![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages_Popovich.jpg\")
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Former Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, pictured during his tenure, is still a vital influence on the team.<\/p>\n
SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 Victor Wembanyama barely could get the words out.<\/p>\n
The question, a few minutes after he and the San Antonio Spurs won the Western Conference Finals<\/a> and earned the right to go to this year\u2019s NBA Finals<\/a> to face the New York Knicks, was about his relationship with former coach Gregg Popovich and what this playoff run likely means to the\u00a0winningest coach in league history.<\/p>\n And Wembanyama paused, clearly emotional, before starting his answer.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what it means for him,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cThat\u2019s a guy who\u2019s got more experience as a coach than almost anybody and has been through so many things in his career and so many things\u00a0right now as \u2018El Jefe.\u2019\u00a0He goes through some things we can\u2019t even imagine. So, I need to call him. I need to see him. I need to talk to him because there\u2019s no way I can understand right now how he feels.\u201d<\/p>\n The official title for the 77-year-old Popovich is President of Spurs Basketball. Unofficially, the Basketball Hall of Famer may as well be coach emeritus \u2014 still regularly seen at practices in San Antonio, still seen at games, sometimes walking with the assistance of a cane. He\u2019s still in the ears of players and coaches, even visiting the locker room after the Spurs lost Game 3 of the West finals to Oklahoma City for a bit of a pep talk and bit of a chewing out, depending on perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, pictured during his tenure, is still a vital influence on the team. SAN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,117610,85,24942],"class_list":["post-707517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-gregg-popovich","tag-sports","tag-spurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}