CNN
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San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich is the best head coach of all time in the NBA – has decided to leave the team’s sideline after 29 seasons.
“While my love and passion for the game remained, I decided it was time to leave as head coach,” Popovich said in a statement released by the team. “I am forever grateful to the incredible players, coaches, staff and fans who have allowed me to serve them as the Spurs head coach and am excited to continue supporting an organization, community and city that makes a lot of sense to me.”
According to the team, Popovich will transition to president of the basketball operations team. ESPN was the first to report his decision. Mitch Johnson, interim head coach in Popovich’s absence, was named head coach.
The decision to retreat from the bench represents the end of Popovich’s bystander’s career.
Popovich, 76, has been missing from the sidelines since suffering a mild stroke on November 2nd at Spurs’ home arena Frost Bank Center.
At the time, the team announced that he was in rehabilitation and “were expected to recover completely.”
In a statement released in December, Popovich expressed his desire to return to coaching.
“No one is more excited to see me return to the bench than the talented individual I have led the rehabilitation process,” Popovich said at the time. “They quickly learned that I wasn’t able to coach.”
Johnson, who was then an assistant to Spurs, was promoted to interim head coach in Popovich’s absence.
Popovich is the winner and the mentor
In addition to leading the Spurs to multiple NBA championships, Popovich also served as a mentor to players and coaches in professional and college ranks.
In 2014, he hired Becky Hamon as his assistant coach and led more women on the NBA coaching staff.
In 2020, when Popovich was kicked out of the game, Jamon became the first woman to oversee the NBA team as head coach in a regular season game. Today, Hamon is considered one of the WNBA’s leading head coaches, leading the Las Vegas ace to back-to-back WNBA titles in 2022 and 2023.
At last month’s NCAA Men’s Final Four, Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson spoke many times about the key role Popovich played in his career.
Popovich joined the Spurs in the summer of 1988 as an assistant coach for Larry Brown’s staff, and later became an assistant to Golden State under Don Nelson.
In 1994, Popovich joined the San Antonio front office. He became the Spurs head coach on December 10, 1996, and took over after he fired Bob Hill. As a coach or executive for 37 years in the NBA, he spent 35 of that season with the Spurs.
He has 1,422 regular season wins, NBA records in his name. He has also won 170 postseason games, five NBA championships, and is one of three coaches who have won the NBA Coach of the Year Award three times alongside Nelson and Pat Riley.
Popovich led Team USA to gold medals at the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics as head coach of the US Men’s Basketball National Team.
“It’s profound that pop coaches have an extraordinary impact on our families, San Antonio, the Spurs and basketball games,” said Peter Holt, managing partner of the Spurs. “His admiration and awards don’t give justice to the impact he has made on so many people. He, along with fans all over the world, is grateful for his incredible 29 years of management as the San Antonio Spurs head coach.”
CNN’s Ben Morse contributed to this report.
