{"id":12938,"date":"2025-05-06T09:26:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T09:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/12938\/"},"modified":"2025-05-06T09:26:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T09:26:19","slug":"golden-state-warriors-steve-kerr-reflects-on-gregg-popovichs-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/12938\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden State Warriors’ Steve Kerr reflects on Gregg Popovich’s impact"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr<\/a> walked into the interview room at Chase Center on Friday afternoon wearing a black T-shirt featuring a picture of Gregg Popovich.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPop\u2019s gonna kill me for wearing this shirt,\u201d Kerr said before the Warriors played the Houston Rockets<\/a> in Game 6. \u201cHe\u2019d call me a hapless rube.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kerr had mixed emotions Friday as he reflected on the enormous influence that Popovich, the league\u2019s all-time winningest coach, had on his life and career. Popovich officially retired as the San Antonio Spurs\u2019 coach Friday after a 29-year run that included five world championships and induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

Popovich, 76, stepped away from being an active coach after he suffered a stroke<\/a> at the team\u2019s arena in November. He had another medical incident<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

Popovich will become the Spurs\u2019 president of basketball operations,<\/a> and former Stanford guard Mitch Johnson, a Spurs assistant who filled in for Popovich, will become San Antonio\u2019s full-time head coach.<\/p>\n

Kerr won two NBA championships as a player under Popovich in San Antonio.<\/p>\n

\u201cPop is one of the most important people in my life for many, many reasons, and most of them go way beyond basketball,\u201d said Kerr, who visited Popovich three weeks ago when the Warriors were in San Antonio. \u201cBut it\u2019s a sad day. It\u2019s also an encouraging day, because this is a natural transition for him, organizationally, to move into his next role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it also gives him the space and time he needs to recover from the health issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Popovich\u2019s career coaching record was 1,422-869, and his 170 playoff games with the Spurs are the most by any coach with any team, and the third-most overall behind Phil Jackson (229) and Pat Riley (171).<\/p>\n

Kerr credited Popovich and Jackson, another of his former coaches,<\/a> with helping to revolutionize the position from a dictatorship to one more based on collaboration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose two guys, in my mind, helped create the current culture that we\u2019re in, for coaching and team building, where it\u2019s so much based on human values, human connection, and then a fierce competitive desire to go with that,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re all searching for, and I think Pop sort of helped create that vibe around the league and in other sports, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kerr was coached by Popovich in San Antonio for three-plus seasons, first from 1999-2001, and again in Kerr\u2019s final season as a player in 2002-03 when he won his second NBA title<\/a> with the team.<\/p>\n

But the two would develop a close friendship beyond basketball,<\/a> with Popovich\u2019s willingness to speak up on social issues profoundly impacting Kerr\u2019s desire to do the same with his sizeable platform, particularly regarding racial inequality and gun control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 100% inspired by Pop to have the courage to speak out and take the hits that you\u2019re going to take if you do,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cI knew how much he loved his country, and I knew how much his Air Force experience meant to him. And I think that conviction combined with, say, the shenanigans of this century politically \u2014 all the B.S. kind of started right around that time, the turn of the century \u2014 where between social media and buffoonery politically, we just got into this current era we\u2019re in, where everybody\u2019s screaming at each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think he already had the conviction, but he saw what was happening, and he wanted to make sure he spoke out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the two would sometimes jokingly take shots at each other through the media, there was always a deep well of respect between them. The two had enough in common that people speculated that the two would form a presidential ticket. A website, www.popovichkerr2020.com, was created and featured mugs and T-shirts in the style of campaign posters.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe probably was one of the first coaches in the modern generation to really speak out on politics and social injustices,\u201d Kerr said of Popovich.<\/p>\n

Kerr added that legendary former North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith helped break down racial barriers in the South, by \u201crefusing to take his team to certain places to play or stay or eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Pop is kind of in that Dean Smith mode of seeing the bigger picture beyond sports, and those are the coaches who really stand out to me. I immediately think of (Jackson) in that regard, just the guys who recognize the importance of sports and yet relative unimportance, and find that balance and that perspective, and then make an impact societally, and that\u2019s where Pop is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally Published: May 2, 2025 at 6:33 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr walked into the interview room at Chase Center on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,159,160,479,164,4025,4024,3349,155,165,6,161,162,163,66,863,255,1372,158],"class_list":{"0":"post-12938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golden-state-warriors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-golden-state","12":"tag-golden-state-warriors","13":"tag-goldenstate","14":"tag-goldenstatewarriors","15":"tag-gregg-popovich","16":"tag-inside-sports","17":"tag-latest-headlines","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-peninsula","20":"tag-san-francisco","21":"tag-san-francisco-county","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-steve-kerr","24":"tag-warriors","25":"tag-warriors-alert","26":"tag-warriors-hq"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114460176191813838","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}