First year Brooklyn Nets guard Patty Mills made his triumphant return to San Antonio on Friday night, his first time in over a decade he wasn't playing for the home Spurs.
The decision to leave the team you spent 12 seasons of your career with is never easy. One of the heaviest parts for Patty Mills was informing head coach Gregg Popovich, the human embodiment of the franchise itself. Coach Pop is the Spurs.
In a recent interview with NBA.com's Michael C. Wright, Patty Mills opened up about that conversation, which began with a simple text message in the middle of the night during the Tokyo Olympics.
“He was the first person that I obviously needed to tell before anyone else. … But I remember coming back from the Argentinian quarterfinal game to the Olympic village in Tokyo. We’d just finished the quarterfinal. Big win.”
The then-Spurs free agent had just played a full game for Team Australia but had his career fork in the road weighing on his mind while having a late dinner at 1 a.m. Mills reveals that he didn't come to a complete decision until nearly four in the morning. As it was already extremely late, he decided to shoot coach Popovich a text instead of trying for a call.
“To my surprise, he responded within, I think it was like three minutes or something that I got a text back. It was one of those things where you send the text, have mixed feelings about sending the text in the first place, then, you put your phone on the bedside table. All of the sudden, before you can fall asleep, the phone vibrates and you’ve got a text back from him.”
“So, I think finally we got to catch up. We played them in the semifinal game, and we got to catch up after the game, and then again after the medal games. I guess it was him having the words to describe this is what I remember him saying, and how it feels. But [he told me] that he loves me and he understands.”
With a championship ring and more than a decade of time spent together on the Spurs, there was nothing but mutual respect between Gregg Popovich and Patty Mills. Mills may have moved on to another team and Coach Pop may not be on the sidelines for much longer, but both will remain franchise icons to Spurs fans everywhere.
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