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San Antonio Spurs legendary head coach Gregg Popovich apparently once sent a new team employee to an errand that took hours to complete and later gave him a brand new car. This excerpt was relayed by Rafe Bartholomew, who recently took to Reddit to for a little Q&A with some avid NBA Redditors.
Bartholomew, who is the co-author of the book “Basketball: A Love Story,” was asked, “What player or coach that you covered do you know well enough to say that their public portrayal is nothing like what they are really like personally,” and here was his answer:
I would submit Gregg Popovich for discussion. He has garnered a great deal of attention for his grumpy in game interviews, which he does in protest of having to talk to reporters in the middle of a game, but that persona does not match up at all with the man I've gotten to know. He very quietly is one of the most decent, kind, considerate coaches I know. He hates for us to write about him, but there are countless stories in which he helped someone. As an example, a young employee from the Spurs not on the basketball side got a job and packed up his beat up Toyota to drive across the country. Pop sent him on a crazy errand that took hours – long enough for him to replace the beat up car with a brand new one.
While Pop is famously known for making fools out of NBA court side reporters and media folks alike, this story comes out as a breath of fresh air.
We all get that 69-year old coach portray a grumpy and sarcastic public image. But stories like this put things into perspective that not everything that is publicized is true.
There are definitely more stories of heart-warming stories of Popovich that we have not heard of. But just looking at his relationships with the likes of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker, these kinds of stories should not come as a surprise.
