Why Gregg Popovich was the real Coach of the Year
Steve Kerr is your Coach of the Year for the 2015-16 NBA season, a perfectly justifiable choice. The Golden State Warriors lost only nine games in 82 tries, a feat that won’t be topped for quite some time (unless Steph Curry gets mad and decides he doesn’t want to miss any of his shots next season).
Nothing against Kerr, who seems like a superb human being and unimpeachable leader. But San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, who finished third, was even more deserving of this season's award.
NBA Coach of the Year results. pic.twitter.com/RjLgn8Stqg
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpearsESPN) April 26, 2016
This is far less about Kerr's faults than Popovich’s immaculate campaign. But here's why the voters got it wrong.
Let's begin with an inarguable layup. The five-time NBA champion and three-time Coach of the Year winner is flat out better than his competition. He’s bold, creative, impulsive and calculating. No coach better weighs long-term cost over short-term benefit. Popovich’s foresight is the stuff of legend, and just about every decision he makes is perceived as being for the greater good, no matter how odd it looks in real time.
Pop is a basketball oracle who’s responsible for the most selfless and successful culture in professional sports. He wins a ton of games, demands the respect of players (and officials) and gets the most out of his team on a nightly basis.
The easy counter argument to this point is that Coach of the Year isn’t a lifetime achievement award. To that: The Spurs didn’t lose an NBA record-tying one game at home all season by accident. Does he make mistakes? Of course — Popovich is human. But they’re few and far between.
Kerr missed the season’s first 43 games (in which Golden State went 39-4) due to poor health, but those games are still attributed to his permanent record. There’s technically nothing wrong here, but it should be taken into consideration when other coaches who are up for the award, you know, didn’t miss half the season.
In the three seasons Popovich won Coach of the Year, San Antonio won 60, 50 (in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season) and 62 games, respectively. This year, they went 67-15 and were arguably his best regular-season squad ever.
As the entire league (non-Los Angeles Lakers edition) embraced pace and space, small-ball lineups and the three-point line, Popovich looked at his personnel and went in the exact opposite direction.
The Spurs stayed big and slow all year long. They didn’t shoot a bunch of 3s or live at the free-throw line, either. But in grading an 82-game final product, process is much less important than results.
And the results say that the Spurs were an undeniable juggernaut: They finished first in point differential and had the best defense in the league. Their offense ranked in the top three, and they moved the ball (and rebounded it) as well as anybody.
The Spurs were historically great, in large part, because Popovich pushed all the right buttons. They didn’t have to adopt a strategy the rest of basketball has by and large turned their back on, but they did, because Popovich is fearless, doesn't care what people think and knows more than everyone else.
So much of San Antonio’s success is the direct result of continuity. Their core players (Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker) are Hall of Fame-level talents, but their consistent dominance is also tied to them having played together for yeeeears. They know the playbook, the system and the defensive rotations so well. On the basketball court, those three, along with several more key role players, communicate with their minds.
They know where each other is going to be. They flow, read and react to what the opponent is doing so effortlessly. This brilliance can’t happen overnight. It takes years, and Popovich deserves credit annually for his part in keeping it all together for so long.
This season, Kawhi Leonard’s rapid rise, combined with LaMarcus Aldridge’s fundamental enrollment, are two significant additions to the status quo that could have easily thrown a wrench into San Antonio’s whirring machine.
Adding a ball-dominant isolation artist to a system that prides itself on making the extra pass — without skipping a beat — is nearly impossible. But Popovich reinvented everything on the fly while simultaneously getting Aldridge to buy in and willingly make sacrifices.
Furthermore, Leonard wouldn’t be the top-five player he is without Popovich as his coach. That development, which crescendoed this season, should factor into Pop’s accomplishments, too.
***
Popovich did a tremendous job this year. He’s arguably the best basketball coach who ever lived, and was more impressive than any of his colleagues throughout this season. Why even have the award if it's not given to him?
