It has been a very long and fruitful NBA coaching career so far for San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich. With five NBA titles, three NBA coach of the year awards, four NBA all-star game head coaching appearances, and a gold medal in the 2021 Olympics to top it all off. With all of those accolades, one would expect Popovich to have a ton of games coached under his belt and that assumption would be correct. On Wednesday night, he reached a coaching wins milestone that only six coaches in the history of the league have accomplished: 2,000 career games coached.
With Larry Brown and Jerry Sloan in his cross-hairs, Popovich will be fourth on the NBA's all-time games coached list by the time the 2021-22 season culminates. Bill Fitch's record can be reached in the 2022-23 season and after that, it will just be a matter of how many seasons Popovich wants to coach. He would need around five more seasons to reach Don Nelson and Lenny Wilkens, so that is unlikely.
If you know anything about “Pop,” you would know that he could care less about where he ends up on this list. He may end with just the third-most games coached in NBA history, but he has the five championships that only four other coaches (Phil Jackson (11), Red Auerbach (9), Pat Riley (5), and John Kundla (5) have ever gotten to. Pop is still coaching these days because he wants to win another championship one day and if he intends to not retire until he gets another one, maybe he will end up in first place on this list after all.