'He Always Gives Advice': What Gregg Popovich Told Spurs Before Playoffs

SAN ANTONIO - Gregg Popovich led the Spurs to 22-consecutive playoff appearances and five titles as a coach.

Then came a six-year drought, and a stroke that took the legendary figure off the sideline but not out of the picture. Now the President of Basketball Operations, Popovich addressed his guys before they make their first postseason run as a unit. For many, it will be their first postseason run period.

"He's been in and out of the building this year, so I think guys have been kind of used to seeing him," De'Aaron Fox said Friday. "With the playoffs on he spoke to the team two days ago, but I wouldn't say there's added pressure. If anything, you want to win more."

Popovich does his rehabilitation work at the team facility, often accompanied by Tim Duncan or Manu Ginobili. He hasn't spoken publicly since a press conference flanked by those two to announce his new role. By all accounts he's recovering well, and he was seen on the court at practice on Friday checking in with his successor Mitch Johnson and various other members of the team.

So what did Pop say when he addressed the team?

"One to congratulate us on, that's a successful regular season," Fox said. "And then two, just the changes that are gonna happen between the regular season and the playoffs. He’s one of the winningest coaches ever, one of the coaches with the most rings ever, so it’s only right that he felt like he needed to come in and preach to the choir.”

The differences in the playoffs are well known. The pace slows down, the physicality ramps up, the whistles blow less frequently. It sounds like the more valuable message from Popovich was for this young team to be themselves.

“Just to be us, not to really do anything different from what we’ve been doing all season,” Steph Castle said. “I think he kind of just gave us another perspective on how well we’ve been playing and the position we’ve put ourselves in. So, just keep doing what we’ve been doing to get in those spots.“He’s helped me and a lot of the other guys on the team, just having somebody to talk to. Whether games are going good, games are going bad, just knowing Pop, he’ll always tell you the real.”

"We don't want to change who we are, we just want to do what we do better, and do what we do with more physicality, faster, be the same team," Fox said. "We got the No. 2 seed for a reason, you don't want to change who you are."

San Antonio won 62 games this season, and Mitch Johnson has young Spurs playing an intense and successful brand of basketball with a strong identity. Johnson has been able to lead this team his own way, but always with Popovich right there to support him.

"He's, for me, obviously a constant resource of feedback and thoughts and ideas and someone I can ask questions to," Johnson said. "So I know I will continue to do that. I think he's done a great job of sharing a lot of wisdom and experiences that he's had, and then also allowing the group and us and myself to go through it on our own as well."

"Our team has a journey that we've been through this year that is not the same as any team before us, different than many of his teams that went through it. There was a lot of similarities, but not one was the same as the other. And I think fortunately for me, he's kind of really set the tone of a really good balance of all that, and I plan to definitely have some conversations with him in the next couple of weeks."

Victor Wembanyama played his first season under Popovich, and before his first trip to the NBA playoffs he's trying to soak up as much of that corporate knowledge as he possibly can.

"Coach Pop always gives advice for sure, I want to talk with the players though, I haven't talked to them yet," Wembanyama said. "I'm hungry for knowledge, but also it's so much going on and we also have our own identity as this team."

From what the players are saying, Popovich's advice to them now centers around owning that identity.

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