Coach Gregg Popovich talks on Pre-Season Media Day 2014

The look is complete: a short, but not quite military-cut, head of white hair is complimented by a nicely trimmed beard and new shirt of the same color.

If Coach Pop is suffering from a champagne hangover, he hid it well at the 2014 Spurs Media Day. His stern eyes, open smirk of a laugh, and witty replies were all signs that our beloved coach was not abducted by extraterrestrial aliens to save their planet from a basketball death match that only the reigning Coach of the Year for the NBA could muster … or was he?

There was something different about Coach Pop’s first meeting with the press this year. His look was different and I saw something I rarely see in them: the whites of his eyes. The ever scowling demeanor we have become accustomed to rarely gives us moments to see what he looks like when he isn’t scrutinizing the field of basketball players or reporters in front of him. Always focused on the next step, Pop doesn’t allow himself to be unfocused when it is time to prepare for battle. Like the mighty King Leonidas watching the waves of Persian ships crash, he alone can not lose focus on the ultimate goal just because everything is going the team’s way. We all know our beloved chess master is thinking five to ten steps ahead. However, the Popovich I now see has that calm look of – dare I say – relaxation?

The idea of a tranquil Gregg Popovich is now breaking my brain. Not because I can’t expect the man to rest – most fans know he enjoys a vacation of travel (mostly to Europe), drinking wine and getting a little Vitamin D in the form of a sunned-kissed glow. I pause because he didn’t have much time to rest. Pop’s pale skin tone comes from a short vacation after his work with RC Bufford on off-season acquisitions.

Sometime after the draft, the effects of stomping his feet had its effect on his hip and Coach went under the knife. From the picture above, he looks like he has worked through the pain. I’m not saying he has a sickly look to him, I just can’t imagine he had much time to rest with a traditional vacation. You know: go to the beach, enjoy the backyard with the family, drink wine outside while watching the sun go down, etc.

So what did he supposedly do in the off-season? Aside from a wine function in Oregon, he managed to avoid any media attention.

Did he need to take time to decompress, somewhere away from people, to remind himself that even though his team accomplished something no other team in NBA history ever has, life is still about being connected to the world off the court? Or was there a mysterious shanghai after the Anderson & Cotton acquisitions that replaced the Gregg Charles Popovich we once knew with a more refined and less edgy version? All I am saying is that I don’t believe the only thing replaced on the old man this summer was his hip.

There was something else different about this year’s first media address: what came from behind Pop’s pearly whites.

“A lot of times winning a championship, people don’t believe — well, I guess the last team standing is probably the best team — but good fortune plays a huge role,” he said. “What’s good fortune? It’s a guy off the bench having a great series. It might be a call or a non-call by an official. It might be an injury. It could be a lot of different things: The way the ball bounces as it ordinarily wouldn’t do in this or that circumstance.”

Excuse me? Coach, are you not the same man who has gone on record saying ‘you can’t blame the Basketball Gods’?

Isn’t their sole reason for being to deliver good and bad fortune to NBA teams in the playoffs?

Now for some reason, Spurs Nation is allowed to whisper that every playoff run comes with some sort of a secret gold coin offering at the summit of the SBC Center once the second season starts?

I ask this question because, as we all know, San Antonians can be very superstitious: pre-game dress-up rituals, game time cheers that we know pump up our heroes on the other side of the screen, and post-game promises & predictions of how Pop and the Boys are gonna be another serious contender for the Title. We even have nuns pray for San Antonio’s team (drops the mic)! Either this helps to prove my alien abduction theory or the old man has forgotten to keep his mouth shut about the invisible referees in the sky.

So here I sit, looking at our coach go through what everyone would consider the least favorite part of his job, with an ease as if he were with his team, enjoying a few bottles of wine from his personal cellar.

The wisdom of having a redemption year on his resume may indicate that a new look comes with such a distinction. The fact that he had to take heartache & frustration and metamorph the energy into focus & hustle to accomplish unfinished business was not just an inspiration to anyone who has faced something similar in their life, but also a boss move by Popovich, because he did it his way.

Maybe this is my long-winded way of trying to understand why Coach Pop now has a swagger – and why shouldn’t he?

His staff kept the band together, his Finals MVP has been practicing three-a-days in the off season as if he lost another championship, and his Big Three did nothing but rest and focus on staying in shape. I think I too would break my poker face for a moment, because feeling blessed can sometimes be too much to keep inside. Either way, I can appreciate this version of Gregg Popovich … for however long it may last in this Race 4 Seis.

Go Spurs Go!