Gregg Popovich, who has won more games than any coach in NBA history and transformed the San Antonio Spurs into one of the league’s cornerstone franchises of the 21st century, is stepping down as head coach and will become the team’s president of basketball operations.
Popovich, 76, who won an NBA-record 1,422 regular-season games and was thrice the league’s coach of the year, had not coached since suffering a mild stroke on Nov. 2.
Mitch Johnson, who took over for Popovich on an interim basis and piloted the Spurs to a final record of 34-48, will have the interim tag removed and continue as head coach, the team announced Friday. One league source said Popovich recommended Johnson for the promotion.
“While my love and passion for the game remain, I’ve decided it’s time to step away as head coach,” Popovich said in a statement. “I’m forever grateful to the wonderful players, coaches, staff and fans who allowed me to serve them as the Spurs head coach and am excited for the opportunity to continue to support the organization, community and city that are so meaningful to me.”
Popovich spent the last 29 seasons as Spurs coach, winning five championships with teams led by Hall of Famers Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. Inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame himself in 2023, Popovich is one of only five coaches to win five championships. His teams won 50-plus games in 18 consecutive years and amassed 170 playoff wins.
Popovich’s new role places him next to franchise chief executive RC Buford and general manager Brian Wright.
The Spurs last reached the playoffs in 2019 and are in the midst of a lengthy rebuild around French sensation Victor Wembanyama. A month after drafting Wembanyama first in 2023, the Spurs awarded Popovich a five-year, $80 million contract extension to continue coaching the team through its transformation. He spent much of this season away from the bench after suffering the stroke, which occurred at Frost Bank Center — the Spurs’ home arena — before an early-season game against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Popovich ceded coaching duties to Johnson after the stroke. The team said in February he would not return to the bench this season, and in April he experienced a medical emergency at a restaurant and had to be transported to the hospital via ambulance with a “non-life-threatening injury or illness.”
Known for his dry humor and innovative coaching philosophies, Popovich became a leading voice for the league over the last quarter century. He is revered by the many considerable stars he has coached in San Antonio — and many of those he coached against.
“When you play the Spurs, not only are you trying to defeat the Hall of Fame players,” LeBron James, who played against Popovich in three NBA Finals and for him on the U.S. men’s national team, said in April. “You’re also trying to defeat the Hall of Fame coach.”
Popovich’s coaching tree is extensive — title-winning coaches Steve Kerr, Doc Rivers and Mike Budenholzer all played for or coached with him, among others. And his traditions of taking players and coaches to wine-soaked dinners are legendary, as is his occasionally cantankerous attitude toward media. He was most ornery during on-camera interviews between quarters for national TV broadcasts, offering short, sometimes acerbic answers to the sideline reporter.
Additionally, Popovich served as head coach for USA Basketball from 2019 to 2021, directing the Americans at the FIBA World Cup in China and then the Tokyo Olympics. It didn’t go so well in China — the U.S. finished seventh in that tournament, the worst placing for an American team at a World Cup or Olympics — but Popovich rebounded to coach the team to Olympic gold in 2021.
Popovich, who played college basketball at Air Force, began his coaching career in 1973 as an assistant at his alma mater before getting his first head-coaching gig in 1979 with Pomona-Pitzer. After seven years there, Popovich joined Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown’s staff as a volunteer assistant at Kansas in 1986. He later joined Brown with the Spurs in 1988 and, after a brief stint as an assistant with the Golden State Warriors, returned to San Antonio in 1994 as general manager.
In 1996, with San Antonio off to a 3-15 start, Popovich fired coach Bob Hill and named himself coach. A year later, the Spurs won the NBA Draft Lottery and drafted Duncan, beginning one of the most successful coach-player pairings in sports history.
The Spurs won titles in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014. Popovich’s teams posted winning records in 22 consecutive seasons, another NBA record.
Johnson, 38, is inheriting a coveted job throughout the NBA in which coaches who had just been let go — and others who have jobs already — were hoping to get a look.
Wembanyama was on his way to another league-leading season in blocks while averaging north of 20 points and 10 rebounds before a blood clot in his shoulder cut the season short in March.
The Spurs swung a big trade for De’Aaron Fox at the February deadline, and additionally saw their first-round pick from last year’s draft, Stephon Castle, win NBA Rookie of the Year this season.
During the Spurs’ two-game trip to Paris this season, where Wembanyama is from, both Johnson and the Spurs’ players said they received routine calls from Popovich, who sought to counsel, but not necessarily coach, from home.
(Photo: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
