Air Force Academy gave him its Distinguished Graduate award, Popovich said it was the most meaningful honor he had ever received, despite holding four NBA championship rings at the time.