At 73, "Coach Pop" has just made basketball history a little more, with a 1,336th victory in the regular season, overtaking the legendary Don Nelson, whose assistant he was thirty years ago at Golden. State.

"It's the most important thing in my life. My grandchildren can go for a hike. What I could do when I retire, what kind of wine I could drink, all those things become bland when I think of the number of victories that I have", he laughed, already sure of his fact, a few years ago.

Most of the time impassive, Popovich the sarcastic sometimes sketches a small smile in front of the journalists.

Because nothing amuses him so much as seeing their livid faces after roughing them up.

"Having a sense of humor is hugely important to me because I think people who aren't self-mockery, who don't appreciate funny moments, won't be able to give their all for a band," confided- it in 2015.

officer and gentleman

It was in 1996 that Popovich took over the reins of Spurs, to make it a formidable winning machine, putting on five rings (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2014), playing 22 play-offs in a row and being named coach of the year three times.

His latest coronation may have been the finest.

First, because at the top of their game, the Spurs took brilliant revenge on the Heat of LeBron James, after a cruel defeat in the 2013 final.

Then because this title dedicated its "Big3" Tim Duncan / Tony Parker / Manu Ginobili for the last time, seven years after the fourth which many thought would be their last.

Of these three so different players, "Coach Pop" got the best.

If he found in Duncan his alter ego and knew immediately that their "marriage" would work, he agreed, a little in spite of himself, to give free rein to the genius of the artist Ginobili, whose unpredictability - the enemy of any trainer - was more often a winner than a loser.

(l to r) Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker listen to Gregg Popovich during Tony Parker's jersey retirement ceremony in San Antonio, November 11, 2019 Ronald Cortes GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/Archives

As for Parker, drafted at 19, he decided on the contrary to harass him, to push him to his maximum.

This did not prevent the Frenchman from considering him as a second father.

"During one of his first training sessions, I brought a few guys to run into him. I wanted to see what he had in mind. He impressed me. So I said to him: + The ball is it's up to you, find solutions, I'm going to love you and yell at you at the same time + And that's how it happened", he summed up.

"Pop art"

In doing so, Popovich, born January 28, 1949 in East Chicago (Indiana) to a Serbian father and a Croatian mother, reconnected with his past as an officer.

From his five years in the Air Force, he retained the virtues of organization and discipline.

Captain of the American armed forces team, he toured Eastern Europe and the USSR on tours in 1972 and understood that basketball was not just American.

It is no coincidence that the Spurs have become the most cosmopolitan of NBA teams under his era.

Gregg Popovich (l) with and Tony Parker, coach and player of the San Antonio Spurs, during an NBA game in Houston, December 25, 2015 SCOTT HALLERAN GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/Archives

The legend made him a spy.

After having maintained the mystery for a long time, he conceded having been in intelligence for a time, in Turkey.

"I was stationed at the border, it's not like I was James Bond", says the one who adorned himself with Olympic gold with Team USA in Tokyo last year - one of his greatest prides.

In San Antonio, a precursor, he chose to have as assistants - a rare occurrence - a foreigner with the Italian Ettore Messina and - an unprecedented event in the NBA - a woman with Becky Hammon.

Often reduced to a defensive style, he is above all an architect of the collective, for whom academicism is not a dirty word but a springboard to excellence, which in basketball is similar to "Pop art", in short.

© 2022 AFP