There is a particular quality about the light in San Antonio in late May, just before the heat gets mean, and it’s the kind of light that makes you understand why a man like Gregg Popovich would choose to die here, eventually, far in the future, on his own terms, after one more lecture to the then Spurs’ head coach about defensive rotations. The light comes in across the River Walk early in the day, and at six in the evening you wonder if it’s ever going to leave, like a relative you can’t stand. Through all this, one constant remains, in a film room that hasn’t been photographed, game 7 is queued up again, because that’s what they do here. They watch the film. They watch it one more time. It’s the prayer cast into the heavens and the answer that wins the games.
You have to understand what Pop built. We’ll get to last night. But none of it makes sense if you don’t understand where it all came from. Twenty-nine years on the bench. Five championships. A coaching tree that is so large it has its own atmosphere. Steve Kerr in Golden State. Ime Udoka in Houston. Mike Brown in New York, the man standing in between the Spurs and another chip, learned how to break down different pick-and-roll plays, while Duncan was learning how to effectively drop to counter one. Same chalkboard. Opposite ends of the floor. Pop taught them both, he just never told either one that they’d meet each other in the end. After learning from him, his disciples were sent out into the league to make more disciples. Now, the league is a Popovich seminar, and most people don’t even know they’re attending one.
Last Spring, he stepped down. Health, mostly. Pride, partly. The job went to Mitch Johnson, who had been an assistant coach for eight years, who had been learning, the way you learn a language by living in another country. By getting yelled at in it, getting in arguments in it, and ordering food wrong so many times that when you get it right, no one cares.
Then, there is the kid.
All the way from Le Chesnay, a small suburb of Versailles, –– yes –– that Versailles, there is something almost absurdly French that he ended up here. A city founded by Spanish missionaries on Comanche land that became Mexican territory before it was Texas and before it was American. In a basketball organization that has more passports than a customs office. Victor Wembanyama is 7 foot 4, or 5, but that fact doesn’t begin to prepare you for the actual experience of watching him play. Centers that tall shouldn’t be able to move like that. He shoots threes off the dribble like he’s a foot shorter. He blocks shots that nobody knew were blockable yet, brushing the ball away like an annoying media question. Last night, he finished with 22 points and 7 rebounds. A good statline, but one that completely misses important facts, like 7 possessions where Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the MVP, who had carved the Spurs up for 35, saw him at the rim and chose, instead, to kick it out. That is the Pop stat, the stat that doesn’t show up. The shot you scared a grown man out of taking.
The Spurs won 111-103. They had seven players in double digits, a sentence, to anyone that knows, is the most Popovich sentence ever constructed, even if he wasn’t on the bench to construct it. Champagnie’s six threes, every shot he made was behind the arc. A player who was picked up by the Spurs after being waived in 2023, ROI that the Spurs have been cashing in on since David Robinson was around. Dylan Harper –– rookie Dylan Harper, shooting a stepback three in the face of the MVP with no hesitation, less than a minute after a swift offensive rebound and putback. A putback from sophomore Stephon Castle. And perhaps the most important one, a chasedown block from Luke Kornet, a man who’s entire objective on the court was to not be punished that bad while Wemby rested.
Here is the thing about a Pop team that you don’t fully appreciate until you watch his team of one era die and another be born: the system outlives the man. You always pass, every pass is a prayer. If you want a better prayer, make another pass. Don’t stand around hogging the ball and isolating. You move, you talk, constantly, until your throat hurts, because the other teams only stand a chance when there is silence. Last night the Spurs talked the whole game. A defense and offense that had been rehearsed since October. Mitch Johnson didn’t invent that. By his own admission, he just curated it in a newer way. The choreography belongs to someone else.
And the kid, he’s the most devout believer of them all. He could have turned out way different, became a type of player that no one would even fault him for becoming. He could be Embiid, demanding the ball, getting his numbers, and losing the mental game when the offense doesn’t rely on him. Instead, he plays the right way, what the modern NBA fan calls the “ethical” way. He gives up switches that might be better for his stats to get switches that are better for his team. He plays like a man who has read the gospel and believes every word. As a young French boy, he grew up watching Tony Parker, he saw what the Popovich system requires and what it rewards to those who believe. Even if Pop isn’t there coaching anymore, he is still playing the way Pop would want, which is the most Pop thing he could do.
It’s June now. Wednesday the 3rd. New York hasn’t been to the finals since 1999 –– when Pop and the Spurs won their first one. The symmetry of this encounter is a marketing team's prayer answered. Jalen Brunson against De’Aaron Fox. Karl-Anthony Towns, trying his hardest not to pick up fouls against a 7’4 Frenchman in the paint. OG Anunoby playing help on Wemby for 48 minutes.
The Spurs were not supposed to win the battle against OKC. They weren’t supposed to be anywhere. They were just 22-60 two seasons ago. Now, they’re the favorites to win it all.
I am eating wings from an unnamed place, breaking my neck to look up at the TV. In Texas, I don’t have to tell you what team is responsible for the restaurant’s cheers. Meanwhile, somewhere, whether in the Spurs facility, at a suite, or in his house, Pop is watching too, saying nothing. And to anyone that’s watched Spurs basketball over the last 30 years, that’s the loudest thing he could possibly say.