Even though he isn’t the Spurs head coach anymore, Hall of Famer Gregg Popovich remains at the heart of the team and his guidance will go a long way in the NBA Finals.
Victor Wembanyama made sure that Pop was the first person he spoke to after the team landed back in San Antonio following their epic Game 7 win over OKC.
“I saw Pop right away when we landed,” Wembanyama said, via ESPN. “The emotion was something I haven’t felt in a while, I don’t even know since when. Coming back down from this is a challenge. We still need to really come back down to Earth and realize we haven’t done the hardest [task] yet.”
As well as Popovich, the Spurs have a unique set up in which plenty of influential people are guiding the team everyday, including Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, David Robinson, Sean Elliott and Bruce Bowen.
“It’s great,” Fox said. “Not even just Pop, just the organization as a whole. It’s a lot of people walking through this building that have been there and done that. We could just have practice, and Manu is there or Tim is there. We have these guys who have won multiple championships and been to the mountaintop multiple times. You can ask them anything.
“Obviously, Pop is going to come in. He’s going to speak his mind. He comes to shootarounds, practices. You’ll see him here and there. It can be something as small as boxing someone out on a free throw or one extra pass that happened at this point of the game that could have changed the game.
“It’s just great having those types of people in your ear,” he continued. “They’re not saying it because it made them successful. They want to see other people be successful. That’s a great thing to have, especially throughout the course of a long year and in a long Finals run.”
If the team do bring the Larry O’Brien trophy home to San Antonio, it’s clear their cohesive approach will have worked.
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