You can learn a lot watching Gregg Popovich’s face.
At first blush that might seem like an easy statement, but I didn’t always feel that way. As a awkward preteen, Gregg Popovich felt foreboding to me, and unreachable. In those heady days of annual contention and struggles for supremacy with the Los Angeles Lakers, Popovich suffered in comparison to other legendary skippers who seemed more accessible than the flat-topped Serb/Croat pacing San Antonio’s sideline.
Though understandably prickly on the subject of the San Antonio Spurs specifically, Phil Jackson had the feel of a lovable hippie grandfather, still wrapped in the nostalgia of Woodstock and a time when the Knicks were a model franchise.