I knew this day was coming sooner than later. It's still hard. IMO, Pop is the greatest NBA coach/executive of all time. (Spare me the Red Auerbach/Phil Jackson talk today.)
I'm sure I've told this story before. (But I'm gonna tell it again.) It's 1996 and I'm fresh out of UT and working for free as a sports intern at KMOL. I was earning some walkaround money covering HS sports for the Express-News. TV was my main gig and what I thought I wanted to do, though. As the intern, I got to cover all kinds of stuff that came through town -- the Alamo Bowl, and Oscar De La Hoya fight, etc. But the Spurs were the main thing in town, for good reason.
As the only major pro sport in town, we covered them on a daily basis once training camp got going. With Pete Delgado and Don Harris back at the studio, I was the person they sent out to practices, shoot-arounds and all the home games with a videographer to get soundbites, run tapes at the Alamodome, etc. The 96-97 Spurs were fresh off a second-round loss to the Jazz and Bob Hill was back for Year 3 as HC. The Spurs were two seasons past having the best record in the NBA and a crushing loss to Houston in the WCF.
Franchise player David Robinson was coming off summer back surgery (or something). He would miss the first 18 games of the season and the Spurs stumbled to a 3-15 start. Oddly enough, just as Robinson is about to start playing again, Pop fires Hill and names himself head coach. How convenient. I couldn't believe it. I *think* this was his first year back in SA as the GM and he'd never been a HC anywhere that mattered. And he seemed like an asshole.
But Robinson is back and the Spurs could maybe win enough to sneak into the playoffs as the lower seed that nobody wanted to play. Well, it didn't quite go as planned. The Spurs were 3-3 in six games and then stunningly we learn that David is out long-term. To this day, I'm not sure if he was healthy enough to have come back near the end of the season but at that point, losses mattered more than wins. And the Spurs were doing plenty of the former. They cycled through players like Jamie Feick and Jason Sasser.
As you can imagine, interest quickly waned. It wasn't long before the only reporters at practice or gameday shootaround were myself and the SAEN beat writer (can't remember if it was Jerry Briggs still or if he was on the national NBA beat; it might've been Tim Griffin). That was it. Let's fast forward to the night of March 14. The putrid Celtics are in town. Avery Johnson is out of the lineup because he's having his tonsils removed or something. Second-year PG Cory Alexander gets the start, plays 47 mins, makes five 3's, scores 22 points and dishes out 10 assists. The Spurs win and "boost" their record to 16-47. (The Celtics finished with the worst record in the league and had the most balls in the lottery hopper. Ask Rick Pitino how that turned out.)
All I need for the news that night is a nice quote about Cory's game from Pop. We assemble in the post-game press room and I'm sitting on the first or second row. It's me, maybe the guy from the AP and Briggs or whoever from the EN. Oh, there's some videographers at the back of the room who will shout out a question if necessary.
I can't remember if I got the first or second question.
ME (with a smile creeping across my face): "So, uh, does Avery need to worry about his starting job when he's ready to come back?"
Hey Pop, just smile, maybe laugh, and give me a Cory blowjob quote that we can run with 20 seconds of highlights on the 10 pm sportscast.
Didn't happen. He thinks for a second and looks at me like I told him to go fuck himself.
POP: "Who are you? You're with who? Why are you here?"
Or something like that. It's hard to remember exactly. I was mortified. My face went flush.
Somebody mercifully asked another question. Unbowed, I fired off another question before we wrapped things up. I wanted to show him I wasn't intimidated. (I was.)
As I made my way to the room where we'd send the tape back to the station, KENS weekend sports anchor Chuck Mikitinic runs me down. He tells me he's appalled that Pop treated me like that. Said it was completely uncalled for and very unprofessional. Whatever. He's an asshole, I thought and I didn't think he was long for the franchise at that point. We made it through the year without incident and the Spurs kept losing. And losing. And losing.
But I noticed a funny thing. The team competed. Every night. They were talent deficient for sure. But damn if they didn't play hard.
I moved over to print journalism full time that summer and remained there until leaving the business In 2006. I left SA a year later for DFW and have not spoken to Pop since the end of that 20-62 season. A few times I was helping out with the Mavericks' playoff coverage but a Spurs-Mavs matchup never materialized before I left the business. I so wanted to pull Pop aside and ask if he remembered that March night at the Alamodome. (BTW, I'm pretty sure I was one of the first -- if not the first -- to get Pop's legendary "sideline reporter" treatment.) I didn't want to make him feel bad. I hoped we could share a laugh about it and I would (off the record) thank him for fulfilling my childhood dream of seeing the Spurs win the championship. I'd still like to see him in person again. I think the story would be far funnier to him today than it would've been in 2003 or so. Or maybe he'd ask me what I was doing there.
Today is a bittersweet day to say the least. Pop is the Spurs as far as I'm concerned and they will always be my favorite professional sports franchise. It's Texas Football and Spurs basketball. Those are 1A and 1B and they're pretty much interchangeable. And that cantankerous motherfucker made the Spurs the envy of American professional sports.
Thanks Pop. For everything.