Hail Pop

Good morning. Gregg Popovich steps down as head coach of the Spurs, leaving a beautiful legacy that continues on in his coaching tree, including his successor Mitch Johnson. Plus: Houston bullies the four-time champs. Let's basketball.

Whether Gregg Popovich is the greatest coach in NBA history depends how you feel about Phil Jackson's oeuvre and whether you can separate Red Auerbach's brilliant personnel work from his coaching acumen. At minimum, Popovich is in the conversation. On Friday he announced he has stepped down as head coach of the Spurs after 29 seasons after suffering a stroke early this season. Mitch Johnson, who took over for Pop this season, has been named the head coach.

Popovich was long known as gruff, exacting and enforcing relentlessly high standards. His comically terse in-game interviews with sideline reporters went viral in earlier days of the full-fledged basketball internet. One of the most reliable compliments of Tim Duncan, a top-5 all-time player, was that he was willing to get screamed at by Popovich, just like the rookies and the end-of-the-bench players.

The vision of Pop eventually softened as stories got out about how sweet he was as a person to beat writers, to his players, to other teams' players, to Spurs staffers, to normal humans. That's been a universal comment in reactions to the news: just about everyone loves Pop, even longtime Spurs foes, even players he (and his front office) traded away. LeBron, Kobe, CP3, Steph, Durant: they all love Pop. (It'll be interesting to see what Kawhi Leonard says during media availability on Saturday since that's the one star player who had a messy break-up with the Spurs.)

Pop also got political, especially at the onset of the Trump era. That probably endeared him to more basketball fans and did the opposite for many Texans. And that's something that will probably continue given that he's keeping a position in the Spurs front office as president of basketball operations.

Beyond the heights to which he led San Antonio and the human connections he made, Popovich also has the single most invasive and resilient coaching three in the league: Johnson, Steve Kerr, Mike Brown, Ime Udoka, Will Hardy, Mike Budenholzer, Brett Brown, James Borrego, Becky Hammon, Taylor Jenkins and then some additional branches off of those coaches. (Budenholzer essentially has a tree of his own.) Most of the league's head coaches have coached or played under Popovich or been on the staff of someone who coached or played under Popovich. His influence is so ubiquitous in the league that it's rendered almost invisible.

He's not dead so we'll save the eulogies. I've burned a couple hours already following the YouTube rabbit hole of people in the NBA saying really nice things about Popovich, though. I encourage you to do the same if you have some time.

Bullies and the Bullied

A team with four championships in the past decade, with one of the most physical and angry defenders in the modern NBA, with an all-time great still capable of dominating against any scheme, with one of the most confident inside-out wings of his generation – that team, the Golden State Warriors, got bulled on Friday night in Houston's 115-107 win to force a Game 7.