Consensus says Gregg Popovich is the best coach in the NBA. He relates to players and establishes a culture of TEAM. What does he say? I'm stealing Pop quotes today.
"You're in charge of yourself. There are always things you can do better."
“You have to make shots to win basketball games and we didn't do that. You also have to get back on defense, so it was a double-whammy.”
"In today's world, if you don't win the whole thing, whether it's football or basketball, or this and that, people have a tendency to paint you as a loser or act like you just robbed the cookie jar. Well that's baloney.
"It didn't happen for us, but is everything going to go your way in life? You think you're on the Earth and everything you want to happen to you is going to happen to you positively? The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn't go our way."
“We suck on 'D. Both individually and team-wise, we suck. We're pretty consistent that way. I don't know if I have an answer to that. If I did, we wouldn't suck quite so bad.” (Our job is to find solutions and Popovich is accountable.)
“I asked them if it wasn't too much trouble, if I wasn't being too pushy, if they could execute what we were trying to do. And if it didn't make them too angry, if they also wanted to play some defense on the other end, that would be great.” (In the middle of a recent game, I told the bench, "wow, that's the first bad shot we've taken." Do you understand what I'm saying?" Two girls piped up, "sarcasm". That's why you have to love coaching young kids.)
"Basketball is a pretty simple game. What wins is consistency and competitiveness."
"I can't make every decision for you. I don't have 14 timeouts. You guys got to get together and talk..."(this reflects his military background and decentralized command structure)