Steve Kerr intended his question to be rhetorical, but it warrants an answer, anyway. When he mused this week about the possibility of his old mentor returning for yet another season as coach of the Spurs, Kerr asked, “Why not?”
Gregg Popovich probably can give him a few reasons. Some speak to how awkward his timing has been over the past couple of years.
And some speak to how he still might wind up with a perfectly timed ending after all.
In a world without a pandemic, there’s a good chance he’d be retired already. For years, the 2020 Olympics in Japan looked like the obvious ride-off-into-the-rising-sun moment for the man who’d long dreamed of leading Team USA.
At the age of 71, with more total victories than any coach in NBA history, a franchise easing into a fallow period, and conversations with grandchildren sounding more and more appealing than interviews with sports writers, it looked like a no-brainer. Why would he want to come back to miss the playoffs again?
One has to remember that before the coronavirus hit, the Spurs’ on-court future looked as bleak as it had in at least a couple of decades. Their best players were over the hill and headed to free agency soon, their promising youngsters hadn’t quite learned how to play together, and none presented himself as a can’t-miss star in the making.
Had the Spurs played out the string last March and April, they might have bid farewell to Popovich without a playoff streak, without a discernible identity, and without any clear understanding of how their pieces fit into the modern NBA.
But when the league’s four-month hiatus put a wrench in Popovich’s summer plans, it also gave him time to reassess his roster. In his career he’d overseen multiple stylistic makeovers, with a couple of them resulting in championships, and this gave him a chance to at least start one more.
The Spurs didn’t qualify for the postseason at Disney World, but they achieved something that might have been far more important. In the bubble they found a reason to believe they were onto something, and that by playing fast and loose they could hang with anybody.
No, they didn’t enter this season expecting to win a title. But they did enter it expecting to win more than they lost, and expecting to get better the more that Dejounte Murray, Derrick White, Lonnie Walker and Keldon Johnson play together. And that’s a much better mental place than the one they might have been in if they had sputtered to the finish last April.
They’re still a long way from trophy aspirations, of course. But even in a season in which he’s been stuck in hotel rooms while getting almost as sick of Zoom calls as the average second-grade teacher is, Popovich has looked reinvigorated by the play of the youngest team he’s ever coached.
The thing is, the neat and tidy ending doesn’t look like any more of a guarantee now than it did 10 months ago. Although officials from Japan and the International Olympic Committee reaffirmed their commitment to staging the rescheduled Summer Games this July and August in Tokyo, an air of uncertainty remains.
A report in Britain’s Times newspaper suggesting the Japanese government already has concluded the Games will have to be canceled was blasted as untrue by both the IOC and Japan. But with cases surging in the country, Japanese broadcaster NHK conducted a poll this month showing 77 percent of the public in favor of scrapping the event or pushing it back.
If it happens, Popovich will get his long-awaited opportunity to coach the team from which he was cut when he was fresh out of the Air Force Academy in 1972.
Given the fact that opening ceremonies are scheduled for July 23, the day after the last possible date for Game 7 of the NBA Finals, at least a few of the game’s biggest stars will be unable to participate. If Popovich has no Lakers or Nets to choose from, for instance, and if the players on the conference finalists withdraw, too, he might even find himself as an underdog.
He’ll enjoy that, though. And if the Olympics get pushed back again? That almost certainly would mean at least a three-year wait for the next Summer Games, and it’s unrealistic to expect Popovich to bide his time with the Spurs until he’s 75.
So one way or the other, he’ll have reasons to make this season his last. To be clear, he might choose to come back anyway. He’s never given any indication he’s ready to quit. And as Kerr noted, “he’s still as sharp as ever.”
But if the Spurs stay on their current path, if they compete for a playoff spot, if they maybe even win a series, this might count as one of the most fulfilling seasons of Popovich’s career. And if then he finally can take a breather to drink all the expensive wine he wants, wherever he wants to drink it, knowing he helped build something that will outlast him?
Well, the question, “Why not?” applies there, too.
mfinger@express-news.net
Twitter: @mikefinger
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